Top Ten Business Decisions - Part I

Earlier this year, Rob was involved in a Practical Farmers of Iowa event in Cedar Falls called the Next Generation Retreat.  Beginning farmers attended and were working on budgets and business plans for what they hoped would be new farm businesses in Iowa.  Rob's job was to share some insights for potential vegetable and CSA growers.

We felt it might be enjoyable to share various "TENS" as a part of our "Ten Year Tenure" celebration.  This will be one of several series we hope to maintain throughout the second half of the 2014 season.

This will, of course, be a Ten Part Series.  We are not putting them in order of importance as that's just too much work.  Instead, we'll do them as we feel like writing about them.

Adding the tractor and various implements to our tool set.

That is one daunting task....

Up until 2010, the largest tools we had on the farm were the lawn tractor(s). Our model was to try to build equity before making farm purchases and it took a few years before we really let ourselves begin investing capital into tools.  In fact, one of our favorite early photos (2005) is above.  Other than a lawn tractor used to mow and pull a small cart, our big tool was the walk behind tiller you see here.  Our first crash course about needing good tools occurred soon after this picture when the tiller 'threw a rod' and was down for the count when we still had things to do.  Our first response at that time was to have a new engine put on this tiller.  The second was to purchase a tiller attachment for our lawn tractor.

At this point in time, the old tiller still runs if needed.  The tiller for the lawn tractor has been down for the count for a few years now.

Durnik the tractor - resting after a little work

Of course, there were intermediate steps that lead us to 2010 and the purchase of the 1949 Ford 8n/2n you see above.  But, the purchase of this tractor represents a significant change in how we performed work on the farm.

It's amazing how much more efficient moving straw can be with the right tools.

This was one of those 'serendipity meets just enough daring to try to pull it off' moments.  That year was not, by any means, a great year for us.  And, we'd already expended significant capital on the high tunnel.  But, attendance at a recently deceased neighbor's auction brought us face to face with the possibility that we could own a larger piece of equipment that would have some people who were knowledgeable of the tractor's past.   So, we took a run at the tractor and landed it.  Members in the neighborhood, including the family, were pleased it stayed nearby.

We weren't able to use the tractor much early on because we didn't have any equipment that worked with it.  But, one of the first additions was a hayrack.  And, this purchase provided us with a crash course on 'why used equipment isn't always the best choice.'  Essentially we purchased a running gear that had no deck.  Rob was pretty confident in building the deck (and it looks great by the way) but he didn't notice that the darned thing didn't turn.  The front wheels were frozen in place.  Ugh!

Disk Harrow

Rotary Mower

Potato Digger

Two Bottom Plow (Moldboard Plow)

Since that time, we have added various implements and done a good bit of learning about how to work with and care for this tractor.  In fact, it is safe to say that we've learned what it is particularly good at doing.  And, of course, we've learned its shortcomings.  But, let's be honest, for the price of purchasing and paying for repairs on this tractor, we've had a an excellent course on how this sort of tool can be a key asset on a farm such as ours.  In short, I am not sure we would have learned as much as well as we did if we had made a leap to take out a loan and acquire a new tractor immediately.  In fact, I'll go out in a limb and say we would not have learned as much, nor would we have learned as well.  Further, we would not have been willing to invest money in several of the other tools that are used with the tractor.  A new tractor with a bucket might be nice, but if you don't have other tools for tillage, cutting, cultivating and planting - it is one-dimensional and wasted money.  Purchasing a less expensive, older, but fairly reliable tractor that had a traceable history was perfect for us.  We had capital to experiment with different tools to learn what we could (and should) be doing.

And, if we made a mistake, the loss wasn't nearly so great.  In fact, we've already removed some items from that farm that didn't work for us.  We've even replaced some items that worked, but we saw the repairs looming on the horizon.

Sometimes an auction purchase didn't work out.

This year, we took another step and added a much newer tractor to our tool lineup.  This time, financing was required.  But, we couldn't ignore the fact that it would address a long laundry list of issues we had with getting things done on the farm.

Rosie the tractor - We Can Do It!

The jury, of course, is still out on whether this, by itself, is a top 10 item.  But, we can assure you that we do not purchase things for the farm without a fair amount of thought and some wringing of hands.  It's no small thing to do this.  But, then again, consider what it will do for us:

• turning compost piles (something we have been unable to do since they got too large for hand turning)
• Using the tandem disk (Durnik just couldn't quite run the disk for much longer than 15-20 minutes at a time)
• better fuel economy.  We figure what we did with the disk and chisel plow soon after purchase used 1/3 the fuel that we would have with Durnik
• More flexibility and less time taking implements on and off (we can leave the flex tine weeder on Durnik and have the disk on this beast for example)
• The ability to add a transplanter to our arsenal of tools in the not too distant future
• Use of the rotary mower is no longer the adventure it is with the older tractor - and we don't mean adventure in a good way this time.
• A warranty during the break-in period so we don't get delayed by break downs...

Keep checking out our blog and see how our new tractor gets along with the old.