"Vermont's Year Round Diversified CSA Farm"

You can eat fresh vegetables, and pasture-raised & grassfed meats from our farm YEAR ROUND!


Wednesday, May 03, 2006

How to spend a nice spring day...


at an auction waiting to bid on an old tractor and farm implements! I traveled to the other side of the State (Fairlee, VT along the Connecticut River) to have a look at a 1964 tractor with a loader. I also noticed some farm implements that would go well with the tractor and help us on the farm. This was a consignment auction with a lot of farm implements and tractors of varying ages and conditions. Of course they start auctioning off the small misc. stuff and it wasn't until about 3pm that the tractor I had my eye on came up for bid. Its hard to spend a nice day waiting around while there is plenty of work to do back on the farm.

A lot of folks where checking out the tractor in question - a 1964 Massey Ferguson 65 Dieselmatic with Multi-Power. It had a New Idea loader, chains on the back tires and a homemade counter weight on the 3-point hitch. I didn't think it would go for more than $3000. The bidding started at $2000 and quickly went up to $3200. I hadn't even jumped in to bid at this point and was hesitating to do so. I kept thinking of the prices of other used tractors with loaders that have been selling for $5000 to $9000 in various ads and other auctions. I knew we could use this tractor on the farm and it could reduce our time on some tasks, so I was doing a cost-benefit analysis in my head when the price jumped to $3400! The auctioneer was looking for the next bid at $3500. My hand shot up and a few more bids later the tractor was headed to our farm!

A used 2 bottom plow and disc harrow were added to the mix - so now we can prepare vegetable beds and incorporate cover crops and compost with this set of tools.

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