It is nice to be out of the bubble of noise in Your Nation’s Capital. It is soothing to be in the country. With the emergence of the season, I feel a sense of new energy down at the farm. The Russians have brought in the first crop of the Spring, a bunch of red radishes. I was thinking about moving some of the furniture around, and looked at some project stacks that had been waiting the long winter season for attention. But the fields needed to be knocked down, and that was first on the list.
First outing of the season is always a little bit of a crapshoot. Did the battery make it over the winter? Do I have gas to run it? Do I remember how to start the damn thing? Why didn’t I hose it down last October and have it looking clean and ready to go?
The first cut of the new year is important. J.E.B. Stuart was right when he observed that the best grass to feed horses is right here in Culpeper. Perfect place to rest up before invading Maryland or Pennsylvania, and that got me to thinking about cross-country mobility. All other things being equal, I probably would have made the first cut on the pastures last week when the riot of growth kicked off and things were not so wet.
This soil is so fertile and the grass so verdant that if you do not stay on top of it the vegetation will overwhelm you. I had to pay my property guy to get rid of that damn pine tree that was leaning drunkenly against the barn. I asked him to take a look at the fences, too, since the scrub growth on the forest side had advanced and threatened to cover the wood with clasping green tentacles and thorns, like a fearsome and hostile invader.
For a variety of reasons that did not seem quite so important here as they did up North, I had yesterday afternoon to do tractor things, and I got on them. I think if I manage to kill myself, it will probably be at the farm, and it will probably involve heavy machinery or a chain saw.
I thought about that while I disconnected the trickle charger, taking care not to electrocute myself or short out the alternator. The five-gallon plastic gas can was full, a useful thing, but the filling neck never works properly and I had gas all over my hands and jeans and the right rear orange jungle-striped fender. Open space, I thought, and probably would not burst into a fire-ball when I engaged the starter on the Turf Tiger.
When I had the gas tank full, I re-capped it and walked over to the pump and pulled the handle up to wash the gas off my hands. The nozzle perked up as the water flowed through the coiled up hose and then disintegrated as the breach end disintegrated under the pressure and produced a cascade from business and control ends of the thing.
Another action item for some other trip to down, I thought, and completed sluicing off my hands and that end of the barn and shut the pump down. I shook my hands and then wiped them on my jeans. I walked back to the tractor and donned my protective helmet, goggles and Mickey Mouse hearing protection. Then I mounted my steed.
The Turf Tiger has a cutting deck that is an impressive 52 inches- a swatch of total destruction nearly four and a half feet wide. According to the owner’s manual I will get around to reading some winter, it can cover major grass with “ground speeds up to 12mph and large, low-mounted fuel tank. The simple, trouble-free shaft drive cutter deck means minimum maintenance requirements and a wide range of cutting heights.”
I set the height at four and a half inches- there are some rocks out there in the fields that can ruin your day if you go lower. I inspected the double tube steel main frame that gives the mower incredible strength and durability. I checked the folding ROPS, replaceable front caster extensions, flat free caster tires and the tapered roller bearings. “Checks good on deck,” I thought, as we used to say on the USS Midway, and off I went.
Well, not exactly. Sitting on the spring-loaded seat, I turned the ignition switch. I got a click and nothing more. I reviewed my switchology- there are several important safety interlock features that defy ordinary logic- parking brake, control levers in outboard or control mode, deck elevation pedal, all that stuff cross connected to the motor behind me.
I tried all the combinations, and like looking for something lost, I find it on the last try. I advanced the choke and sat satisfied in a cloud of unburned hydrocarbons. I let the engine warm up a bit and leaned down the mix. I dropped the parking brake down into operating mode, brought the control levers inboard to their operational range, and slowly moved out of the barn.
So far, so good, I thought, though the muscle-memory for controlling the beast were a bit rusty. I drove around the back of the barn and toward the open style on the west pasture and pulled the yellow button that engages the fierce cutter blades, and I was off. Into the mud.
There was a reason that the armies that fought here went into winter quarters, and why the wars took a hiatus in the winter and beginning of Spring. Under that riot of new green growth is saturated rich soil. It wasn’t so bad in the upper range of the fields, but down at the foot, near the junction of the two streams that bound the property, there was standing water. Around the big slab of rock in the middle of the field there was more, and I realized I was churning it up pretty well. Where I cut I could see ruts.
The hell with it. Has to be done. I won’t be back until the weekend. Cruising along the fence line, I saw that the undergrowth had been cut back nicely, revealing a sight line to the water rushing down the channel of Summerduck Run.
I had forgotten how fast I could run that Tiger, and it was a blast. I got the west field cut and rutted in short order, and then drove through the gate into the East Field, navigating around the granite promontory in the middle and hurtling down to take a swipe at the lunging ring that bounds my back property line.
That was not bad, I thought, and disengaged the cutter and drove back up to the barn and around the garage to the gate that leads up to the lawn in front of the house.
The width of the gate was predicated on the 52-inch deck of the tractor, and the gate was closed, of course. I had to shut down and dismount. I unhooked the gate, clambered back up into the seat, fired up the engine and drove into a morass.
(Before).
I worked the handles frantically as the Tiger lurched into one of the gate posts, churning grass and soil under the fat rear tires. It was more than a bit like driving a car on ice, and I managed to back down through the gate in a wild swerve.
I gave a sigh of relief that I was not stuck in the back yard, and thought I would try a pass on the grass in the circular drive, but that was saturated as well and rutted quickly.
“The hell with it,” I muttered. This is the grass that is supposed to look good later in the season. May as well wait until the weekend and see if things dry out.
More rain was supposed to come that night. I drove the tractor back down to the barn and shut it down and re-attached the trickle charger. Good start to the season, I thought, and the ruts will settle out in a week or two in the fields. But for sure, this would not be a good week to invade Maryland. Too freaking muddy.
(After. Note attractive ruts).
Copyright 2015 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303