It’s Sunday night and we are tired. But it is  a happy and healthy tired since we got a lot done and did a lot of physical work. One of the things we are hoping is that working on the land will improve our general health. Even Patches our foster dog got tired. We tied her to a tree with an extra long lead whilst we worked away.  You can see her enjoying a wheelbarrow ride in the video below.

We started our first Saturday a little later than planned. We got to the land by 10 am since it was going to rain all day. We had purchased a second hand John Deere 160 garden tractor through a Craigslist listing from Smithsburg. It is a small town about 25 minutes from our land. The guy was kind enough to bring it to our land on his flatbed truck. He showed up a little after 10; dropped off the garden tractor and answered a few more of our questions about operations and maintenance.  We played around with it for a bit at the lower level of the land and then decided to drive it up the gentle slope to the location of the test house. We wanted to start clearing that area first. As we drove it up; one of the belts fell off. We spent some time trying to figure out how to put it back in and then gave up. We tried reaching the seller to see if he could give us any pointers; but got his voicemail. We then figured out a way to chain the tractor to a tree and cover it up. Since it continued to rain, we decided to go to Thurmont and visit the Fall Colorfest. We grabbed some lunch as we walked around. We then got back to the land. The weatherman had predicted rain to continue till later that evening. We decided to start clearing the small area next to the test house area where we planned to park our backhoe (when it arrived). We set to work with our clippers and brush cutter. At one point we took a break and started setting up the kelly kettle to make some tea. Unfortunately all the wood we found on the land was damp and we just couldn’t get the twigs to fire up. Alan decided to put in a few drops of gasoline to get the fire started. The first try was a bit scary with a big ball of fire emanating from the kelly kettle when we dropped the lighted matchstick in. Even Patches who was sitting a few feet away; jumped up from her blanket! Undeterred, we tried it again and this time the fire stayed lit. We continued the clearing for a little bit more. The overcast sky meant that we started losing light by 4pm. So we stopped and had a bit of discussion about the test house layout. We then packed and left. That evening we started to look up youtube videos for fixing the tractor; but didn’t have much luck since this was a relatively older tractor. I then located a local John Deere retailer and called the number hoping to find out their hours of operation. It was 8pm and I was expecting a recorded message; instead a very nice lady picked up the phone and told me that she just happened to be there since they were having some kind of event. She gave us the store timings and said that they were closed on Sunday. She asked us to bring the serial and model numbers and said that they would try to help us with parts/advice.

All the excitement of Saturday made us tired. It was 9am by the time I got up on Sunday morning. Alan is a morning person and he was up a bit earlier. We managed to reach the farmer who had agreed to drive the backhoe to our land. We agreed to meet him by noon and pay him for the backhoe. So we stopped by Subway to pick up sandwiches and drove straight to the farmer’s land. He said he would bring it to our land by around 2:30pm.  Whilst waiting for the farmer to show up, we noticed a large number of pallets lying around. So we enquired at the farm store to see if they wanted to get rid of them. Turns out, these were pallets they had purchased. Oh well; we can always find a grocery store that wants to discard pallets. By the time we got to the land, the guy who sold us the garden tractor had actually responded to our call and given us some information about putting the belt back – that was so nice of him. We were able to put the drive belt back. However, when we tried to cut the grass; it didn’t work. We noticed that the drive belt and hence the deck belt were not moving. We figured we would have to forget about the tractor for this weekend.  We started to work on clearing the location where the house would be built with the clipper and brush cutter……………when suddenly we heard a noise. We turned around and the farmer was already there with the backhoe. Needless to say we again had a bit of a chat about operations and maintenance. We walked him to a couple of slopes on the land to check if it was safe to take the backhoe over that slope. He was confident about one slope; but told us to avoid taking the backhoe on the other. As he left, he wistfully said that the backhoe had served him well for 10 years and that he would miss it. We told him that he was free to stop by whenever he felt like; especially if he wanted some entertainment of watching us drive it! Once he left, Alan got on the backhoe and drove it a bit on the flat area. The video below shows him driving the backhoe. He then very bravely took it up the gentle slope to park it so that it would be hidden from view. We then resumed our land clearing. I setup my android phone to do a hyperlapse video recording as I worked and then moved it for a bit to where Alan was working. By 4pm, we decide to pack up. We covered the backhoe with a brown tarp to reduce its visibility. We then decided to stop by some yard sales that we had seen earlier in the area. When we reached the yard sale (almost 5pm); people were packing up. But we managed to snag some great deals – we got one storage box and two 5 gallon gas containers for a total of $7 and a very good 10 foot long metal chain for $35.

We got home tired but happy. Things could have been better if not for the weather and broken tractor. But things could have been worse too. We are starting to realize the small town feel of the area. People are simple, friendly and everyone seems to know everyone. We were laughing at the thought of the kind of news making the rounds of this quiet town about us – we were wondering if they would be more surprised at what 2 city folks were trying to do or if they were trying to figure out our accents or if we are the first mixed race couple they had met…………that reminds me – A couple of times during the day, we saw a truck drive by and the guy honked and waved at us. We didn’t know what to make of it. But on our drive back home, we saw that truck parked on a house near our land. We are assuming it was just one of our neighbors saying hi to us. We are probably the biggest thing to happen to this town.

#storage #equipment #problem #craigslist #repair