Tractors - Dave's Midwestern Ohio Memories

Series of Guest Blogs by an out-of-state Fish Report reader originally from this area about fond memories of growing up in Midwestern Ohio during the 50’s & 60’s

Tractors

My brother Luke took the above photo of Dad’s old Massey- Ferguson tractor in use by its current owner, whom my brother had worked with and arranged the sale back in 2004. The tractor was about 30 years old when sold, so now at 50, we were both glad to see it still going strong. Note the tractor was pulling a manure spreader, which ironically was why Dad bought the tractor in the first place. He needed something with a front end loader that was lower than a conventional tractor so he could get it into the cow stable to remove the manure, as the ceiling holding up the hay mow above didn’t have much clearance.

The tractor also had the power to pull a multi-bottom plow with ease as well as any other implements we had on the farm at the time. Here’s a photo of Dad removing snow accumulated around the barn after the Blizzard of 1987.

Before the Massey, Dad had a Super 77 Oliver he bought from my uncle Clarence who worked at Streakers Implement in Minster. This photo shows Clarence delivering Dad's new tractor in1954. Also shown is a photo of Dad, his brother Bob, several of my nieces sitting on the tractor. His prior model was an Oliver Model 70 pictured below that Dad purchased 1939 to replace a team of horses performing all the farm work in those days during and before the Great Depression.

Clarence was able to sell tractors to his 6 brothers as well as his 4 brothers-in-law who were farmers, It helped to have a big family! Speaking of brother-in-law, my Mom’s brother Tony worked for John Deere, so Dad always admired John Deere products, but his loyalty to his brother carried the day when it came time to buy new farm equipment. In fact, Tony’s brothers who farmed didn’t even buy John Deere products, but predominantly Allis Chalmers. Tony did have a John Deer painted golf cart in Florida as pictured here.

For the last 40 years, the Lake Loramie Improvement Association has hosted a fall festival that always included many antique tractors as well as other attractions like threshing demonstrations. Here’s a previous blog post about Lake Loramie with more info on the Fall Festival.

Below is a photo of Dad on one of the restored Oliver tractors at the Fall Festival. The owner brought it out to our farm on Dad’s birthday as a surprise. He loved it, as did my wife and son, probably the first and only time either has driven a tractor!

Speaking of our son, he lives in Grand Blanc, Michigan and on the way to his place is an amazing farm implement salvage yard pictured in the aerial photo below. The owner also writes a blog; here’s one entitled How many tractors are too much?

When Mom & Dad visited us in Michigan, we’d check out the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, especially the farm section. Dad had a special memory about every piece of antique equipment on display. Here’s an informative youtube video tour of the exhibit. Check out the local item at the 12:44 mark that shocked Dad when he spied it.

This 1917 Fordson tractor on display at the Henry Ford Museum is the first production model and was given to Luther Burbank by Henry Ford. Burbank pictured below in the middle between Thomas Edison and Henry Ford was a botanist famous for developing over 500 varieties of plants during his 55 year career.

Today’s tractors are amazing machines - I really enjoy following MDPuthoff and Lakeview Farms Twitter accounts for their farming escapades.

Autonomous electric-powered tractors - they're coming!

~~~~~~~~

Receive a weekly email whenever there is a new blog post. Just click here to send me an email request and your name will be added to the distribution.