What machine started it all for you???

I was looking through my archives this morning trying (unsuccessfully) to come up with a photo of my very favorite antique tractor for the "Yesterday's Tractors" forum when I came across this scanned photo of the tractor that started it all for me. I can't remember the exact production year, but it was a John Deere 755 with loader and backhoe in pristine condition being sold about 5 towns over from mine. I came to want this tractor so bad I could positively taste it. But as with so many other things in life, I couldn't quite justify the big dollars the seller wanted. Even older used Deeres don't come cheap and I lost this fine machine to someone with either much deeper pockets or far more motivation or both. But the rest is history. I got the bug... "Tractoritis" as some call it... and I went on to educate myself and shop the market more intensely and... 5 or 6 offers and failed attempts later... buy my 2004 Mahindra 4110.

I didn't grow up on a farm. I suppose this interest came only indirectly through a combination of my engineering & construction background, my 2004/2005 hurricane recovery work and my need to make the back 2/3rds of my property far more open and livable. The concept of business use of a tractor/ loader/ backhoe came to me later... a few months before my lay-off and about halfway through my shopping... prompting the purchase of a significantly bigger, more powerful machine than the 755 shown below. Those who grew up in a farming environment probably have always viewed tractors as an everyday fact of life. But for those who didn't grow up in that environment, I sometimes wonder how you came to find tractors as a pressing need or hobby or small business interest similar to mine. Did a particular job or task or property purchase come first? Or did you one day see or find a machine that suddenly triggered something in your brain and set everything else in motion???

And so I ask the non-longtime farmers in the group: What special project and/or machine started it all for you???

Dougster

I was born, at a very early age, and can remember tractors around us all my life. My own started years ago with a 9N, then a Ford 5000, then a Mahindra 4110 and now a Kubota L 48. Someday, I would like to get a 5740 cab model with front end loader and relegate the 48 for strictly bucket/hoe work around our property. THe 5740 woould bush hog and plow snow. I can also take on some bush hogging jobs that I can't with the L48..

I lived in what is currently 15th biggest city in the nation for 15 years. I found 50 acres WITH RIVER FRONTAGE. That is hard to come by in this area. I was as excited about the river frontage as I was about the acreage.
I had no clue what I needed, but 8N's looked cool, so I bought one. Totally blind. I spent more time trying to get it running than I did in the seat, but I still have a fondness for the tractor. When it ran it was awesome. It taught me the advantages of 'live PTO'. I would attempt to stop while bush hoggin and the PTO spining down about pushed me over the hill more than one time. I sold it and started my internet tractor education.

Used to push toy tractors about in the dirt when I was a young lad, I haven't grown up yet, except my toys are bigger, and I don't push 'em!

I've got a picture hanging on my office wall of me sitting in dads lap on grampa's Massey Harris 44. I'm around 2 years old in that one. Got another picture of me, again, sitting on dads lap, on his 1952 Ford NAA (Golden Jubilee) I'm wearing the uniform we had to wear in grade school, so I'm at least 6 years old. We're using the manure loader to dig gravel out of a creek bed to put on the driveway.

Fast forward to 1956. I'm a mature 9 year old who has already decided I was going to play pro baseball someday and leave this farmin' to someone else. Then it happened. Dad came home from work early one day. He put me in the truck with him and we drove to Glasgow Ky so he could buy a new tractor. It was a 1956 Ferguson F-40. Beige and dark green metallic with red lettering. It was the sharpest looking tractor I'd ever seen. I was hooked. Harry Ferguson was now my hero instead of Mickey Mantle. In a few days the Ferguson was home. One afternoon, dad called home and talked first with mom. Then she put me on the phone. We had plowing to do but dad needed to work late a few days. He'd already taught me how to plow, even letting me give it a try while he road along sitting on the fender. But this time I was on my own. I took the Fergie out in the field and plowed 'till dark. Dad got home just after dark. It was a toss up as to which one of us was the proudest! Me for getting to run the new tractor by myself or dad for seeing his son out doing a mans work on his own. From that day on, I was a farmer. Nothing would stand in my way. I was hooked on the Ferguson/Massey Ferguson 40/50/150 series of tractors too. When it came time for me to buy my first new tractor, it was only a matter of what dealer I'd buy my 150 from.

