Tractor Disaster! The big bang theory

My best friend is one of those girls who has balls…

I know this doesn’t sound very lady like but let me explain. When we were in High school we had to go do a practical training period of one week at another school, usually in the northern part of Holland where we wouldn't sit in a classroom but drive tractors, milk cows and do stuff “for real”. This training would be one week long and when we finished that week we would return to our own school and get new theoretical things to study.

And because we went to a High school especially for the Agricultural sector there were a LOT of boys and not so many girls…

Kamie was awesome driving the tractor, not like me as you can read in Tractor Disaster & Tractor Disaster, Driving in Circles, but really really good! Of course the boys thought they were better and so it would be amazing to see her jump on the tractor with tanker, put it in reverse and back it up 500 feet true an overhead door, with no more than a couple of inches to spare on each side of the tanker, into a barn… You should see the faces of those boys when she would do that… pure jealousy, pure lust (after all it where teenage boys) and pure and utter disbelieve that a GIRL was capable of doing such a thing with a tractor!

I just stood by and watched ‘my girl’ do her thing…

In high school we also had to go to a local farmer and spent one day a week for half a year on their farm. This was believed good for your education because you could practice the things that you had learned in class on that farm and ask the teacher or farmer questions that might arise.

I went to a dairy farmer… can you believe it… and I would help him milk in the morning, feed the cows, clean the (free stalls) beds and helped the farmer with whatever needed to be done that day. I was pretty determined to do it right and after a couple of weeks; the farmer asked me if I could come in the weekends too. I thought this was a good idea, learn more about dairy farming and make some money, so one day I could buy my own BMW (hehe…)!

On a beautiful spring day, after milking was done, the farmer asked me if I could drive a tractor. I told him “yes, I can…”. I also explained to him that I didn’t do so well on my final exam but that I had been doing some practicing and that every day that went by I felt more comfortable, not as comfortable as my best friend (i told him about the boys and her driving) but comfortable enough...

Don’t tell me I didn’t warn him…

Soooo, long story short, he put me on the tractor to spread the grass he was cutting. My tractor had a machine (rake) behind it which you normally would use to make nice little rows (dunes) of cut grass, but instead of me making nice little dunes I needed to spread the grass around, this is called 'raking'. Imagine that the grass he cuts is laying in a nice little neat row, but no air can get underneath that pile of grass, so I needed to drive over it and “spread” it over the entire field so a lot of air can dry the grass quicker. If the grass is dry enough, you take the same machine, but adjust it a bit and make nice little rows (dunes) again, so the farmer can bale it. Some people make little bales (normally for horses) or big bales (for cows) and feed this to their animals.

He had cut all the grass and I was just driving around in circles over the fields spreading grass, having a good time. I made sure that my tires were good and i wasn't bleeding… yeah…. And that I didn’t drive true any holes and stuff.

After lunch I headed back to “my field” and started up again. There were some posts in the field… normally this is not a problem, but I didn’t see the post until I was already past it… Which is no good…

I stopped the tractor immediately and to my amazement one of the rakes went already past the post and the second rake was right after that. So you had rake, post, rake.

My blond and healthy farmers instinct said, “Ok, just put the tractor in reverse and the rakes will go backwards and just roll out of that post again. My theory: roll in, you can roll out again… right???

Well, in theory it should have worked, except I forgot the PTO… a PTO is that thing that goes round and round which makes the actual rake do what it’s supposed to do. And you should NEVER put a tractor with a rake behind it in REVERSE…

There was a HUGE BANG!!! No not a little bang, or crack, NO A BANG that you can hear 5 miles away and the PTO, the tractor and the rake stopped and things were FLYING!!! And really, all the blood that was running true my body just stopped running… “OH, OH, OH…. What have I DONE???"  While I was recuperating, the farmer, who lived half a mile from where I was raking, came running up to me! Yes, Dejavu all over again…. PTO broke, rake broke, some wheels inside the rake broke.... disaster all over...

Important lesson to be learned here; NEVER EVER EVER put your tractor in reverse when your PTO is still on….

I was allowed to come back to the farm the next week. My school was called and their insurance was not happy with me… I brought the farmer a homemade pie…



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