[AT] What to do when you think you need to buy more antique tractors

[Indiana Robinson]

On Sun, May 16, 2010 at 10:54 AM, Grant Brians
<sales at heirloom-organic.com> wrote:
> This thread speaks to me because I enjoy tractors and farm equipment in
> general and am not thrilled by much of the new styling and electronics on
> the tractors. I have a solution for those of you on the list like Dean to
> allow you to legitimately justify acquiring the antique tractors of your
> dreams. Become a modest scale commercial farmer growing the crops you love.
> Now there are several issues with doing so, naturally. First, you must
> actually train your self how to spend your resources in a way that will
> hopefully make enough money to support both your habit and your family (or
> self if single....) Second you need to choose a crop rotation that works
> where you farm. Third, you need to be good enough at marketing and choice to
> avoid not only no till corn beans corn but also sell what you produce in a
> manner to become sustainable. Last, it is amazing how many of the tractors
> and other tools you will use turn out to be OLD. I am now 50 years old and I
> just realized the other day that most of the tractors and equipment I use is
> older than I am still - not just when I was a teenager and starting out in
> farming.
>     The upsides are the NEED to have enough tractors and farm equipment
> RUNNING to be successful, that it is much easier to interest a
> child/grandchild/acquaintance in continuing your business when using
> INTERESTING equipment that is human scale, and that you will love what you
> are doing. Also your health is likely to be better as you get older than
> otherwise because despite the challenges you enjoy what you are doing.
>     A side note is that sometimes you end up having to make these decisions
> SOLELY on the basis of the business needs not on the basis of what you have
> your heart set on. More on that in a later post....
>              Grant
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Keeping horses "demands" a lot of tractors... I like the sometimes
mentioned here concept of one job, one tractor... Horses create a lot
of jobs.
mowing
manure scraping from the barns
manure scooping
manure spreading
manure composting
lot dragging
arena harrowing
hay hauling (or even mowing, raking, baling...)
fence building (one for the trailer, one for the post hole auger)
driveway grading
The list just keeps going...
;-)
Not sure she is buying all of this yet...
.
Also not switching implements is a big safety factor.
:-)
I'm about to try Roger's system of buying "parts". You know, buy a
tractor and haul it home in sections as "parts".



-- 


Be tolerant of almost everything but intolerance...

Francis Robinson
aka "farmer"
Central Indiana USA
robinson46176 at gmail.com