I was super excited when my first tractor arrived: green and proud, a John Deere 5205 killah tractor with bucket loader. I was so stoked to farm some dirt. No instruction manuals included and a quick 5 minute lesson by Dan your local neighborhood tractor man. If you have ever looked at a new tractor there are no less than 10 of those stick man warning stickers about the various ways you can painfully meet your end:

- tractor rolls over but you don’t have the seat belt on; you get ejected then smashed by your tractor

- tractor rolls over and the roll cage is down; you do have your seat belt on this time but you cannot escape therefore you are crushed by your tractor

- you are rolling across your pasture with a load overhead in your bucket; the laod bounces out and crushes your head, killing you instantly

- you are rolling across your pasture with the bucket overhead, it clips a live power line and you get electrocuted to death

- for some reason you are standing under your bucket and it drops on your head thus killing you in a millisecond

- you are standing behind your tractor and it rolls back and flattens you and ends your life instantly

- you get caught up in the PTO drive shaft and according to the stick figure, your entire body gets wrapped on the shaft ending your life in a horrible, painful death

Like all warning stickers, they were promply ignored and I fired that sweet diesel engine up for first time. I dropped my water bottle and leaned over to pick it up, resting my elbow on an innocent looking lever. The bucket plummeted out of the sky and smashed through my cedar split rail fence. Great. I turned the tractor off and had to temporarily patch my fence with a gate that was laying around so the cows wouldn’t wander off. That was enough farming for me that day.

The next day my new disc harrow arrived and I was super amped to finally disc up my outdoor track for the first time. I fumbled around for an hour and crushed my fingers a dozen times trying to figure out how to attach the thing to the back of the tractor. After much confusion and frustration I was off to farm my sweeet soil. I got safetly out to a track lane, dropped the disc and happily creeped forward watching my sweet discs tear up the ground. 10 yards into farming I heard some metal creaking and one of my discs snapped. Dang. 5 minutes of work and I broke a disc. The thing was brand new. I continued discing up the lanes until well after dark. I gave it some gas to get back to the house before it rained on me (still slow by normal standards); pretty rough ride with no suspension and the weight of the disc harrow out back. I pinned it through my gate and hit a gopher mound and swapped sideways. The disc harrow made some metal to metal noise and for some reason I smashed the throttle to the floor. The disc harrow was hung up on a barbed wire and I promptly ruined a section of cross fence. Awesome. The rancher I share that fence with will be excited for sure that his foreigner goon farmer neighbor tore up his fence.

I have used the tractor twice and have broken three things. I did all that on a tractor that goes SLOW. They just don’t go that fast. I promised myself to slow down even more, pay attention to what I am doing, look around, concentrate on the task at hand. I will think of the warning stickers. I don’t want to be the stick man. Good thing I didn’t realize until just now there are two gear ranges. I have been in the low one whilst wreaking havoc on my land and property. Nothing runs like a Deere…..clear through your fences.