Ready to work! (I hope!)

Last winter after becoming dissatisfied with farming as a career I sold of a couple of quarters of land. Carla and I had a business plan in mind but that dream had to be let go, too, after some things beyond our control made that proposition a little too risky. Instead I bought myself the toy pictured which is a 2003 Caterpillar 246 skid steer loader. My idea is to pick up some work with it to make up for the money I wasn't making farming my land. I made sure I didn't borrow any money to get into this business, spending only what I got for the sale of my land. Debt scares me these days. This machine cost me around $24,000 with a little more than 900 hours on the hourmeter. Fairly low for its age.

Anyway, this machine came with a straight bucket only so at a Richie Brothers auction I picked up a hay spear (for picking up large round bales) and the manure grapple pictured, which I'm hoping will be the core of my business. A couple of years ago I rented a Bobcat S185 and quite enjoyed operating it cleaning my own corrals and barns so I have a bit of experience running these kind of machines. This one is even better than the Bobcat as the Cat doesn't require the use of pedals to operated the loader and bucket. It's all on joysticks. The left stick controls movement forward, back, left and right. The right stick controls the loader and bucket. Each stick also has a switch to control extra hydraulic attachments. In this case the right stick's switch controls the claw on the grapple. Another bonus is that I have heat and air conditioning. Yes, I'm a big suck! I need my air and heat!

Of course I had to get a trailer to haul this thing around. Carla and I went to a farm auction that had a used Dumenceau 8-1/2x20 gooseneck triaxle flatdeck on offer. It was in average condition, nothing special but quite usable. It sold for $9500! And no, not to me! It definitely wasn't worth that kind of money to me. So we made our way back into Swift Current and visited JayDee AgTech, a dealer for Trailtech trailers (and obviously John Deere farm equipment!). Anyway, we left there towing a shiney brand new Trailtech 8-1/2x20 gooseneck tandem axle flatdeck and it only cost us $8800 taxes included! Yeah, it's got one less axle but even with two I've got plenty of capacity to carry the Cat. My neighbor has actually borrowed the trailer a lot to haul stuff so it's obviously a hit with him!

I also have a set of brand new tires on the Cat. The ones that came with it had very little traction in wet manure. It's possible to get tracks that fit over the tires but they're very expensive - $3500 for one set I saw advertised in the Western Producer newspaper. I checked into chains but Brake and Drive in SC quoted me well over $1000 which seemed odd because I've seen them online for a lot less, but I didn't feel like ordering from the US. Anyway, I got a set of Trelleburgs from Fountain Tire in SC with an extra wide sidewall to protect the rims and spent just over $900. No fussing with chains and they seem to perform quite well in my own barnyard after some testing today.

Anyway, what it all comes down to is that this coming Monday I have my first "official" job cleaning corrals for Hughes Farms south of Chaplin. Hopefully I've worked out all the kinks at home and have a good, trouble-free day!