Skidloader love

Our skidloader had a bad week, so it's on a date with the repair guy at the implement.

(I had to go back a long way to find a picture of our skidloader.)

While it's there, we're renting this skidloader from the implement.

Glen + this skidloader = ♥

I think Glen has a crush on it.

It has more power than our skidloader. What man-farmer doesn't love equipment with more power?

It also has two speeds. That means it takes him half as much time, in high speed, to drive out to the bags of haylage and high moisture corn.

And it has a cab. With a heater. Which happened to come it pretty handy today, since it's only 30-some degrees out and sprinkling. Glen didn't install his plexiglass poor-farmer's-cab on our skidloader this winter, so to go from completely exposed to completely protected made a big impression on him.

I happen to like that this skidloader has a horn. Glen probably does, too. We're getting corn silage from Glen's dad's farm right now, so Glen hauls it here in a dump wagon. Someone has to sit in the tractor and run the hydraulics to dump the corn silage into the skidloader bucket. Then, the corn silage is dumped into the TMR mixer. (Yes, it's a bit of production.)

Anyway, it's hard for the person running the hydraulics in the tractor to see how much corn silage is in the skidloader bucket. But, with a skidloader with a horn, all Glen has to do is honk when the bucket it full. I can't tell you how much easier it makes dumping corn silage.

"There's only one problem," Glen said, after the first day of using it. "I don't want to give it back."

Glen didn't say it, but using this skidloader has to be a little like rubbing salt in a wound. He really wanted to buy a skidloader just like this one with the cash we should have got from selling our extra corn last year. But... last summer's drought changed those plans.

Now, like an old flame that just won't burn out, this skidloader is here to rekindle his desire for a new one.

He even went as far as calling the implement to ask about the price tag for this skidloader.

Maybe I'll go buy him a lottery ticket. Because, unless we sell the 20 extra cows we're switching, a winning ticket is the only way this skidloader will fit in our budget.

Poor guy. It's really gonna break his heart when this skidloader leaves.