Step One of Many

What you are looking at is the rear bumper of the family minivan. It isn't particular interesting other than it is dirty from driving the gravel roads down by the farm looking for mushrooms and asparagus. But if we are ever going to successfully move our garden from the farm to behind our house where it is much closer, something about it has to change. There will be a need to occasionally get some compost or other amendments, especially in the early days, and I will need to physically haul up the tiller from the farm. In order to do all that, I need a trailer and a way to pull it.

The minivan seemed to be the likely candidate for this endeavor. Hitches for it were plentiful to find on the internet and reasonably inexpensive. There were even videos online showing how to do it step by step for the exact year and model we have and apart from it requiring two people, I thought it was pretty doable by me. After all, one engineer can equal two people in a lot of things. So I placed my order and the hitch arrived. But it sat there for a couple weeks just being a tripping hazard on the garage floor. I wasn't particularly looking forward to the installation job itself, sliding back and forth on a cold and dirty concrete floor trying to reach back to where I needed to reach.

Finally one day I got tired of tripping over the hitch, I had seven hours of uninterrupted time, and so decided it was now or never. It took me a couple hours and was every bit as bad as I had imagined sliding around on my back on a cold and dirty concrete floor. But I was able to get it installed without any issue and now I have a hitch to pull a variety of things should the need arise, like a wood splitter to finally split that well seasoned oak piled alongside my lawn. 

I don't have a trailer and don't plan to get one at this point. I don't have anyplace to store one really other than outside under the elements and I can rent one from the local rental place for less than $20 a day, including tax. Right now, my only plan is to maybe haul the tiller up from the farm later after all the tilling is done down there and to till up a portion of our yard to see how things look and perhaps start adding amendments. But that is step two and I'm not there yet.

*I'm out working on a project away from home and might not be able to publish your comment in a timely manner but I will do so as soon as I get back.