Back to the future …

Chopping knotty oak logs with an axe is a mug’s game.

And anyone who thinks otherwise is in urgent need of psychiatric care.

This time last year I shared the story of how lucky I was to have borrowed my brother’s John Deere tractor and log splitter.

The JD is a seriously big brute with more grunt than a bad-tempered Grizzly Bear.

Turn the ignition key and you have more than 200 horsepower of raw energy at your disposal.

And when it’s hooked up to the splitter it makes matchsticks out of the knottiest timber I’ve ever come across.

But this year the big beast was off-limits due to harvesting duties. So, it was time to go old tech with a trip back to the 70’s using the farm’s Massey Ferguson 185.

Compared to today’s computer driven monsters, we’re talking stone age.

With just 75 horsepower or almost a third of the power of John Deere I thought I was going to be toast.

But you know what …?

Once I’d got the engine revs right and a little bit of toggling with the hydraulic controls for optimum oil flow to the splitter, I was cooking on gas.

OK, it might have been a bit slower, but it did the biz.

With only a fraction of the controls available compared to the mind-bogglingly complex flight decks of today’s modern-day monsters, I still got the job done.

And therein lies a lesson in life.

We’re always looking for something bigger, better, and faster but old tech still cuts the mustard.

So, next time you are doing a local promotion just think how effective your reach could be with something like the humble flyer.

Everyone might be on social media these days, but which platform? And do the algorithms let you reach everyone anyway?

Flyers? They may be old tech, but they reach the parts other beers can only dream of.

Food for thought, perhaps.

Until next week.

Alec