The YT Story - Part One

How it All Began

I'd been living in town only a short time when we started talking about getting a place with acreage. I was born and raised on a farm and several years living in the city left me with a hole in my soul that kept getting bigger and bigger as time went by. Oh, living in town was exciting at first, the hustle and bustle was an endless source of things to do for this self proclaimed "do-a-holic". But after late night parties next door kept us up all night, and my favorite cat got squashed by a car after venturing only 20 feet from the front door, I began to crave the rural life once again.

Finding a place was difficult. Here in the most northern part of the Pacific Northwest acreage is covered with towering firs that don't let in much sun for gardening or crops. Land that has been cleared has to be re-cleared on a monthly basis or the alders, blackberries, nettles and ferns take over before the tractor engine even gets a chance to cool.

That's the kind of place we ended up with but it seemed like paradise to us. In short order we decided we needed a tractor to help shape the land to match our dreams and keep those alders at bay. Chris, having lived in the city his entire life, thought there couldn't be much to this tractor buying business and found himself at the local saw shop where Jim Storey sold everything from chain saws, weed wackers and lawn mowers to tractors big and small.

I remember well the day the tractor was delivered. Here it comes bouncing up the long dirt driveway behind a truck, a large mass of faded orange and rust chained to the trailer like a prisoner of war. Chris had a grin so wide I thought his face might split. This was a kid at Christmas, plain and simple, and the fact that his new toy had been around the block once or twice - okay - so many times the rubber was worn off the tires, was of little consequence. The ancient tractor was home to stay.

Little did I know that this moment would change not only our lives, but the lives of many others in a very big way. [to be continued]