Bagged Another Deere

One of my co-workers has been diligently bow hunting for deer.  He has gone out almost every morning and evening the past couple weeks.  Despite his persistence, and a few misses, he has yet to get one.  Personally, I have never had much interest in hunting animals.  I am, however, all about hunting inanimate objects, be it toys, tractors or whatever is my current area of interest. 

My "hunting" typically follows the same pattern.  I start off trying to satisfy some personal want or need.  Once that need is met, not wanting to waste the research that inevitably went into it, I will typically transition into hunting for "opportunities" to upgrade or turn a profit.  I have definitely gone through that phase on toy tractors and power wheels.  Although I am not as fanatical about those now, I still like to take advantage of a good opportunity when it presents itself.  Obviously, my most recent fad is garden tractors.  Starting off with "Johnny" in early 2011, I have progressively added tractors to my fleet, each with a unique purpose in mind.  I now find myself out of ways to rationalize adding tractors to my collection, but still seeking the thrill of the hunt. 

It is that continued hunting, with no real need for finding anything, that has presented me with my latest situation.  In my defense, I did resist for almost a week calling on a Deere 317 fix-er-upper with an asking price less than half the going rate for a running tractor.  It was the classic opportunity ripe for the picking; vague title, bad picture, limited description, and (relatively) low asking price.  Combine those factors with close proximity, and it was just begging me to at least go take a look at it.  Finding out the seller had multiple other interested parties that couldn't come look at it until the weekend only further fueled my curiosity. 

Long story short, I am the new owner of a 1982 John Deere 317.  The seller practically described it like a family pet, but a high dealer estimate for repairing a broken drive shaft (a weak point on 317's), and a recently acquired four wheeler that can perform similar duties, prompted him to part with it.  For me I saw about $250 more in just the major parts than what he was asking for the tractor, and perhaps double that if I can find a decent deal on a used drive shaft to get it running again.  I'm not sure yet which path I will choose, but either way, potential uses for this tractor duplicate those of others I already have, so long term one or the another is going to have to find a new home.  Of course, I have said that before...

Pumpkins, Plowing and... More Storage

The past couple weeks have been fairly tame by our standards.  Not that we've been sitting around looking for things to do, but we haven't had any major activities planned. 

Of course one event that did happen over the past couple weeks was Halloween.  Although our pumpkin crop from the garden left something to be desired, we started a new tradition, decorating watermelons.  The boys put some stickers on the watermelons we had left.  Not wanting to buck tradition, we bought some pumpkins.  We had skipped jack-o-lantern carving the past couple years, but the boys enjoyed it this year. 

We also took in 3 trick-or-treating events this year.  We did one at the local petting zoo, one at the high school, and then the neighborhood one on Halloween night.  L was super cute in his monster costume that C made.  N was really into his Transformer costume, and surprisingly kept the mask on the majority of the time.  For the neighborhood one, we took the big wagon so we could haul the boys, extra coats and our candy bowl for the neighbors to trick-or-treat from since we weren't home. I couldn't resist tricking out the wagon a little bit, and put on an extra set of orange strobe lights to give it a little Halloween flare.   

On the Saturday before Halloween, I took my Wheel Horse over to Roanoke, IL to a plow day.  It was nice because it was so close for me.  The old 854 looked downright puny compared to all the big Deere's and Cub's.  It was pretty wet when I got there, and the tractors that were going were packing up with mud.  Closer to noon, things dried out enough for me to give it a try.  My tractor did a fine job, just not real fast.  Some of those guys were going faster with a plow in the ground than I could go with just the tractor!  I guess like anything, it turns into a contest to see who can go the fastest.  I took pride in the fact that I could get the job done with less than half the horsepower that some of the others had.  It was too cold and windy for the boys to come with me, but I did a little more plowing at home that afternoon and they had a good time playing in the freshly turned dirt. 

While I spent a fair amount of time last summer expanding my outdoor storage to keep pace with my rate of accumulation, our inside storage has become increasingly full as well.  We did a good job earlier this year sorting and collecting items to sell at a garage sale, and C has continued to set items aside for one in the future.  The problem is, we did not sell enough of it at our garage sale this spring, and when you combine that with the "new" garage sale items, it fills up almost a dozen tubs of stuff.  As the weather has turned colder and we spend more time inside, we have become increasingly frustrated by moving around those tubs when trying to get to various things in our storage room.  That frustration reached a breaking point this past weekend.  After some discussion on it, we decided the attic above the garage was our best storage solution. 

The prospect of lugging tubs up an extension ladder, through a hole barely bigger than the tub itself seemed daunting.   Having recently seen a neighbor with a fold-down ladder for their attic access got me thinking.  It didn't take long for that thinking to turn in to a plan.  Long story short, it took nearly all weekend to add a couple lights, put flooring in the attic, and install the ladder.  The end result is some incredibly handy storage space.  Now if we can just keep from filling it, and actually follow through with a garage sale to get rid of it.