Farm Equipment

4th Installment 

  Good equipment is essential on a farm. Our largest purchase was a John Deere 2150.  I love that tractor: 45 horsepower, diesel, live PTO, roll bar, seat belt and a gentle vibration better than any washing machine. It was so peaceful to bush hog a field or plow a garden; no screaming kids or spouse; this was probably the only thing Danny and I ever agreed on. When we divorced, he gave me full custody of the kids and agreed to pay more child support than the law required, but for 10 years we have battled for custody of my tractor because my lawyer neglected to put the serial number in the divorce decree. At present, Danny has the tractor and I have the attachments. But, it’s not over yet.

  Many small pieces of equipment make daily or specialized chores easier. A cute salesman talked me into buying a head gate, which is pretty much what it sounds like. When a cow sticks her head in the opening, the spring-loaded gate closes on her neck to hold her in place. Ideally, the gate is placed at the end of a narrowing chute contained in a corral. The cow is led with feed into the corral and herded into the chute. It works wonderfully in theory. Danny missed the part about the corral and chute though. His idea was to put the head gate free standing in the field. It was a little harder to herd a cow in to it that way. There seemed to be a force field around the gate that repelled our cows. With all of Danny’s injuries and the hospital deductibles we had to pay, we could have built that corral.

  What would farming be without crops? A heck of a lot easier. Over the years, we tried growing just about everything but settled into the rut of the tried and true: corn, peas and okra. My Dad especially liked to plant corn. He loved to give it to all of the relatives, friends and his bartender. Some corn was sold. Some corn was put in 55-gallon drums for feed and some corn was for making moonshine. Daddy and his friend, Billy, built a whiskey still and placed it inside their playhouse, a gutted Greyhound bus. The big still with all of its coiled copper tubing sat proudly in the front glass window of the bus’s make-shift kitchen. I was accustomed to Daddy doing crazy things and figured this was another phase he was going through. One Saturday, I had some Auburn students coming to shoot lines as to where we should put a lake. They were going to show me what needed clearing and how and where to build the dam. I didn’t think too much about it when  two dark blue cars with gold state seals pulled in the field in front of the bus. I knew the government cars were from the Conservation Department but Daddy about had a conniption. He thought the “revenuers” had arrived - one of the few times I got the best of him.

 Ray McClinton with his son, Perry, working on old tractor.