… and bigger …

I forgot another part of our farm that is growing bigger these days. We just … ahem … bought another tractor. More accurately, we traded in our little compact Yanmar for a much much much bigger tractor:

Meet Houdini the Landini. He is a 55 horsepower Landini tractor with all the trimmings, including a front loader, rototiller, and mower. Landinis are a line of narrow vineyard tractors—they pack a lot of power into a more compact frame. Due to the wine activity in these parts, they’re popular around here and also perfect for the kind of work we do.

There’s no denying: Houdini is a lot of tractor. But with 17 acres, we needed to move up either way (the Yanmar was only 18 horsepower), and the same fairy godfather who first connected us with our tractor dealer (Tom Moehnke), kept encouraging us to go up in power. As he says, you don’t want to spend your life pushing your tractor to its limits. It’s true. It’s also true that we were able to buy a slightly used larger tractor for almost the same as a new compact version. Plus, we’ll be able to run any implement we’d ever want to us, including borrowing them from other farmers in the area. That’s a bonus, since most folks have some awesome discs and such lying around their barns.

It’s a good decision. But it’s also a BIG thing. Sometimes we feel like this:

But mostly we’re excited. We’re in the process of building our first structure on the new land—a little house (shed) for Houdini and Allis to live in during the winter. Photos coming soon!