Don't count your eggs

3/13/09 Friday
It’s another cold wet morning. May not feel to comfortable but we’ll take all the wet we can get right now. I called the old man and asked if he could check around to see if any of the farmers around here might have an old tractor they would want to get rid of. Last night I went online to see what I can find as well. There is a tractor in Abilene that has a front end loader on it that’s in our price range though it’s a little more than we want to spend. We don’t want to spend the whole pipeline check on a tractor as there are some other things we need. I’ve been considering hiring some of the Chuck and Lillian gang to help me get things done around here that are essential to getting the farm going. Plus I may be forced to take the tiller in to get fixed. Hate to do it but may not have a choice. It’s not a huge check so we will try to be wise in how it’s spent. Tractor’s, trellises, hiring some help, are all investments that will produce income down the road. Plus there are probably some things Cherie needs as well.
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Well I’m still learning not to count my eggs before they hatch, or as Cherie just said “spending our eggs before they are hatched”. We went to the bank to get the contract notarized and deposit the “Sight Draft” they sent us. Never heard of a sight draft before but I guess it’s a common instrument in the oil business. We had the idea that it could just be deposited and then the funds would be available. NOPE, that’s not how it works. The bank manager looked at it a little puzzled. On the draft it said “Void after 120 days”. She said they usually said ten to thirty days and that she had never seen one for this long. The way it works is the draft is sent to the main bank office, who then sends it to the issuer, who then sends the bank a cashier’s check, which is then deposited, and then a notification of the deposit is sent to us. Plus she was surprised that the draft wasn’t printed on heavier paper and only had one copy where there are usually multiples. On the draft there were instructions to send the yellow page one place, the pink one another and the same for two other color pages. This only had the front page and a green copy. Probably not an issue but I tend to worry about things like that, look for what might go wrong. Anyway, she said that she has seen companies wait till the last minute before they issue a cashier’s check. That would be four months down the road for us if they did.

So now all the plans get put on hold. I found a potential tractor in our price range that is in a town called Brownwood. It’s about two hundred miles away but well worth the drive if it’s as good as it looked on paper. A big attraction of this tractor is it has a nice front end loader on it and is a fairly heavy machine. She had it listed on Craig’s list. The lady said she had inherited the tractor and everything worked but she didn’t really need it. I asked if there had been much interest and she told me she had lots of calls but no one came to look at it yet. When asked if she would negotiate on price she said she would a little. I’ll call her and see if she will hold it…no, that’s not fair to do. If it’s the tractor for us things will work out. I will call and explain the situation and that we won’t make the two and a half hour drive to look at it until we had funds in hand and that she should go ahead and sell it if she can.

So it’s back to working on the tiller. If I have to I’ll take it to a shop but have gone online and learned some things to look at so I’ll do that first to hopefully save some money. The dogs got into the fifty strawberry plants we just got while we were in Big Spring to get my eyes checked this afternoon. Not good. But I haven’t been able to prepare the beds they will go in yet and even if I did I’m not sure if they could handle a freeze. I should buy some hay to cover and protect them and any other plants we put out. Time to get back out into the wet cold and do some work.