I was on the road one spring morning, bringing my new tractor home, when it dawned on me that I was within a mile of a fellow vegetable grower’s place. My friend Sam had an organic farm too, which is why we were friends. We didn’t often spend time together outside of farming activities, and I had not seen him for several months. His farm was north of Plymouth, near Rhine Center, which is not an area I usually pass through. I pulled my phone from my pocket and dialed his number. “Hey Sam, are you at home?” I asked when he picked up the phone. He said that he was. “Great,” I said, “and do you have a fire extinguisher handy that I can borrow? One you could bring me, um, right now?”
Two days earlier, I was in my car driving the opposite way on the same road, not knowing where it was leading. That spring, my fifth season, it was time for me to invest in a new tractor. The only trouble was I had nothing to invest and there was zero chance of that tractor being new or anything like new. I needed a small miracle to locate a working tractor at scrap steel prices. Under those conditions, visiting a dealer was out of the question. And I had no experience going to auctions where tractors can sometimes sell for very low prices, nor did I have any friends at that time who could help. Searching used tractor listings online generated very little. The one lead I pursued took me to a farm where the owner of the tractor, upon meeting me, asked where my husband was. When I explained I wasn’t married, he looked annoyed and then asked why I would want to buy his tractor and who was going to do the test drive. It was not the right tractor for me, anyway.
One dreary morning I decided to get in my car and just drive, having no plan of where to go and preferring it that way, given that my mood matched the weather. This was during a time when the wood stove in my living space was often insufficient, and the early hours of the day were cold and the heater in my car was a welcome respite to the ever-present chill on the farm. Once on the road and warm, I started thinking about what to do, the need for a new tractor always on my mind. I remembered a little place with a patchwork quilt of farm equipment spread around the lawn that I had driven by once or twice in years past. If my memory served me, it was a farm on a county crossroads somewhere north of Plymouth about fifteen miles. I could picture the property with the tractors—or was it only parts of tractors—but I didn’t quite remember if it was an independent dealer, or a busy farm that used all the machinery, or maybe it was only a scrap yard. Whatever it was, I decided I should try to find it again.
My memory did serve me, and within a half an hour I was driving by the place I’d remembered. Passing it once again, I still couldn’t determine if it was a working farm or a place selling the tractors that were scattered around the farmyard. But I thought I spotted exactly what I wanted, a Deutz, parked by a large outbuilding. I’d have to stop in to find out more. I turned around at the next intersection and headed back, summoning courage and trying to ignore my memory of the last farm I had visited in my search for a tractor. I approached again, and this time I pulled into the driveway.
There was a weathered house set back on the property, but I headed straight for the machine shop, drawn there by the sight of my dream tractor, a mid-sized, -06 model Deutz, complete with a covered cab, parked smack in front of the door of the shop. In addition to being the right make and model, it was perfectly worn out, with cracked, mismatched tires and rust on every panel of the body. If the owner would sell it to me, it might be within my price range, I thought. The tractor was parked so close to the door of the building that I practically had to crawl over the front axle to get in. It struck me that this wasn’t a place which regularly received drop-ins like me, or else they typically just used the overhead door, but that was closed against the cold. I wasn’t sure yet where I was, who I would find inside, or why I thought this was my tractor, but squeezing past it and into the building I went, looking for all those answers.
Two days later I had the answers, a tractor, and a small fire on my hands. Smoke curled up around the rear axle, out past the tires, and up into the cab. I had jumped down from the cab moments earlier, when I realized that the fumes surrounding me were not just from oil burning off the dirty engine. These fumes were from open-air flames. I hung up the phone with Sam after he assured me he’d look for a fire extinguisher. A small fire on a tractor loaded with fuel could lead to a big fireball in a big hurry. I doubted that Sam would be able to help if the flames found the fuel before he found a fire extinguisher. A downside of buying very used farm equipment is that it can come with thirty years of chaff tucked into every crevice of its body, which had overheated shortly after I set out on my drive towards home. I could hear the popping sound made by kindling as it catches fire, the kindling being straw matted to the rear axle and trapped directly below the driver’s seat. The ditch on the north side of the road was spackled with the last of the spring snowmelt, and that is where I stood contemplating the fire and feeling a tinge of buyer’s remorse. I put my phone back in my pocket, reached for the slush around my feet, and began making a snowball.
…to be continued…
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