Welcome back and Happy New Year! This week, we eased back into shop work. As we did last year, we put some equipment in online auctions for the last week of the year. We sold a planter, a tractor, and some fertilizer/spray tanks. We had to do a little bit of work to prepare these items for shipping.

Selling online seems to be working out well. For the most part we’ve been happy with the prices we received. Though the market isn’t as strong as it was a year ago, we did substantially better than what we were offered on any trade. Dealers just aren’t adding to inventory in the current ag economy. But farmers are out there looking to make upgrades and changes. Our equipment was sold to Canada, Colorado, Wisconsin and Indiana. We’ve got a few more miscellaneous items we hope to put on auctions before planting.

The worst part of the whole deal was loading the planter. It is not shipment friendly and nothing seemed to go right on Wednesday. It took five hours to get the job done and was more than a bit stressful. We had to slide it in on blocks and it didn’t want to go onto the trailer straight. We ended up calling the wrecker service to guide it onto the trailer. I wish we made that call sooner. They were here and gone in less than an hour.

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We continue to work on other equipment in the shop.

The mulching head and windshield protection has been installed on the excavator. It should be ready to go do some work.

The inline ripper has been hanging around the shop since tillage ended. I ordered some parts then and we’re finally getting those repairs made.

I’m beginning to wonder if this machine was a COVID build as actual parts and the parts manual just aren’t matching up. The dealer even called the manufacturer to verify by the serial number on the build sheet. They have no explanation for where installed parts came from.

It has taken a couple extra shipments, but I think we should be able to put it together when the next package arrives. It will be parked fully greased and ready to go to work.