...mauvaises nouvelles. The guy who services and repairs lawnmowers, chain saws, and rototillers at the garden center called yesterday. I'd been waiting for the call all week. He said our tiller is not worth repairing. The necessary parts and repairs would cost as much as buying a new one, and there's no guarantee that some other breakdown might again render it unusable this year or next. We bought it in the spring of 2004, after all. It's given us nearly 20 years of bons et loyaux services.
Yesterday I wrote about apples. Here's a photo of our surplus one year nearly 15 years ago...
The rototiller gets even less use than our two old cars do. The "new car" is a 2007 model, but it has only about 70K miles on the odometer. The older car will be 22 years old at the end of the year and has about 125K miles on its compteur de kilomètres. The cars get used year-round, though not much, especially these days. The tiller is a seasonal tool.
Another shot of the ornamental cherry tree in the back yard
It's used mostly in spring, for a total of 3 or 4 hours. Sometimes, weather permitting, it also gets used for a couple of hours in autumn, when we prepare the garden plot for over-wintering. I guess we'll have to buy a new one, if we are going to continue gardening. Maybe one that's not quite so heavy and hard to operate.
Yesterday I wrote about apples. Here's a photo of our surplus one year nearly 15 years ago...The rototiller gets even less use than our two old cars do. The "new car" is a 2007 model, but it has only about 70K miles on the odometer. The older car will be 22 years old at the end of the year and has about 125K miles on its compteur de kilomètres. The cars get used year-round, though not much, especially these days. The tiller is a seasonal tool.
Another shot of the ornamental cherry tree in the back yardIt's used mostly in spring, for a total of 3 or 4 hours. Sometimes, weather permitting, it also gets used for a couple of hours in autumn, when we prepare the garden plot for over-wintering. I guess we'll have to buy a new one, if we are going to continue gardening. Maybe one that's not quite so heavy and hard to operate.
P.S. I just noticed that it has started raining.
Yo como 3 manzanas(pomes) cada día.
ReplyDelete3x365=1.000 manzanas(apples) al año(year)
Royal Gala
J'en mange moins que vous.
DeleteHoly cow! Out of curiosity, I Googled rototillerto see how much they cost, and there is such a huge disparity! I'm hoping that for your use, you're fine with one in the few hundreds of €, not the one that is over 1,000 €
ReplyDeleteThink of all of the delicious, home-grown veggies you end up with, that most people don't get :)
We do want to have a garden. But at some point you have to think it might be easier and less expensive to buy local produce at weekly markets rather than grow it yourself, especially as you get older and find the work of it harder and harder. Last year's crop failure was not encouraging. It's a lot to think about.
DeleteI suppose there aren't any rental agencies near your small village. There are so many gardens in Europe maybe the niche for rental machines isn't what it is in the U.S. We had bought our own when we lived in Wisconsin.
ReplyDeleteWow - that is a huge amount of surplus apples. That could have been pies for the entire Loire Valley, lol. Mary's idea of a rental is a good one - that's pretty common here.
ReplyDeleteMaybe renting is a good idea....rent a tiller or hire someone with a tiller.
ReplyDeleteHiring people for small jobs is difficult around here. Renting a tiller costs about $200 a day. And what happens if you reserve a tiller for a day that is rainy?
ReplyDeleteI, too, thought about renting a tiller, or hiring someone to come in with his own and do the work for you.
ReplyDeleteMaybe I'll contact our landscaping service to see if they can recommend anybody.
Delete