Tractors, loafing and corn likker

I've done a months worth of loafing all in one day today. I was supposed to ride up to Meigs county with TC to look at that 1394 Case (bigger brother is out of town), but the owner is a truck driver and he had to make a run to Arkansas today. He asked if I could come up there Sunday after church, so I figure that'll take care of my day tomorrow.

TC called me early this morning and said it was too damn cold to do anything today (other than feed the stock), so we went loafing. We were undecided on where to go, I kindly wanted to ride over to Henegar and look at those two Hesston 540 round balers, but we took a notion to go the other way. Neither one of us had been over to the dealer in Blue Ridge, so we went over to Mason New Holland(they're a McCormick dealer too). We looked around, kicked some tires, picked up some literature from the sales rep and decided that since we were already most of the way there that we'd ride up to Blairsville to the John Deere dealer.

We got up to Nelson Tractor (John Deere, New Holland and Kubota) and I said dang, we're way over here, let's just ride up north a ways, hit 64 and come back through Cleveland and see what-all Lewisco's got on the lot for the auction next weekend (not much).

It was snowing pretty good most of the day. It commenced to laying pretty good when we came through North Carolina, I was starting to think this wasn't such a good idea after all, but it wasn't sticking to the road, so we didn't have any problems.

So we drove about a 100 miles or so, looked at tractors in three states and just generally spent the day riding around.

The bargain of the day was a 175 Ferguson with two flat tires for $4100. I did get to look at a 7810 Ford MFWD at Nelson, but the only guy left up there was a mechanic and he had no idea whether it was a customer tractor or one they had for sale. It was most likely far, far out of my price range. TC found a JD grain drill at Lewisco, but we didn't price it. Didn't see any round balers that I liked or could afford a'tall.

The neatest thing I saw today was these little buttons on the back of the fenders of the McCormick CX series tractors. They allow you to raise and lower the lift arms while standing beside the implement at the rear of the tractor. That takes a tremendous amount of aggravation out of hooking up implements (especially heavy things like disc mowers...). I'm not fond of electronic gizmo's on my tractors, but that is a dandy idea. How long these little buttons will work under field conditions is the $64 question.

Conversation with TC about the lack of any flat ground up in the mountains:
"I bet the only crop folks ever fooled with up here in these little fields was corn"
"Yeah, but they counted the harvest in gallons instead of bushels"

All in all, a pretty good way to waste a day.