New Farm Toy

A few posts ago when talking about our good farm week I alluded to another good thing that happened that week that I would save for another post. Well, this is that post. I wanted to wait to talk about until I found out just how good of a thing it was. Since moving out on the farm, Margo and I have talked about how nice it would be to have a 4 wheeler (I will from here on out refer to it as an ATV). We could use it to go around and check on stuff, haul wood or rocks or hay, take it deer hunting, and many other tasks. The past 2 years we have been using the truck to haul wood out which is hard on my truck and I want it to last for a long time and not tear it up. We use the wheelbarrow to haul rocks, dirt, or hay. When we were putting up fence, I had to carry the big wood posts and metal posts up the hill behind our house by hand to the back of the property because I had no other way to get them there. So you can see how nice it would be to have an atv to do a lot of that stuff with. The main reason we had not got one yet is they are expensive (even used) and we did not have the money to spend on one. Over the past 2 years we have been saving any money we make on the farm whether it is by selling wood or selling goats. We have been putting that money in a "farm" savings account to use on some large item we needed to buy for the farm at some point. We decided a while back we wanted to use this money to buy a used atv. We looked for a couple months and realized that even a decent used atv was expensive and cost more than the amount of money we wanted to spend on one, but we kept looking hoping that God might smile on us and we would find a good one we could afford. Well, one came along a couple weeks ago. It was really cheap, but it did need some work. It is always scary buying something used especially when you know it has some problems but don't know what they are or how much it will cost to get them fixed. We decided to go out on a limb and go ahead and get it. It was kind of funny because we were the first ones to look at it and there were 2 guys there staring at us that wanted to buy it if we didn't. So we got it, and then we took it to a dealer to have them check it over and fix any problems it had. We finally got it back this week. They had to put a new starter, solenoid, belt, and adjust the clutch and now it works great. After buying it and paying to have it fixed we came in under what we had planned on spending on one (which means we can buy some accessories like a small trailer to pull behind it) and it is better than anything we thought we would be able to afford. In fact based on the money we have in it, we got it for less than half the price of what kelley blue book says it is worth. We are very excited. This post is getting long so I will cut to the chase and tell you what it is exactly and show you pics.

The Specs:
2003 Polaris Sportsman 500HO 4x4
liquid cooled engine
push button 4 wheel drive
independent rear suspension
Towing capacity 1200lbs, almost as much as Margo's CRV
ground clearance 11.25 inches, that's just crazy
up to 60mph which is way to fast on an atv for me, I had it up to 40 today on the county road and it was just cruising along but I think that will be my max speed.
engine braking system- this means the engine will slow itself down if you let off the accelerator even when going down a hill. I tried it out on our really steep hill on the county road. I was going down at about 20mph and let off the accelerator and it immediately started slowing it down to about 3 mph and kept it there all the way down the hill.