🚜 Our Little Orange Kubota

Today we say our grateful goodbyes to our Little Orange Kubota who got us off the ground here at Templo de Água Lila.

He came to us from up the mountain, €5000 for a time machine to 1984 rural Japan. Complete with Japanese instructions.

Before we even got electricity.

It was a precursor.

I'd never driven a tractor before, heck I couldn't even drive a manual car back then.

But it had to be done.

I'll figure it out, always have before.

That's part of the reason for our belief in God.

The Universe has gotten us here so far and we're grateful for the journey, even the difficult parts.

But we trust the resources will always come through even if that means putting in some hard work yourself on the front end.

⚠️ The Danger Revealed

So I learned how to drive a tractor and in the learning I discovered a major concern.

This tractor was made for flat terrain in an age before roll bars were required by law. Because we find out, tractors tipping over is a common cause of death in this part of the world.

Then word reached us of some distant neighbor we hadn't met yet had just died last week coming down from Landeira. Fuck.

This old tractor without a roll bar is a major risk.

So I tried to get a roll bar fashioned but there was no secure anchor point...

I guess we've just got to be extra careful on the terraces.

We empty half the firewood, let's try again with less weight.

Ultra low gear in reverse. Try to line up the approach better because I can't leave the tractor here, even after it did try to kill me.

Indi, who I'm working with at the time jumps on top of the front hood of the tractor like a cowboy, trying to weigh it down.

But it still pops a front wheelie on the approach and I'm forced to implement emergency measures again to stop another suicide attempt by the tractor.

Into reverse again.

Survey the levels of the caminho, re-angle the tractor like Austin Powers in a narrow tunnel.

Fucking third time's the charm 🤞

I'm shaking with adrenaline. Let's do this.

I inch up the hill. Tires spin on the mud, stuck against an obstacle. A little thrashing as another tyre finds grip and then we're over. Nervous saying the rest of the way up but I unload the firewood, park it in barn and go home to have a stiff drink.

There the tractor sits for weeks while I try to figure out a fix. No one says they can do anything about it.

I eventually start driving again but we don't go down there no more.

I actually get pretty good, even if I'm a little overly cautious. It carries our world on our shoulders, we grow with that tractor.

Eventually (with our Little Orange Kubota's help) we get a reliable source of electricity allowing us to make the all-important upgrade to the luxury of having a real fridge (also transported down with our Little Orange Kubota).

💔 The Final Service

We slowly moved our way through my infinite to-do list up till about one month ago when something went wrong.

John's been helping out around the farm a lot and mastered the art of aggressive tractor driving one summer in the Outback. He'd just given the tractor a full service, a kind of final act of love.

Reversing it out of the service yard, something happened.

The fan fell out of place.

It started making a weird noise — so he parked it.

Tries to move it again and boom. Chassis cracks in two—the tractor crashes in on itself.

God's grace the tractor was stationary when this happened, he only strained a wrist.

But the tractor was fucked.

We held onto optimistic delusions that a local welder could come fix it in place. Turns out this kind of chassis work needs a vice. Tractor's got to go to him.

So John and I, we get creative.

We intentionally overload the back bucket with stones from our wall and remove the front weight. I'm going to replicate the wheelie maneuver that almost killed me. The overflowing back bucket tips the steering wheels into the air, relieving the fracture of weight. With three sets of hands, we reversed that tractor out of the service yard and back to the main road where presumably it could be reached.

But tragedy struck the second leg of the ascent and despite all our efforts our Little Orange Kubota staggered towards the edge of another terrace. Not this again. It's now looking impossible to rescue so we call our neighbor Celso the farmer for help. Unfortunately, the tractor collapses even under his efforts. Now utterly ruined. Unrepairable.

River helps us say our grateful goodbyes to the Little Orange Kubota and Celso helped hauled it the rest of the way up the mountain in his blue behemoth.

€143 from the salvage yard for the weight in metal.