Deere John,

I've been putting off writing this letter for a while now. Every year I tell myself things will get better. Every year I turn the key at 5am and wait to see which version of you shows up — the dependable workhorse I fell in love with, or the $400,000 paperweight with a proprietary error code and a two-week service queue.

I want you to know this hasn't been easy. My grandfather bought one of yours. My father bought one of yours. I bought two of yours and a combine another combine three combines. I have given you more money than I have given anyone or anything in my life, including my mortgage, my children's college funds, and my first marriage several years of therapy.

But somewhere along the way, you changed. It wasn't enough to sell me the tractor anymore. You needed to sell me the right to use the tractor. The software. The diagnostic access. The GPS subscription that lets me drive in a straight line — a feature I managed, I'll note, with my own two eyes for thirty years.

Remember when a tractor broke down, a neighbor could help fix it? Remember when "I know a guy" was a valid repair strategy? You ended that. You and your proprietary service terminals and your dealer-only diagnostic laptops and your licensing agreements that I technically agreed to at 5am during planting season when I would have agreed to anything.

I've tried to make it work. I really have. I've paid the service fees. I've waited for the technicians. I once left a message with your customer support line and received a callback during the exact three minutes I was in the field without cell service, which I choose to believe was not intentional.

So here we are, John. It's over. Or rather — I'm over it. I deserve a tractor I actually own. My fields deserve better. And honestly, your tractors deserve to be fixed by someone who loves them — which, after that last repair invoice, is not going to be me.

It's not me. It's you. It's the entire post-2010 business model, really.