There's always a bigger tractor

After David took off to go mow, Ginger suggested we get in a quick horseback ride. We hadn't yet tried our lesson horses in English tack, so we wanted to see how they reacted. She had Shoni and I rode Romeo. From the arena we could easily watch Dave and saw that he was making good progress. We were all racing against the sunset, however, so I stopped paying a lot of attention to David, until I noticed that he'd gotten out of the tractor, and actually the tractor hadn't moved much recently. Sure enough, shortly thereafter he started back to the house on foot. We rode out to meet him and confirmed he'd gotten stuck. He was almost done too - just trying to get two last swathes cut - but they were probably two swathes too close to the wetlands to be realistic. I put Romeo away while Dave got the truck and chains, and our friend Mike who is currently using our vacant small barn to do some remodeling on his '76 Bronco.
Getting the truck out to where the tractor was no picnic either. We certainly did not want to get the truck stuck as well! (Recall entry on City-Bumpkins) On the way over we passed our neighbor who said he'd have time the next day to help out, if we didn't succeed tonight. Have I mentioned we really like our neighbor?

We cautiously approached the tractor from the most solid ground we could and then tromped over to take a look. I was really kicking myself because I didn't have the camera since just earlier that day I'd found it not only dead of batteries, but the battery charger covered in leaky battery gunk. I cleaned off the charger, but decided it needed to dry thoroughly before plugging it in.... Thus no camera. And the tractor was totally picture-worthy too. All the wheels were dug in so deep that it was sitting as much on the chasse as it was on the wheels. We kicked the bush hog free and dragged it away from the tractor, but didn't dare getting any closer with the tuck. As it was near dark anyways, we decided Dave would have to go after it with the neighbor the next day.

Next day came, and Dave found the tire tracks had filled some with water already. Definitely too close to the swampy area to be mowed! At least we now know where that boundary is. Every disaster is a learning opportunity. Every disaster is a learning opportunity. This has become our mantra.

Tom came down with his big green tractor. I've never seen it up close, but it's big enough to have an enclosed cab - so it's quite a bit bigger than any we've looked at. Bigger and Heavier. And it got stuck before even reaching our red tractor.

Never fear - Tom has lots of farm equipment. He went up to get his yellow backhoe. After it became clear the backhoe wasn't going to tow anything free, Tom put down its bracer feet and was able to tug the green tractor out using the scooper arm. Then the green and yellow tractors together were able to tug the red tractor out. Sounds easy now, but I take it it was quite the operation.

But you know boys and their toys - I suspect they probably had a ball.