096- Put out to Pasture

We are all familiar with that phrase: put out to pasture. We normally apply it to people, horses, and other animate objects. But when I saw this dilapidated old tractor I couldn't help but think that this faithful friend has also been put out to pasture.



I don't know the whole story but I'm guessing that it goes something like this:

Not too many years ago this whole area of Springville was just rural pasture lands with a few homes dotted along Canyon Rd. But as happens, cities begin to grow. In 1993 the tract where I live was built and many of the homes here are still inhabited by the original owners. But the explosion that is now called Hunter's Valley/Hidden Cove is much newer. And now there is a sea of houses where a friend my age used to drive her pony cart through the fields.

I wouldn't even know about this little lost tractor, hiding behind her old master's home, had it not been for some developer who bought up a huge hunk of land, punched through a new road and graded a bunch of huge lots for $1M homes. (Sadly for that developer the housing/economy crunch has stopped that subdivision in its tracks).

So here sits a once useful machine... I can only imagine the stories she could tell about the valley she used to cultivate, the crops she has harvested, the feed she has hauled to store for the winter, the animals, wild and domestic, that she's been friends with. And now she sits alone, forgotten and rusting.