It started when I was 7 or 8 when I would drive tractor to pickup small round bales. When Dad got sick at ten I did alot of feild work had to stop on end of feild to lift implement. That was with a WD45 still have the tractor. Still runs and I want to restore it. It was used heavily until 1996. renovator

First tractor I ever drove was a kubota compact tractor. A LONG time ago, my dad got a contract to commission a machine designed to unload boxes of bananas from the ships when they docked here in ireland. Basically a big mobile conveyor with slide chutes. There were two big machines and a compact tractor. The tractor was used to tow the conveyors out of their compound and maneuver tham into place alonsgide the ships. The machines were built in the USA and shipped over here in crates. My dad and his mate had to uncrate it and get it working. While my dad got on with his side of things, I would go along with him and I'd drive the kubota around the yard, all day long... I was about 8 or 9 yrs old.
I have pictures but not digitised yet so sorry cant share them. The kubota was painted canary yellow to match the yellow machines.

In my teens, I spent my summers on '67 Ford 4000, it was a rusty old piece of sht! but it would run, all day long no problem, drawing silage. God those times were fun. We didnt get much money for our long days work but the apple cider was plentiful and free and we had such a laugh, we almost did it more for the fun than the money...

A Ford4000 similar to the one I drove...(this one is immaculate compared)

When I was 17 I got a job working on Wyoming ranch as a hay hand. When interviewed, I prevaricated about my tractor driving experience. The first day the foreman asked me to bring a Case tractor over to put some water in the radiator. I got it started ok, but when I let out the clutch it didn't move. My friend back home had one like it and I had watched him driving it. It took a couple of seconds to figure out I had to engage the hand clutch, so I got it moving and the boss wasn't any wiser. After that I mowed, raked and ran a buck rake for the rest of the summer. A couple of neighbors who started at the same time were a bit jealous. The only times I saw them they were shoveling out stables or doing other manual labor.

My tractor experiences after that were limited to a couple of times of renting one for working around the house I was building until I retired and could justify owning one for mowing, driveway maintenance and general power wheelbarrow work.

The 1966 Bolens 850 i bought new and still have.

My granddads Minneapolis Moline Z. My Uncle had a Deere back then too. I think an 820. It was traded in on a 4020 in 1962 or so. I put in a lot of time on the 4020 plowing and pulling a baler.

I put the Moline back as my avatar. I didn't realize I was still flying the Pirate flag from September's "Talk Like A Pirate Day."

Thanks to those who've told their story. It appears that I am a relative rarity here in the sense that I got into tractors & backhoes late in life... only after my first career was in obvious decline and the writing was on the wall in regard to my lay-off and subsequent need/desire for some interesting form of self-employment. I envy those folks to whom I will never catch up in terms of sheer tractor knowledge and experience... but better late to the party than never.

Dougster

you follow what in your heart tells you to pursue. Most times, it will work out for you. IF it's tractors, than so be it.,

larryRB said:

you follow what in your heart tells you to pursue. Most times, it will work out for you. IF it's tractors, than so be it.,

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Well, it is a funny thing with old engineers. Nobody ever told us that we would be stuck in silly little offices (about the size of a jail cell) and behind desks and computers for over 90% of our careers. Engineers, by their very nature, like to actually do things... i.e., design and build things... not sit behind desks all day and grow fat and old making other people rich (which is essentially what I did). So what often happens when we retire or are shown the door early: We want to go out and actually do the things we always wanted to do but were not allowed to do. Does that make any sense???

My rich younger brother was much smarter than me. He became a civil engineer and went directly into construction and made the big bucks. I was the dummy. I became a mechanical engineer and ended up stuck behind a desk writing reports all day long making other people rich.

So it goes. I'll know better in my next life.

