Tractors and trees

To say we have a small orchard would be an exaggeration.  What we have is an old apple tree with no fruit, 3-4 trees bearing what we believe to be plums, 5-6 trees that have no ‘plums’, an ample supply of suckers shooting up out of the ground that are nothing more than glorified weeds.  Cleaning up the orchard was a job that I felt I could manage.  I ear marked the small non-producing trees and backed Jubal up to start ripping them out, a job we’ve gotten quite good at.  The Bride was here to help me and together we tackled the job.  What I hadn’t planned on was pulling a giant wheely on the tractor and scaring the pants off of us both!  Once I ‘landed’ the tractor, we broke out laughing, grateful that there were no men around to have seen it and grateful that Jubal and I were still in one piece.  As she knows me well, she ran to gather her camera just ‘in case’ I did it again, which of course I did.  Well, not exactly, the second time as you can see, when doing the wheely it did not go up nearly as high, but only because this time I was prepared for the hair-raising experience and I had learned how to land the darn thing.

I still have a lot to learn about both tractor driving and tractor driving instructions, especially when recited by my loving spouse.  We have a small space between the dog run and the garage.  It looked big enough for the tractor to go through, but to be cautious, I asked Pat if the tractor could fit through that spot.  He’s exact words were, “I don’t know, why don’t you try it”.  What I thought this meant was, “Sure, there is plenty of room”.  What he meant was, “Are you crazy?  Only if you go very straight and grease both sides of the tractor so it will squeak through.”  Needless to say, Jubal and I did not make it.  Both the garage and the dog run are still standing, although there are some fresh skids marks on the dog run.  I ended up with a wrenched thumb, a bruised elbow and a broken nail.

The tribal drums must have been beating announcing that there was both tractor driving and pulling stuff down going on.  Pretty soon most of the men on the farm materialized to have their turn on Jubal as well as guide the newest teen (freshly arrived from England) to productive tree pulling tractor driving fun, with NO wheelys.