Tough Tractorin’

One thing we’ve lacked in our plowing “arsenal” is something with which to deep plow. In trying to sell some of our cows, our teacher came across a fellow who wanted to trade a large chisel plow for some cattle; and he forwarded the information to me, as he wasn’t interested. I took a look at it, and it seemed to be a pretty nice plow, and one that would suit our needs well. I set up the deal with the owner, he came and got his cattle from us, and I went out to his place, about 190 miles away, with the neighbor’s flatbed trailer to get the plow.

Well, when I got there, I found out just how big and heavy it was. The owner had to use a front loader to get it on, and we had to remove the wheels for it to fit. Here are a couple of pictures of the plow:

When I got back, six of us men here tried to lift it enough to slide it off the back of the flatbed trailer, but to no avail: it was very heavy. In fact, our neighbor Homer graciously came and lifted it off with the plow chained to his big John Deere tractor’s front loader.

I had to put different tires on the plow, as they had been replaced with ones that were too wide; but one of the local tire shops traded me straight across for ones that would fit, except for the typical mounting fee. I also had to replace one of the hydraulic hoses; but once that was done, I was all set. I even tried a small test plowing to see if it would work, and everything worked great. I was now ready to finally tear up some of the land around here that hadn’t been plowed in many years, to help with our crops and any other land cultivation we might endeavor upon!

Tearing It Up

The big day came where I was planning on plowing some of our neighbor’s land; and then I was going to do our inner area where our goat pens and barn are, in preparation for planting a Winter crop (wheat, oats, or something). I headed there and started in. The ground was quite hard, especially in this one area, even to where the rear wheels of the tractor were spinning in the ground; and I sometimes had to lift the plow out of the ground to be able to continue plowing. I thought though, “This Farmall 806 has 94 horse power, and it’s not like I’m dragging a 24 foot wide disk plow behind me…I should be able to just barrel through this ground. What I need is more power!” And so I throttled up and plowed on, waiting to see how our tractor would handle its first real plowing test (I’ve disked fields with a small tandem disk plow, but I’ve not really done anything that has ever really strained the tractor).

It was doing pretty well until I got to that difficult part again. It stopped the tractor again, but I thought I’d see if it would “bull” through. Well, it did — right through the right rear axle. I heard a loud pop, stopped for a second, tried to go forward again, and the rear wheel started to cave in on the cab area. Uh oh. I hopped off the tractor to take a look. The axle casing was cracked wide open, fluids were coming out, and the axle shaft itself had sheered like a sheer bolt.

Here you can see the wheel angled in:

I can imagine the look on my face at that moment, as I believe I was in a bit of a state of shock. I couldn’t believe what had happened. I sort of just went and set on the front tire of the tractor, kind of dumbfounded. This was major mess-up, and I figured that I had just totaled our tractor.

I was pleased though that it appears the Lord has worked on my heart in relation to things that “happen” to us, in granting more of a trust in His sovereignty and perfect will, as my initial reactions were, at a minimum, better than they almost certainly would have been just a few years ago; and for that I was and am thankful. Also, the neighbor came over and suggested there was a spiritual lesson in there somewhere, which is true.

I’ll admit though, it weighed on my mind for the next week, during which time there were better times of keeping proper perspective, and some not so good times, of which God graciously granted that I not hold on to any bitterness for very long and granted repentance for my improper heart condition concerning the situation. I had to let go of all of the plans I had had for the tractor and plow; trust Him in the situation; and instead of just thinking about the situation and wondering what I was going to do, eventually I asked Him for help to figure that out and maybe even help to get the tractor fixed or help in going maybe another direction (as in, maybe now would be the time to look into a horse team for plowing).

In trying to understand what I was actually going to be faced with in regards to repairs, I went and talked to the local tractor repair place; and they suggested with parts and labor it was going to cost a bundle to get it fixed, and that they’d put their money in getting a new tractor instead; but they also gave me some information on tractor salvage places, in case I wanted to try to find the parts.

Shortly after, one of our neighbors, Mr. Gillis, who has done some other plowing work for us, saw or heard about the tractor. Well, come to find out, he worked in the past as a professional tractor repairman; and given his friendliness toward and willingness to help us, it wasn’t long before he was out here taking everything apart to see to what extent the damages were, and to hopefully get it to a condition where, if we were able to get the parts, we could repair it.

Mr. Gillis and some of the guys were able to get the big rear wheel off using our neighbor’s engine hoist, and you can see Mr. Gillis starting to take things apart:

This is a close up of the axle and casing attached to the tractor:

And here is the piece of axle that was still in the wheel:

Now, mind you, we’re not talking a 1/2 inch hex bolt here; we’re talking 3 1/2 inch thick solid steel that sheered away. I figure that probably the stresses on it over the years just finally got to it. Here’s a picture of it next to my shoe so you can get a size reference:

And here is the part of the casing that went with the wheel:

With a little help from me as best I could, Mr. Gillis got it all apart, including the other pieces, like the gears and breaks:

And so, there it sits, broken, but now apart and ready for replacement parts. As this situation with Mr. Gillis arose, I thought perhaps the Lord was being gracious in answering my prayer for help through the situation, maybe even to being able to fix the tractor (although I’m still keeping an open mind about perhaps going another direction). I’m in the process of trying to find parts, and perhaps, Lord willing, I’ll have an update to this time of tough tractorin’.

I am thankful to God for His graces and mercies in granting some apparent growth in trust in Him, although I am woefully pathetic in that area still; but I pray for a continued increase in measure of those graces that only He can grant and provide. And I pray for anything else He might teach us from this situation.

— David