Goodbye, old baler

I don't know when we bought the old John Deere twine-tie, square baler. I remember it being really cheap; back then, "cheap" was all we could afford, and even then we had to scrape pennies together for any major purchase.

There was a reason it was cheap: It was almost as old as us, and had been sitting outside for several years, rusting.

It took lots of elbow grease, but Cliff got it running. Oh, he's always had to baby it, stopping now and then to give a couple of turns on the thing-a-ma-jig that ties the bales; and it sheared the occasional pin, but those shear pins are one of the few items for which John Deere doesn't charge a fortune; so Cliff usually kept several on hand.

He loaned the old baler out a couple of times, and we soon learned that other people didn't have Cliff's patience, or that ability to treat it gently and take things slow and easy. So they had trouble with it, and never wanted to borrow it again.

Cliff doesn't intend to plant alfalfa any more; it keeps him tied down too many weekends, and works him harder than a man his age should have to work. He'll be using the big round baler for the grass/clover mix we feed the livestock nowadays.

Thanks to Craigslist, the old 214 John Deere baler left this evening. I believe we got twice the price we paid long ago, although with inflation being what it is, we probably didn't make a profit. We sure used it a lot of years, though.

I can't help feeling rather sad to see it gone.