Brutus

There’s always something to do here on the farm and spring seems to be the busiest.  This past week my husband and I spent time trimming back the brush and overhanging branches on the lane.  This doesn’t sound like much except that it’s a third of a mile long, with trees and bushes on one or both sides.  The delivery vans have to run the gauntlet, often leaving with debris decorating their vehicles.

Usually I just walk along with my battery-powered hedge trimmers.  When the battery runs down, so do I.  And I can only reach just so far up.  Getting to the overhead branches is more challenging.  In this case, one person drives the truck and one person stands in back with clippers or a chainsaw.  We got over nine truck loads so far and we’re still not done. The temps were in the 90s a couple of days ago, but they were in the 50s today.

Since I was the driver this time, I spent a lot of time in the truck.

Brutus is our farm truck. (My husband names every vehicle we have.)  We ordered Brutus new back in 1985, a handsome but no frills Ford F250 4WD. Let’s see, that makes him 36 this year. Every farm has an old truck.  Come meet ours.

He’s very reliable but has never been coddled.  Never spent a night under cover.  And is used but not intentionally abused.  He’s hauled rock and a whole lot of firewood over the years.  He’s been able to get out during the worst of snowstorms.  Both of the boys learned to drive in him, which in the country is way below the legal age (only on the farm). 

Unfortunately, Brutus is showing his age.  The speedometer doesn’t go past 99,999 so he’s now clocking at over 117,000 miles.  The radio still works (AM only) but the heater doesn’t.  He has two gas tanks but I don’t think the gage works on either one.  We don’t worry about anyone stealing him as he’s pretty touchy to get going, besides, he’s not a beauty either. And his top speed is about 45.