As I type, Paul is trucking on home from Rochester, NY pulling a flatbed trailer behind his pick up truck. On it is a new-to-us green chopper.
You see, we have cobbled our old chopper together with twine, wire, various weld jobs and other things for years. When a thing has more break downs than flawless use, you begin to realize that it needs to be retired instead of fixed. The problem with retiring farm machinery, however, is that you must find a suitable replacement.
$15,000-20,000. That's what a new green chopper costs. That's a lot of money, most would agree. Sooooo, Paul sat at the computer keyboard and found himself a used one at a price he liked better (knock off a zero, that's more like it!) allbeit at a very distant location.
A 5 hour spin on up to NY during the night after a long day of butchering chickens and we're almost ready to roll with a different chopper. He got to the farmer's place around 1:00 AM.
Hope it works. It's always rewarding when these maneuvers actually turn out well.
I was getting the boys up this morning and realizing that exactly 10 years ago today (the eve of the 9/11 attacks) that Paul was in the very part of NY buying a corn picker!
Anyhow, our day is creaking into motion. Trent's taking his turn to go bring in the cows for Garth and Brock to milk. Brady and Miles and I will try to feed the chickens.
Logan normally does the chickens, but he left at midnight for New Jersey to pick up a truck lift for Blake. I wonder where our boys learned to stare at a map when they need a new something or another from Craiglist or Ebay and say, "Yeah, it's only 8 hours. Let's do it and be back by morning!" ?????
~Colleen
