It’s snowing again—from gentle to purposeful. After all the snows this year, its beauty melted my hardness, so I could slip into delight.
For over two days, David and I focused on getting our first “farm” vehicle. We don’t need a tractor. Our needs are small. Transporting bags of soil, and moving some big rocks to our construction pile, or moving just about anything up to 1000 pounds from point A to point B over these hilly 44 acres. We will be thinning out our forest land this spring. As a reward, we add to the wood stash for the winter. So, we need a vehicle that could cover terrain the pickup truck couldn’t approach.
But the driving force, sorry, was to transport supplies from town to our cabin. It’s early spring mud season and our vehicles easily get stuck in the mud of our unpaved driveway.
David did most of the research. But we saw that our first thoughts of getting a fun ATV (All Terrain Vehicle) wouldn’t meet our need to lug stuff from point A to Point B. An ATV can pretty much get any place, but, it’s limited to carrying about 300 pounds of cargo. So, from an All Terrain Vehicle we moved to Utility Terrain Vehicle. The UTV is built for work as well as mobility. For over a day Honda’s version ruled our world. There were no dealers in our local town, so off to Spokane we charged. No problem finding dealers but the five places we visited only one had a UTV on site. And that was a deluxe model—way over the budget—but it would be a Honda. David and I each happily drive a Honda. The road to rationalizing began.
And after seeing a video of a company making about the same kind of vehicle with quality—maybe even a little better, for about the same price, I instantly switched to it. And there was a dealer in our small town who carried them. And the exact model we wanted could be ready by Monday.
On our way home, we did a test drive. It did not disappoint.
It has been. a great joy. And a great pain. Fortunately, the pain is temporary, and the joy isn’t.