Marketing Inertia
Jun 16, 2008 3:30 PM
As good as that sounds, there was one small problem. You don’t just grab a round bale by hand and toss it on the trailer. This wasn’t just down the road from the home place where I could call staff and have them show up to rescue me in short order. This was about 14 miles from home. I quickly did some Rain Man MapQuest work and tried to figure out whose cell phone number I had programmed into my phone that would come out and help me in the shortest time. As luck would have it, I had just delivered a small load of round bales to my A.I. guy west of Spillville the previous night. He hadn’t been around when I had arrived with his hay, so I drove his small John Deere loader tractor and unloaded the hay myself. I was practically a veteran with his machine.
A call was placed. He answered, and knowing my situation, he immediately agreed to let me use his tractor and loader to get myself out of this mess. Small problem. He was in Decorah and wouldn’t be home for awhile. If I drove my truck to his farm to get his tractor, I’d have to drive the tractor back to his place with the bale on it. Had an accomplice been available, he could have driven the tractor and I would have driven the truck back to the scene of the crime. Then I could have loaded the bale and immediately delivered it to Fort. No muss, no fuss, no big deal.
But no accomplice, no quick solutions. It looked like I’d be spending some quality time on the road behind the wheel of a tiny little green machine with a giant green load on the front.
A good Boy Scout is always prepared. I only made it to the rank of Weebalo. A good Weebalo usually has some options. This Weebalo had his iPod with him. I hopped on the cabless tractor when I got to the farm west of Spillville, fired it up, dialed up an episode of The Bob & Tom Show, and headed out on a Hay Dude 9-1-1 call.
Did I mention that it wasn't a huge Deere tractor? Did I mention it WAS a huge Deere round bale? Not to get all Allen Ludden on you here, but “Not a match; the board goes back.”
You can lift giant Deere round bales with a small Deere tractor. You can haul giant Deere round bales with a small Deere tractor. What you can’t do is lift them and haul them at the same time flawlessly. The little Deere had to sort of psych itself up to lift the bale. As soon as I made its tiny little brain switch to transport mode, its wimpy little arms slowly decided to give up on the carrying idea. The bale began to sag as I drove. It was only three or four miles back to my truck, but it took a couple of stops along the way to let The Little Engine That Barely Could regain its composure and go for Olympic gold in the clean-and-jerk. The more the bale sagged, the more the plastic mesh wrap on it began to, um, dissipate. With weather on my side at all times, the wind was pretty much blowing all the chaff right back into my mouth.
Most Recent Story
VIDEOS
PRODUCTS
TECHNOLOGY
 Watch video produced by the editors to show the latest equipment from the NFMS and UV Rodeo. |
 See the results of the latest farm product tests conducted by Team FIN farmers and magazine editors. |
 Recent articles on Biofuels, Water Quality, Credits, and what "green" practices will impact your business. |
(New Course)
