[AT] Red tractor day

[Dean Vinson]

Thank you, gentlemen.  I am indeed lucky, and I have indeed worked hard, and
also been patient.   This coming summer will be the 20th anniversary of my
finding and joining ATIS, and I think probably dozens of times over the
years I've posted some variation of "I still hope to return to rural life in
a few years" or "One of these years I'll move back out of the suburbs."
I'm profoundly grateful to have finally had the opportunity--and for a place
like this to have come on the market when I was in a position to do
something about it.   

My fiancee (I've been able to introduce her to a few of you at Portland or
Greenville) and I have known for some years that we'd end up together and
wanted to find a nice old farm, and for a long time we'd entertain ourselves
on a nice Saturday afternoon by driving around the countryside and looking
at farms and farmhouses, learning about the various areas within feasible
commuting distances.   A few years ago as my youngest finished high school
we started looking more seriously, and I got more serious about getting my
former house ready to put on the market, we began working with realtors and
going to farm auctions, etc.   Looked at lots of places, and although I
would have been happy with many of them she had a more dispassionate eye and
was able to point out things that really weren't what we wanted, so we kept
looking.   

In the summer of 2013 we found a place at auction that we both got very
interested in just because of the setting--the house and barns weren't much
to speak of but the land and woods were as perfect as one could ever
imagine, lots of beautiful gently rolling USDA prime farmland, spectacular
hardwood woods with a nice little creek, long tree-lined driveway, no big
highway within earshot, red-tailed hawks lazily circling overhead, etc.   We
went to the auction to bid but the opening bid from another bidder was above
our upper limit, so that was that.  But the disappointment at not getting
that beautiful place was strong and stayed with us, so we resolved that the
next time we found something really special we'd do a better job at
researching what it was really worth and what we could manage.   Couple of
months later this place came to our attention.   It's a longer commute than
we had planned and farther from extended family, and the woods don't hold a
candle to that other place, and the price was more than what we'd previously
felt comfortable with, but the house and barns are beyond what we'd dreamed
of and the setting and serenity are certainly wonderful.   Took a week or so
of discussions and sleeping on it and figuring out just how it might be
workable, but in the end we went for it and I have never had a moment's
regret about doing so.  

And Dean VP, indeed, I love that 620 and have never had a moment's regret
about purchasing it also!   I had it out just the other day--I really only
needed to move the brushhog from where I'd parked it to another spot since
I'd decided to rearrange things a little, but then once I had the brushhog
hooked up I figured I might as well go clean up some scrubby undergrowth
from an area I'd recently cleared of obstacles... sure is fun.

As for dozers and clearing the osage (yes, aka Bois d'Arc, also aka hedge
apple), well, I think I'm constrained to a lower-intensity approach for the
time being.  (I'm not *that* lucky.  :)

It's certainly a ton of slow-moving work to tackle that stuff mostly by
hand, but there's no particular rush.   And the mass of big osage trees
conceals two very good-sized mature walnuts, and I'm discovering, in at
least a few areas a whole bunch of much younger walnuts.   So part of what
I'm doing is clearing out away from them, giving them some room to breathe,
which means careful hand work in the vicinity.   Well suited to a
low-budget, slow-moving approach.

Although, the other day, when one of the endless and thorny and flexible
young osage branches whipped back and hit me on the cheek as I was dragging
its host branch out of the tangle of adjacent branches, I did contemplate a
more nuclear option...

Dean Vinson
Saint Paris, Ohio


-----Original Message-----
From: at-bounces at lists.antique-tractor.com
[mailto:at-bounces at lists.antique-tractor.com] On Behalf Of Dave Rotigel
Sent: Saturday, January 3, 2015 10:13 AM
To: Antique tractor email discussion group
Subject: Re: [AT] Red tractor day

I would think that Dean, like so many who live in our great country, found
that the harder he worked, the luckier he got. Strange how that seems to
happen when people have the freedom to follow their own path in their own
way!
	Dave

On Jan 3, 2015, at 9:46 AM, Richard Fink Sr wrote:

> Dean all i can say when i see photos of your place is WOW. How does 
> one family get so lucky. And tractor still looks good R Fink PA
> 
> 
> On 1/2/2015 5:51 PM, Dean Vinson wrote:
>> Yesterday and today were comparatively warm and dry, so I spent quite 
>> a bit of time cutting back the osage orange hedge, a very small 
>> portion of which is visible at the far left side of this photo.
>> 
>> http://www.vinsonfarm.net/photos/farm_panorama_20150102.jpg.
>> 
>> Hauling the cut branches to an increasingly gigantic burn pile is a 
>> job for the red tractor rather than the green one, since the red one 
>> is easier to get on and off, easier to back up, and typically has the
little wagon
>> hitched to it anyway.   The green one comes out when I need the rear
blade
>> or the rotary mower, both of which at times have roles to play in the 
>> long process of cleaning up this hedgerow and the 5 or 10 yards on 
>> either side of the main line of trunks that has become overgrown with 
>> the sprawling osage branches.
>> 
>> Here's a view of an area I haven't yet begun to work on.  The thorn 
>> briars that seem to accumulate under those branches are a nice added 
>> bonus, in case I manage to escape most of the thorns on the young 
>> osage branches themselves.
>> 
>> http://www.vinsonfarm.net/photos/osage_orange_20150102.jpg.
>> 
>> Dean Vinson
>> Saint Paris, Ohio