Free Caps

I have a lovely addition to my wardrobe. It is all the rage among fashionable farm wives. The classic cap is enhanced with pink and gray camouflage, perfect for the start of dove season this week.

And best of all: It was FREE!

Wait just a minute. Is that the sound of money draining out of my bank account? Yes, yes. That's the sound all right. Glug, glug, glug ... That free cap just cost me a tidy five-figure sum, even with a five-figure, trade-in credit.

But that's OK. We didn't get just one cap. We got several. One in classic Case red was claimed by Randy and a couple of others went to Jake and his little boy. There was also a lovely Case license tag tossed in the shopping bag.

It's a bargain, right?

A new tractor was added to our County Line line-up last Friday. Well, it is new to us. It's a 2005 Case Steiger STX375.

It replaces a tractor that truly was a lemon. You've heard of cars that are lemons once they roll off the assembly line. Our Case MX240 was the tractor version.

When life gives you lemons, make lemonade, right? The only people making lemonade out of that tractor was the dealership who was raking in the money on repairs.

So it was definitely time for a revamp, even though it is painful to the pocketbook.

Randy considered going green this time. In fact, by decision time, he was considering three tractors, two of which were green. But he's a RED-blooded farm boy who has been driving red tractors all his life.

He could obviously stomach a little green, since he added a John Deere planter to the mix earlier this year. But for the major hardware? Red, it is.

Actually, he says it was less about the color than it was the pricetag. The Case tractor was less money. It didn't have all the bells and whistles that the John Deere tractors had. But he just needed the basics.

Well, basics are a matter of opinion. I took a ride in the new tractor Saturday, and its computer told us how much fuel we were consuming and how many acres we were working per hour, among other fascinating details.

Jake had taken the tractor to Zenith to fill the 300-gallon capacity fuel tank. He told Randy he didn't want to know how much it cost.

Big men are really just little boys in different packages. Randy was pretty excited about the tractor. On Saturday, we were disking a field that still seemed plenty wet to me.

"Would we be working this field if you didn't have a new tractor?" I asked, not so innocently on Saturday.

Long silence and a grin ensued.

"Well, maybe not," he finally said.

Big boy: New toy.

Little boys like new tractors, too. Trevor, our hired man's little boy, couldn't quit grinning about the new tractor and went for a spin with his dad on Friday.

"This is the best tractor ever," the first grader declared to Randy.

Let's hope it is, Trevor.

However, some caution flags are going up for this seasoned farm wife. Randy says that it's really more tractor than we need for the implements we have.

Uh oh. That sounds expensive to me.