Runs Like a Deere

This is the emoji you text your mother when you find out she is buying a tractor:

It speaks volumes, LOL. (That was DD#2.)

I said last year that when I turned 55, I was going to go shopping for a riding lawnmower, because—as much as I appreciate the exercise—it is getting to be too much for me to mow our acreage with a push mower once a week during the summer. I hadn’t planned to go shopping quite this soon, but we were having a discussion about mowers in the homesteading chat group yesterday morning, and as I needed to go get chicken feed anyway, I thought I’d look at what was available in town.

The Kubota dealer had no riding mowers in stock and couldn’t tell me when they thought they would get more inventory. The young man I spoke to tried very hard, though, to convince me that I needed the $7000 zero-turn radius commercial machine with the 54” mower deck. I have no plans to start a lawn care business.

The sales guy at the John Deere dealer had a much more relaxed approach. He asked me what I needed, listened to my answers, then gave me the pros and cons of riding mowers versus zero-turn radius mowers and showed me models in a range of prices. I took the information home with me, intending to discuss it with the husband over dinner. As luck would have it, he was home—passing through between jobs—so we had our discussion, decided on a model and accessories, and I headed back into town to make my purchase.

[Somewhere on this planet is a picture of me, about age 15, sitting on my grandfather’s John Deere riding mower. I was the grandchild willing to drive that behemoth around the yard, so the job of cutting the grass fell to me. I remember that that mower had a manual clutch. It might have had power steering, but I rather doubt it. The rational part of my brain thinks that nostalgia is a lousy reason to buy something (says the woman who drives a BMW because her boyfriend-now-husband had one in college), but I looked at that John Deere tractor and was transported back in time 40 years. When the husband blesses an equipment purchase, though, I feel okay about it even if it involves less-than-rational decision-making on my part.]

The dealer has to bring the model I want up from Missoula—everyone is short on stock—but I was able to test drive the same one, an X384:

Tractors have improved considerably in 40 years. This one has a hydrostatic clutch with forward and reverse pedals. We chose a model with four-wheel steering, which I tested by doing figure-eights in the parking lot. It will not be hard to maneuver this machine around our trees.

There are lots of optional accessories. I can get a snowblower, a snowplow, a rear blade, a bagging attachment, a sun canopy or even a full enclosure, and a trailer. I added just the bagging attachment and the trailer for now, but I can see where having a snow removal attachment would be helpful in the winter.

Our chat group discussion reminded me, once again, that men and women have vastly different approaches when it comes to homesteading tools. The whole discussion came about because one of the women, who is younger than me and a single mom, mentioned that she was picking up her new tractor. (Hers is similar in size to mine, but a different brand.) I asked what machine she chose, and as soon as the guys found out I was looking for one, they bombarded me with all kinds of advice, which boiled down to two things: 1) Bigger is better and 2) Sexier is better.

[I’m not going in the direction you might think I’m going, but that sums it up nicely.]

The husband is a bit like this, too, but practicality is foremost in his decision-making. He also has had to listen to me complain for 30+ years about machinery designed by men for men. We have equipment here—the brush hog mower comes to mind—that I don’t use because I can’t operate it safely. That mower requires upper body strength I simply don’t possess. Sometimes smaller and more basic is the right choice. Having this tractor will allow me to do stuff around here in ways that are manageable for me without waiting for him to break out the heavy equipment. And this machine will go places, like the garden, where the access is too tight for anything larger.

Because I spent all day shopping, I did not get anything else done. I still need to put the borders on the baby quilt, make the binding for the purple and green quilt, and sew the last couple of rows of the Flower Garden quilt together. I think we might finish up burning today, though.