Moon over Martinborough

Sunshine

Podcast available.

“Buy a used tractor?” I said to Rick. “Do we need one?”

Three years ago, after finishing the paperwork to purchase 20 acres with an olive grove in Martinborough, Rick and I received an email from the real estate agent asking if we’d like to buy the vendor’s tractor as well.

In our city boy minds, a used tractor would break down and require mechanical know how. We wanted a new tractor, but we were already broke from the mortgage. We planned to wait a few years before investing in equipment.

So we sent an email back to the agent confidently telling him that we did not yet need a tractor.

This single act, more than any other thing we’ve done in our stumbling transition from city boys to olive growers, demonstrates how utterly clueless Rick and I were about what were getting ourselves into.

Moving in

The day we moved in we noticed that something amazing had happened since we’d last seen the place. The grass had grown. All 20 acres of it. In the five large paddocks, in the olive grove, and all around the house. When we originally viewed the property, there were cattle and sheep grazing on it, and it looked like a golf course. Not only were the animals gone, but the spring rains had arrived.

Suddenly it seemed as though the place had been invaded by Radioactive Grass from Mars. It was chest high. If you fell down in it, you’d be lost forever.

And we didn’t even own a lawn mower.

Thankfully, people far and wide took pity on us. A good friend from Wellington gave us an old hand-me-down lawn mower so we could take care of the yard. Our neighbor Duane arranged for the hay to be cut in our five paddocks.

Frantoio olives, April 2010

And our neighbor John, who has a few hundred olive trees of his own, came by to perform what can only be described as an olive grower’s emergency intervention.

“You’ve got to mow that grove,” John said , looking out from our front deck. He is a smallish, sturdy man with a grey Santa Claus beard. “You did know you’d have to mow it before you bought the place, right?”

Rick said, “Oh yeah. Sure. Everyone knows you have to mow an olive grove.”

“Mmm. Of course,” I said, nodding diligently.

John just shook his head. “My mower’s too small for that high grass. But you can hire a contractor to come in and mow it. Then you’re welcome to borrow my tractor and mower to keep on top of it.”

Meeting John’s Tractor

A few months after a contractor mowed the grove, Rick and I were standing in John’s hayshed being introduced to a small orange tractor.

“I bought the tractor you should have bought,” John said. “Priscilla sold it to me when you said no. ”

Rick and I were standing face to face with the very tractor that we had so confidently spurned.

John placed his hand on the ripped black vinyl of the tractor seat. “It’s a Kubota three cylinder diesel. Must be 20 years old. Rough as guts, but does the job.”

This tractor has always looked to me like a storybook tractor, as though it was designed by a child with a thick orange crayon. It’s boxy and simple. The writing on the levers and knobs is in Japanese, but on the main control panel a picture of a rabbit and a turtle indicate speed.

On the front there’s a small chrome bull’s head between the headlamps and below that, across the front grill, there’s a shiny name plate that proudly spells out the word, ‘Sunshine.’

Of course, John would never refer to his tractor as ‘Sunshine.’ He’s far too much of a no-nonsense Kiwi bloke to do that. In my mind, however, from that moment on John’s little orange tractor became known simply as ‘Sunshine’.

I pointed to a large, red square thing that looked like it dragged on the ground behind Sunshine.

“What’s that for?” I asked.

“That’s the PTO mower,” John said.

“The what?”

“The power take-off mower. Runs off the tractor’s engine, you see.” John climbed up into the seat. “I’ll show you how to start it.”

There’s an odd black hole in Sunshine’s dashboard. To start the engine, you put your thumb over the hole and turn the key to the left. You leave your thumb there as the hole heats up. When you can smell your skin burning – and not a second before – you turn the key to the right to start the engine.

Sunshine's dashboard

“You’ve got to make sure it gets good and hot,” John said, waving his thumb around to ease the pain. “Then it starts like a dream.”

Clearly, whoever designed Sunshine’s ignition system was some kind of twisted sadist.

John let the engine run for a while and then turned it off. “Your turn.”

Rick sat down, singed his thumb as instructed, and the engine started immediately. But when it came to my turn, no matter how diligently I seared my tender flesh, Sunshine simply wouldn’t start. This went on for nearly 20 minutes. My thumb was blistered and red, but the engine was silent.

