Help Revive the Ford 5000 for Sunnyfield Farm

Hey everyone out there! I could say we are doing fine, but we are not. Expenses have gone up so much. We cannot keep raising our cheese prices as we feel the squeeze.

Importing off-island feed is not sustainable and it's become even more apparent with some huge price increases with Alfalfa and grain.

We are in need of some help repairing a tractor we got last year. The Ford 5000 is a sought after tractor made in Basildon, England which is known for exceptional, long years of service doing what it was made to do: Farm.

After the historic freeze we had this winter, coolant was forced through the unknown pin holes in the diesel engine cylinders, showing us it had a big problem, after we bought it. So I had no choice but to take apart the whole engine, something i have never been close to doing before.

Long story short, we took the head and block to Sedro Wooley only to find the block's pin holing and a head failure which needed $3000 in cylinder resleeving and other machine work. I am no doubt in "tractor school" and would love to get this running so we can delve more in to running trials of forage crops for our goats and having it be part of the hay making fleet of my hay maker friend Ben Thompson.

We have run this dairy for about 10 years and haven't needed a tractor so much. In the last few years we have been borrowing them and it sure is a drag when something goes wrong on someone else's tractor! We got a $20k loan for a Bobcat that we paid off last year for mucking out the goat barn and making fabulous compost, but now we want to make hay, spread compost, plow, seed, and generally pull things on the farm.

$5000 would cover the machine work and the engine rebuild kit, plus as i took it apart i noticed other parts that need attention like the power steering, injector lines and the injectors themselves. I would then spend many hours putting the thing back together, luckily with the help of two brilliant mechanic friends on the island, hopefully by hay season (June)!

Thank you for considering to give us a much needed lift.

Andre, Elizabeth, Weston, Ada and Otto thank you!