My tractor

When my dad was a farmer in Germany we always had a few tractors, but when we moved to Canada, even though we moved to a rural property that used to be a farm, my dad never got a tractor. I often wished we had one, a tractor would have been so handy here and there!

Having a rural property now, I've often thought about buying a tractor. Eventually, I had enough of thinking about it and just bought an old tractor. It turns out, big old farm tractors are easier to find, and often cheaper than smaller tractors, because lots of guys with hobby farms want a smaller tractor. And so I bought a big tractor. Definitely bigger than I "needed", perhaps a bit too big for some things. The fenders on this one are as tall as I am. Here, comparing size to my lawn tractor

Driving the tractor to the back of the property.

There is a swing set here, made out of telephone poles. Whenever kids are at the farm, they immediately run towards this decrepit swing set. The swings are broken, and the thing may become dangerous. Plus, the telephone poles might eventually be useful for underpinnings for this old barn.

I wrapped a chain around the post and hooked it to the top of the front end loader. I expected to have to wiggle the post back and forth to get it to budge, but lifting up with the front end loader, it came straight out!

This is with the loader as high as it will go. I drove forward to pull the post all the way out.

Of course, I could have wrapped the chain around the post at a lower point, but if I did that, there would be the risk that the post, once pulled, might tip over backwards onto me!

Pulling out the second post. This one was considerably thicker than the first one, but it also came straight out.

I also used the loader to bring some extra soil to fill in the holes left by the posts.

I chained the top beam of the swing to the loader bucket, then lifted it up. Before hauling it away, I wrapped all the chains for the swings around the post so I wouldn't end up driving over them.

Hauling the long top beam back to the top of the hill. I had to lift it way up to clear some of the vegetation, though I still scraped some branches of a cedar tree. One of the chains that held the post to the bucket ended up coming loose, though, surprisingly, the post didn't fall off the bucket.

Picking up the larger of the two posts, this one was more elegant to pick up.

I also have a fork that can be attached instead of the bucket, but I haven't tried attaching that yet. And the wider bucket gives more stability for balancing the long poles.

I have been questioning my sanity buying such a big tractor. And being old, there are plenty of things wrong with it too, and I probably paid too much for it.

But my main regret is that it takes up an awful lot of space in my workshop / garage. I later parked it in one of those awful car tents (it barely fit with the loader bucket and exhaust removed), eventually started building a shed for it, which I wasn't able to complete.

Intimidating about it is, if it won't move under its own power, there's no way for me to move it. It weighs four times as much as my car.

But if I end up with another bandsaw I can't fix, I now have just the right thing to finish the job!

Selling the tractor

Two years later (in 2018), when we decided to move, I sold the tractor. It turns out, it had a more things wong with it than I knew about, which really drove dowon the price I was able to get. Live and learn.