Wednesday, November 18, 2009

ABOUT FARMING AND ROADS

I mentioned a problem with farm equipment in a previous posting and someone asked me if I was against farming - or something like that... and my answer might be that I am not happy with corporations running farms and some of their practices... but my problem is with the humongous equipment that barely fits on our road and the inability and even unwillingness of some drivers to get out of the way. I guess they expect these behemoths to back up for them - I don't know. But you would think that even an idiot seeing one of these monsters coming down the road would know enough to stop, get in someone's driveway or do something to stay out of harm's way. Most of us have deep drainage ditches separating our property from the road. This is flat land, the water has to drain into the Bay or the Ocean, hence drainage ditches. Notice the curvature of the road - it is called a turtle back here and is very slippery in freezing weather. It is very rare for a big piece of equipment to start up the narrow part of the road when they see someone else already in the middle of it. However, on Monday, a school bus was coming down my road heading back into town. This monster sized piece of equipment did not stop and wait for the bus to get thru, he just kept driving. The road is 4 lanes wide about 500 feet before the bus and Deere had a "meeting" on my road. My property is a tenth of a mile long - no place to get out of the way for something this big. It is close even for 2 school buses to pass each other.Did he expect the bus to back up over a tenth of a mile or just go in the ditch with all the kids on board? I came in the house to grab the camera. By the time I got back outside, somehow the bus had managed to get by and the equipment was up on my bank.
Do you know HOW BIG those tires are?

5 comments:

Grenville T. Boyd said...

Are you picking on the Farmers again?????? And who brought you that load of Pine Shatts???? And all those fresh veggies this summer?????
And just think,,, if it wasn't for farmers spring on the Shore wouldn't smell nearly as nice...
OKOK OK .... maybe he should have taken off the bean head of his "Combine" but that is a lot of work....

possum said...

DUDE! Does this mean you are starting your blog we talked about last night?????

Ginnie said...

He did a job on your bank. The road looks like a lovely place to live...when not invaded by over sized vehicles!!

Beatrice P. Boyd said...

There was a road under that huge equipment? Almost couldn't see it.

Tossing Pebbles in the Stream said...

It is a great corn harvester. They have to get bigger and bigger in order to make money on the economy of scale.

The strange thing is you do not need a license to operate a piece of equipment like this on the road.
I had a friend who tried to get permission to drive a payloader on the highway. They said they do not license such equipment on the road. So he hauled a house trailer with his payloader the 80 miles from the city to here.