“Well,” Rick said. “I’ll just start it when we mow.”

Mowing the grove

The first time we mowed the grove, Rick did it. That’s because every time I sat on Sunshine, she stalled. Obviously the little brat preferred Rick to me. She had no idea what he was about to do to her. From then on, mowing became Rick’s job.

That first time it took Rick almost 8 hours to do the entire grove. He drove Sunshine back and forth in one direction, and then the other. Sunshine is a rough ride. Rick was jostled and tossed as he tried to get as close as possible to the trees, all the while dodging the olive branches that smacked him in the face like whips.

When he was done there were red welts across his cheeks and several small, round burn marks on his thumb, but the grove looked fantastic. The next morning he drove Sunshine back down the road, putt-putting slowly all the way, and mowed John’s grove just to thank him.

It all went downhill from there.

The second time Rick borrowed Sunshine, John had left the red plastic container for the diesel fuel on top of the mower. It was tied on, so Rick left it there. After an hour of mowing, he suddenly heard a loud ‘BAM!’ and saw fuel arcing up into the air. Behind him John’s red diesel container lay shredded in pieces on the grass. It had fallen under the mower, where the blades made quick work of it. Luckily, the fuel didn’t ignite.

Sunshine's mower

When Rick took Sunshine back that day, he had bought a brand new diesel container, filled it and the tractor full, mowed John’s grove as usual, and then gave John a heartfelt apology.

John just laughed. “You left the diesel container sitting on the mower while you were actually mowing!” Then he said, “No worries. This container’s better than my old one. It’s an improvement.”

The third time Rick borrowed Sunshine, he was sitting comfortably when suddenly the seat gave way underneath him, dropping and tilting to the left. The metal supports had actually broken.

When Rick took Sunshine back that time, John laughed even harder. “Maybe you need to lose some weight!” Then John added, “No worries. I know a bloke who can weld it for me.”

Rick offered to pay for the repairs but John said, “Pay? I’m not going to pay. My mate will fix it for free and make it stronger than ever. It’ll be an improvement.”

I think Rick took this as a kind of challenge. How much damage could he inflict on Sunshine and have it still qualify as an improvement?

So the fourth time Rick borrowed Sunshine, he took out all the stops, literally. He was driving along in Rabbit speed when suddenly a thick, low olive branch jumped out in front of him. It made full contact with the metal exhaust pipe at the front of the tractor. Rick tried to turn and downshift into Turtle, but it was too late. ‘CRACK!’ The exhaust pipe bent backwards and broke in half.

Later Rick drove poor, battered Sunshine back to John’s house, exhaust sputtering out of a broken hole. “I’m so sorry, John,” he said. “I broke your tractor again. It’s bad this time.”

The view from Sunshine

When John saw Sunshine, he nearly fell over from laughing so hard. “Look what you did! You snapped it like a twig!” It took a while for John to get his laughter under control, but once he did he said, “Aww. No worries. That exhaust was always too tall anyway. It hit branches in my grove too. I’ll get my welding mate to fix it, make it shorter. It’ll – ”

“I know,” Rick interrupted. “It’ll be an improvement.”

Getting the sheep

That was when we started putting sheep in the olive grove. We figured if we didn’t stop mowing soon, there wouldn’t be much left of Sunshine to ‘improve’.

We found a stock agent who wanted to lease the land, and now we have his sheep in the grove for nine months out of the year. We take them out three months before the olive harvest to get the grove ready. If we time it right and the rains cooperate, we only have to mow once a year.

We still borrow Sunshine, but after suffering so much under Rick she seems to have changed her mind about me. Every time I burn my thumb she starts like a dream, and she no longer stalls out when I drive.

So, to keep good relations with our neighbors, nowadays I mow the olive grove. I haven’t yet managed to make any Rick-style improvements. I suspect that John, and Sunshine, are secretly happy.

____________________

Podcast

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Related posts

Read other stories about:

• our excellent neighbors
• olives & olive oil
• adventures in our paddocks

Or read the next post: The very first store

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 1st, 2010 at 10:18 am and is filed under Neighbors, New Zealand, Olives & olive oil, Paddocks, Podcasts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.