I stood next to the tractor in a mixture of shock and delight. I was safe and I knew I could eventually get the tractor out although I could already sense that I would need Mike’s help. I examined the wheels of the tractor and saw that the front left wheel was not coming out easily. Even the much bigger back left wheel was off the road and leaning dangerously. Still, I have chains and heavy ropes and a racheted puller that I had used when I wanted to angle trees in the right direction when I was still doing some tree cutting. I decided to see what I could do myself, and in a half hour I had a chain attached to the tractor then to the puller then to a tree on the upper bank. I tightened the puller but nothing moved, and I didn’t want the strap on the puller to snap and perhaps injure me severely. It was time to call Mike and let a pro take over.
Mike was able to come up in a couple of hours and when he saw what I had done, the usually unflappable Mike was very upset. He told me that if I had gone another foot the tractor would have flipped. He didn’t have to describe what would have happened to me. He lectured me for a few minutes on tractor safety—the implications being that I was not qualified--and then he relaxed and we went to work on getting the tractor out. We tied a rope to the front of the tractor and then to a tree on the upper bank, and then attached the chains and puller to the back of the tractor. Both were very tight and I racheted the puller a half dozen clicks to make it even tighter. Mike tied a large strap to his truck and to the tractor (now in neutral) and the plan was for me to keep racheting as he pulled back with his truck. The problem was that no one would be on the tractor to perhaps use the bucket to help with getting out. Mike asked me if I wanted to get on and I admitted that I didn’t and I also said that we needed someone to work the puller. Mike thought about it for a minute then climbed aboard the tractor, started it up, put it in reverse, and with me ratcheting quickly he backed it up and safely onto the road.
I thanked him profusely, and then I drove the tractor back up to the house. I parked it and took a break, but I knew I had to get back on the tractor before I got completely spooked.
I remembered a kayaking trip where I flipped over in Zoar Gap on the Deerfield, broke my paddle and almost got caught under a huge boulder. It was a very scary moment and when I surfaced below the boulder after desperately kicking off, I was very happy just to be alive. I went to bed that night unsure of any more kayaking plans, but the next day I knew I had to get back on the water. A few hours later I was on the Sacandaga, which I handled very well even though I was pretty nervous starting out.
After my break I got back on the tractor and drove it slowly down to the gate, keeping to the middle and scraping a little snow off. That was the easy part since the blade was down and there was little chance the tractor would slide off. Coming back up with the blade up was where the tractor could slip and then I could be in trouble again. I turned around at my gate and back up I went, in fourth gear low, and by using the left brake, was able to get to the top although I could feel it slipping slightly on the steepest sections. I repeated my run and managed once again to get back up, although it slipped a little more this time. I was not accomplishing much—in fact, my two runs probably just compressed the snow and made it more slippery—but I was glad I had gotten back on the tractor. It was time to quit for the day and I realized that with any significant snowfall, my tractor (a John Deere 790, with a 30 horsepower engine) was too small and too light. I also understood that I was clearly not qualified to handle it under such conditions.