This is only a test
Oct 6, 2008 2:17 PM, By Jeff Ryan
When you think about making a major purchase of some kind, do you go out to the store/dealership and just pick up the item on a whim? Probably not. Most people like to check around and see what other consumers think of that particular product before they sink their own money into it. You can go to Consumer Reports magazine or Amazon.com for reviews on a wide variety of stuff. If you're talking farm equipment, though, the options suddenly decrease considerably.
One of the very best places to go for such research is a little publication I have been subscribing to for decades. It's an outfit called Farm Industry News. The magazine has a group of farmers known as Team FIN that tests and reviews various pieces of farm equipment and tools. Reviews of those items appear in the magazine from time to time. As a reader and a farmer, I'm interested in knowing what my fellow agrarian scientists think of various "stuff" for the farm. Those reviews are always very popular in the magazine. When the opportunity came up several years ago to become a member of Team FIN, I sent in a letter of application. It seems like I submitted my application in 1999 and didn't hear anything from them until 2001. At least it was a positive response! A year-and-a-half wait for a flush letter would have been disappointing in the extreme.
One of the most popular testing subjects for the magazine has been all-terrain vehicles (ATVs) and utility vehicles (UVs). Every year or two, a group of about six or eight Team FIN members heads to sort of a hunting club in south-central Minnesota. The place is spread out over about 800 acres of hills, woods, crop fields and CRP land. Several trails wind through the woods and the fields. It makes for great testing of ATVs.
As is almost always the case in my life, nothing good can happen without a scheduling problem. The idea was to have the ATV Rodeo on the 5th and 6th of August. Okay, that was the magazine staff's idea. My idea was to have it the week before, or maybe two weeks after the single digits of August. I'm always busy with A.I. season for my cows in the single digits of August. It was beginning to look like I wouldn't be able to make it this year. Then some bait was floated my way. The editor wanted to know if I would help the good people at Yamaha. They not only wanted to send a machine or two to the Rodeo, they wanted to send a machine home with a farmer for more "in-depth testing" at his own place after the official Rodeo.
Suddenly the inflexible math of bovine A.I. season was taking on a pudding-like rigidity. The calendar could be shifted, I suppose.
Not that I would bite on the tiniest morsel of bait put in front of me, but I swallowed this minnow whole. I did it for my fellow farmers, of course. They need good testing in the magazine. They need it in a readable format that may make them mildly interested in making a purchase. Could my fellow Team FIN members do that without me? Without being completely conceited and arrogant, "HECK NO!"
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