Dougster

Dougster, to become a qualified engineer here at least you need not have any practical knowledge of engineering. Its all about punching the numbers.
My brother is working towards a degree in mechanical engineering and I have little doubt he will succeed, but if you gave him a pile of metal he probably couldn't make a go-kart.....

I would like to be an engineer, but I'd like to get my hands dirty. From my point of view, I can either be the owner of a company and set my own rules so I can go and do that, or get paid next to nothing and be at the lower end of a company.

Maybe I should train to be a lawyer.....

Mith said:

Maybe I should train to be a lawyer.....

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As evil and despicable as lawyers can be, I assure you: That would be the much wiser move!!!

Dougster

Well this is a little different than what you asked for, but my 1st tractor was my Case 310 dozer. I didn't even own any land that I could use it on. People would ask me why I had that old tractor. My answer was that it was my link to the land that I would someday own and need it for. After 6 years of setting in my brothers back yard, we bought 120 acres in the near by mountains. Sold 40 acres to my brother the next year. Still have the 310 and currently doing some restoration on it. I doubt that I will ever get rid of it.

Dougster said:

It appears that I am a relative rarity here in the sense that I got into tractors & backhoes late in life...

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Nah. The newbies are just bashful.

It took me a long time to get my first tractor.

There have always been tractors running through this orchard but they belonged to neighbors who contracted to operate this eleven acre orchard combined with their own larger operation.

The summer I was sixteen I made a little money as a farm worker. I picked apples, and drove both a new Ford tractor and a WWII jeep with big trailer, hauling harvest boxes for a couple of neighbors. Then I hit the road and picked fruit all over the county. Loved the freedom! It was hell to go back to the city in the fall.

From that summer I learned cars, tractors, jeeps, are all the same thing. Later I owned a couple of Jeep Willys Wagons when I needed 4x4 to get into the back country in the Sierras to my gold mining claim. It never occurred to me I would ever own a farm tractor.

Fast forward another 30 years. The booming stock market of the 90's made it possible to buy the other half interest in this orchard when Dad passed on, something that hadn't seemed possible earlier. Why not get a tractor? Dad had used the place as a summer home and always advised me to leave the heavy stuff to the neighbor 'real farmer' who tilled and harvested this place. Well, I can't call this Yanmar essential when Dad planted and watered new trees, and maintained the driveway, with just a wheelbarrow, but I got a tractor anyway. Now I've found so many applications for it that I wish Dad had kept one here for his chores.

I've had this first tractor four years now and it seems about right. It's a little big for mowing around the house, and a little small for serious discing. (so I got a 57" rototiller for it). For everything else its ideal size, and it fits under the trees where a larger tractor would rip off limbs. I think I bought about right for my first tractor, and expect to keep it.

Dougster said:

Thanks to those who've told their story. It appears that I am a relative rarity here in the sense that I got into tractors & backhoes late in life... only after my first career was in obvious decline and the writing was on the wall in regard to my lay-off and subsequent need/desire for some interesting form of self-employment. I envy those folks to whom I will never catch up in terms of sheer tractor knowledge and experience... but better late to the party than never.

Dougster

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So does that make you a day late and a dollar short?
hugs, Brandi

I was 9 years old and my Dad was adding to my Grandpa's driveway with Grandpa's model D John Deere (like in the photo attached) and a Fresno. I got to ride with Dad on the Poppin' Johnny. Our neighbor had a corn field next to our house and used a Farmall to work it. My brother and I would run behind it as he plowed. Something about the smell of fresh earth that invigorates me.
My first tractor all my own was my Ford 3055. She was made in England and exported to France back in the mid 1970s. She made her way back to the Steve Lilly auctions in Nacopdoches Texas about 5 years ago. 2WD with turning brakes is FUN in the mud. Here she is with my KK box blade. She had a ton of ground clearance and those large rear wheels would power over anything. Simple and reliable. East to work on. Oh why did I sale her? Oh yeah,to buy the Big Red Beast.
hugs, Brandi