WE BOUGHT A TRACTOR

Since the day I retired, which was almost seven years ago,
I've been putting money under my mattress to make a dream come true.

Exactly a month ago @farm-mom and I bought a Kubota. We purchased our new toy from a local Kubota dealer in Norwich, NY. What an exciting day. As we entered the dealership, I parked next to the tractor you see in this picture. As I got out of the car I said to myself, "I wonder how much this one costs, it's a beauty, but probably out of our price range."

Well, it was not!

When we entered the store a sales rep greeted us and asked us what we were looking for. Sporting a smile on my face from ear to ear, I told him that we were in the market for a tractor. At that point, the sales lady introduced us to the owner of the joint, Andy. What a character he was. As we made our way back outside to the lot where over a hundred different pieces of machinery were parked he headed in the direction of the ride-on lawnmowers. I guessed that he misunderstood me. When I pointed to what we were looking to purchase, he said, "Oh you want to look at the backhoes."

As I said earlier, this gentleman was a character, funny, friendly, and informative. He went about his business without making you feel like you were under pressure to buy, as is typically the way that most salespersons come at you.

Robin, being the person she is hit it off with Andy right away.

Before we had even sat down to talk $$$$$$, Andy was inviting her to dinner at Fred's Inn and Restaurant. I laughed as she accepted his invitation. Boy, was I glad she came along, she softened him up like a bowl of Jell-O.

When I finally sat down to talk business, as Robin perused around, Andy had me smiling the whole time, especially when he shot me the price tag of the tractor that I thought would be out of our price range. When he talked about the special financing rate that Kubota was having for the month, 0.99% for an eight-year period, I informed him that we would not need any financing. That brought a smile to his face.
After getting the price of the tractor, I asked about the cost of a set of pallet forks and a three-point hitch, he informed me that the two extras would cost about $2,300.00. As I sat there contemplating whether to purchase the additional accessories, Andy surprised me when he said, if you decide to buy today I'll throw in the two items at no extra cost. That sealed the deal.

After the gentleman unloaded the tractor I went down to the corner of the property where we have a stockpile of crushed stone. Over the years I have shoveled at least 12 tandem dump trucks of this product into the small wagon that hitches to our four-wheeler, 50 shovels at a time. Within a few minutes, I was back with a load of stone and spread it on the driveway. I had to be carrying at least 8 wagons of stone in one scoop. In minutes I had loaded and spread what would have taken hours to do before. You talk about being ALL PUMPED UP, I was floating on CLOUD 9.

My better half even gave it a go, pulling it into the road,
driving it to the corner, and returning, backing our new tractor into the driveway.

Now, this is where Robin used to park her car, but not anymore, at least for now. I've been officially informed that I need to do another #DIY project, build another structure to house the orange toy.

It has been a month since we purchased our tractor
and I've yet to do much hobbitizing with it. We have been so busy getting our @hivegarden together. I tried digging the holes for our seedlings with the backhoe, but the holes end up being a little too big. 😁 With the garden ready to go, today will be the first time I will spend a good part of the day playing with our new tow. It's exactly 9:30 in the morning, Sunday June 4th, by 10:00 AM I'll be digging up some stumps that I've wanted to remove for years.

One last thing, after signing on the dotted line and thanking our Robin's new friend Andy for everything, Robin went up to the hat rack and tried on one of the hats that sported the Kubota Logo. She asked Andy how it looked on her and guess what he did, he gave her the hat. Hell, he even threw one in for me.