It’s an exciting day when a new piece of equipment comes to high hopes. This old flare wagon found its way home tonight.

To many it may look like an old rusty wagon, but to me it is full of possibilities. I could fill it with extra corn for the corn stove, fill it with custom-ground layer food, or use it to store mulch for next year’s tree planting. It has a great John Deere running gear (wheels and axles), good rubber, and the box does not have holes. It even has a hydraulic lift to tip it up to pour contents out the back.
I picked it up at Vern’s Implement in Melbourne. He’s got a field full of junk and not junk and a shop in town where he tinkers with old tractors and goes to auctions and sells equipment to help pay for his restoration habit. Anybody who’s driven by Melbourne has seen the place. He’s also got solar panels (a lot of them) on his house.