Tractor Troubles

When you have a tractor that was built in 1962, things tend to go wrong from time to time.  Whether it's the hitch literally breaking the first time you try out your brand new sprayer, the tire going flat after ploughing when Matt is off in another country and I am at the vineyards alone, or,  like today, the battery simply was dead.  Somethings are big, like the arm of the three-point hitch breaking, some things are little like a flat tire or a battery being dead, but all of these things add up to a lot of time lost when we're trying on a weekend to get some vineyard work in.

Luckily for us we have some very generous friends who are always willing to help. Like Jacques, he lets us store our tractor in his back yard, for free.  When we first got the tractor we

had it at our house in St Quentin la Poterie, which is about 20 minutes from our vineyards by car.  Consider this though, by tractor it takes an hour to get to our vineyards, ugh!  We did it for the first few months, it was awful, but we couldn't find anyone who had a garage or hangar for us to rent. 

Finally, in desperation, I went to see Jacques who had asked all of his neighbors for us, but didn't find anyone either.  He agreed that we could keep it in his back yard behind their house. We've offered to pay them rent, but they refuse to even consider it.  Whenever we have any trouble with the tractor, Jacques is there to help us out.  The tire went flat again a couple of weeks ago. Jacques has a compressor and filled it up, but it went flat again before we could get it to the garage.  Jacques jumped in his car, borrowed a heavy-duty jack from a friend and helped us get the tire off.  He then called the garage in the next town over and found out that they couldn't take it until the next morning. In order to save us a trip down there, he offered to take the tire over and drop it off for us! What a guy!