I decided a long time ago there are two kinds of farms. You might call them the haves and the have-nots, or maybe the fancy farms and the frugal ones. But I’ve got my own system for figuring it out—and it all comes down to draw pins.
Now, if you’ve never had to hook up a wagon, plow, planter, cultivator, disk, or any of the thousand other implements we farmers drag around, you might not be familiar with the humble draw pin. It’s the heavy metal pin that links your tractor to whatever thing you’re pulling. And like everything else on the farm, there never seem to be quite enough of them.
So here’s the key: Some farms have a draw pin with every implement. Neatly stored in a special holder, ready and waiting. Doesn’t matter what tractor you show up with—there’s always a pin right there on the tool.
Then there’s the other type of farm: our type. The “just enough pins to get by” crowd. Around here, the pins live with the tractors and trucks—the things that actually pull stuff. Because we’ve only got a few of those, it keeps the pin count (and the budget) low. Sure, it means you’ve got to bring a pin with you when you go to hook something up, but that’s just how we’ve always done it. It’s efficient... sort of. Until the day you show up and realize the pin’s still sitting in the cup holder of the other tractor.
So that brings me to this week.
I was hooking up to one of our grain wagons and grabbed the pin from the tractor cab—like always. But just as I went to slide it in, I looked back at the front of the wagon… and there it was. A shiny, proper draw pin. Resting in a tidy little holder I’d never noticed before.
I stepped back.
Who put that there?
Was it Anne? One of the kids? Was someone trying to tell me something? Are we… drifting? From the frugal to the fancy? From the minimalist “we’ll make it work” crowd to the well-equipped, high-functioning types?
It was a lot to process in a single moment.
Now, I’m not saying I’m about to go out and buy 37 draw pins so every implement has its own. But… maybe I won’t fight it if the change comes naturally. Maybe it’s not the worst thing in the world to know where your pin is—every time.
So yeah, there are two kinds of farms. The kind that has a pin with every tractor, and the kind that has a pin with every tool.
Turns out, I might be slowly becoming the second kind. And I’m still not sure how I feel about that.
Farmer Rod