{"id":902,"date":"2014-02-22T23:53:10","date_gmt":"2014-02-23T06:53:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lastbestnews.com\/site\/?p=902"},"modified":"2014-02-22T23:52:49","modified_gmt":"2014-02-23T06:52:49","slug":"902","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/2014\/02\/902\/","title":{"rendered":"MATE show: City slicker, behold the leviathan"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Ed<\/a>

<\/p>

Ed Kemmick<\/p><\/div>\n

At the Montana Agri-Trade Exposition, size does matter.<\/p>\n

Between the MATE show (which is redundant but which is what everybody calls it) and the Home and Health Expo, spread out over two large buildings at MetraPark, there were supposedly more than 500 booths.<\/p>\n

This was the 38th annual MATE show, a Christmas-in-February extravaganza that brings thousands of farm and ranch families from all over the region to Billings during this slow season.<\/p>\n

You could buy tools, hoses, drill bits, butcher knives, tires, seeds, fertilizer, caps, hoodies, jackets, meat, barbecue sauce, jewelry, fancy purses, cookware and \u201cTomboy Tools\u201d with pink handles.\u00a0You could even buy something called \u201cParker\u2019s Hangover Tonic,\u201d a drink mix with the winning slogan, \u201cWhen you feel dead, it\u2019ll clear your head.\u201d<\/p>\n

But what absolutely everyone had to see were the monster pieces of farm equipment, the sticker-shock behemoths that gave young boys a thrill and old ranchers the willies.<\/p>\n

The biggest of them all was a John Deere S680 combine with a price tag of $468,678. The side panels on the combine were propped open to give people a peek into the belly of the beast, where there was a bewildering variety of levers, drive belts, hoses and electrical boxes.<\/p>\n

The combine was so big that one of the open panels looked something like an awning on an RV, and clusters of people would just stand there in its shadow for a few minutes talking and basking in the bigness of the machine.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know who had more fun making the long climb up to sit in the cab of the equipment on display, the ranchers and farmers themselves or their young children. Why, if I had a dollar for every tyke in a cowboy hat who had his picture taken in the cushy cab of a tractor or combine over the three days of the MATE show\u2026<\/p>\n

Closest to the John Deere combine, in terms of price and size, was a Case Quadtrac, which looked like a cross between a tractor and a futuristic tank. I might have bought it myself but damn the luck, it had a \u201cSold\u201d sign on the cab window.

\"CapreAir_Variable\"<\/a><\/div><\/div><\/p>\n

A Case rep told me it had actually been sold, for $450,000, just before the exposition and was headed to a ranch near Forsyth. One fellow stood beneath the leviathan and said to the rep, in mock disappointment, \u201cWe want a big one.\u201d<\/p>\n

All the giant equipment makes you wonder: Who\u2019s going to work on farms and ranches in the future? One advertising sign made the connection clear. Next to a photo showing an array of post pounders, some priced as high as $11,800, were the words: \u201cDoesn\u2019t take breaks or call in sick. Your new fencing crew.\u201d<\/p>\n

True, but what about the economies of those small towns that used to depend on the people working on farms and ranches? A \u201ccrew\u201d of post pounders might not call in sick, but neither are they going to be buying much tobacco and whiskey, or food and clothing.<\/p>\n

But I\u2019m no farmer or rancher, if you couldn’t tell. I didn\u2019t know what most of the stuff on display was, and in many cases even the names \u2014 action rake, super slicer, disc ripper and hydraulic calf table \u2014 didn\u2019t do much to clear things up.<\/p>\n

At least I was wearing jeans and a ball cap, so I mostly fit in. I would estimate that 95 percent of the people in those two buildings were wearing jeans, and if the Hutterites wore jeans the percentage might have crept up to 98.\u00a0In all that crowd I saw exactly one person wearing a suit and tie. If my eavesdropping impressions were correct, he was trying to sell life insurance to one of the booth operators.<\/p>\n

Speaking of which, what did people working the booths at trade shows used to do before the advent of smart phones? I swear, unless they were engaged with a customer, every one of them was bent over a phone. I saw a couple of old boys stabbing out one-finger text messages, and it\u2019s OK for me to mention this because I am one of that tribe.<\/p>\n

My lack of familiarity with agricultural practices allowed me to savor a couple of advertising slogans that probably wouldn\u2019t have given a moment\u2019s pause to an experienced farmer. One said, \u201cConception. Calving Ease. Carcass. Cows.\u201d Another read, \u201cCastrate. De-horn. Dock Tails. Treat Prolapses.\u201d<\/p>\n

I wouldn\u2019t be surprised if these products, whatever they were, also cured hangovers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At the Montana Agri-Trade Exposition, size does matter. Between the MATE show (which is redundant but which is what everybody calls it) and the Home and Health Expo, spread out over two large buildings at MetraPark, there were supposedly more than 500 booths.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":846,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[184,182,183,181],"class_list":["post-902","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-prairie-lights","tag-case-quadtrac","tag-john-deere","tag-metrapark","tag-montana-agri-trade-exposition","prominence-category-featured"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/902","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=902"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/902\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/846"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=902"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=902"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=902"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}