If time could stand still

[Farmwithjunk]

Everyone has that moment in time where they would return to if it were possible. That defining moment in ones life. Everyone who's hooked on tractorin' has that moment too. That split second when you realized THIS IS FOR ME!

I was 13 years old. Dad was working out of town. We had been having cold and rainy spring weather. Dad always put out around 25 acres of corn. Just enough to fill a grain bin we had. It was getting towards time to plant and we didn't even have the ground plowed yet.

I walked in from school one afternoon. Mom was on the phone with dad. They were talking about me having the next couple days off from school. I figured there was a barn cleaning in the works. Mom spoke to dad and handed me the phone. He explained to me how he had taught me how to lay out a field for plowing. He had taught me how to carefully use his tractors. Now was my big opportunity. I got the go ahead to get his tractor out of the shed, hook up the plow and go plow the corn field BY MYSELF!

With a 2-bottom plow, 25 acres is a big job. (for a 13 year old anyway) I stayed on the tractor from daylight to dark the first day. On day 2, I finished up about 4 PM. And just as I was backing the tractor in the shed, here comes dad up the drive. I'm not sure which one of us was the most proud at that moment.

From that day forward, I knew what I wanted to do in life.

Have a child and give them the satisfaction of a job well done and the opportunity to understand that hard work is it's own reward.

Some people had to wait until later in life to experience their first "Kodak moment" on a tractor. WHen was yours?

 

[Turbys_1700]

I don't know if there is a specific moment in time that I can relate to. I do remember being so little that my dad and grandfather would let me drive the big two ton truck in the field while they were loading hay. I couldn't wait until I was big enough to get in the field and throw them bales onto the truck. They would put the truck in granny gear and I would just steer the truck between the rows of baled hay.

Later I would be given a super A Farmall with a set of 1 row cultivators in a 20 acre field of soybeans. I was around 12 years old at the time. Prior to that I plowed with a D-17 many times. They started me off at around 10 years old. I had a lot of experience and our fields were pretty flat.

I consider myself an old expert now. My dad's retired from selling tractors and farm implements but we still like to go to the auction every month in Charlotte. Pop can't walk real well now at 76 years of age. I feel very fortunate to have lived here at the time that I did. Most kids now don't know how to pull a calf, raise a garden, work on a farm, or maintain a tractor. I've been blessed.

 

[Farmwithjunk]

I feel very fortunate to have lived here at the time that I did. Most kids now don't know how to pull a calf, raise a garden, work on a farm, or maintain a tractor. I've been blessed.

Beyond what you actually learn growing up on a farm, you develope a strong work ethic and a self reliance that can't be found in too many other environments.

My oldest grandson is 11. He's just starting to get his chance at a few things like my son and I did when we were young. It's so much fun watching him grow up.

 

[RonR]

I started by playing with toy trucks, tractors, and implements. The real metal kind that you could use in the dirt outside, where the disk would actually turn the soil. I loved it!

I dreamed of getting to drive a tractor, and probably about age 8, 9, or 10, I got to steer an 8N ford pulling a hayrack through the field while the adults loaded and stacked the bales on the trailer. I recall the clutch being a LONG WAY to depress.

A while later, I got to cultivate feed with the same 8N. I probably only spent a few hours doing that, but I loved it.

About age 12, my cousin and I got to run a JD720 diesel pulling a chisel plow. Cousin hated it and I loved it! I could have run it all day—except we got it stuck on a terrace and my uncle had to come retrieve it.

Age 13, and too young to legally drive a wheat truck, I drove truck in the field, then a combine while an uncle drove the wheat truck to town. We custom cut in OK and NE, as well as his own wheat fields in KS.

Through high school summers and a few college summers, I drove windrowers, balers, trucks, combines, and tractors for a large custom hay operator and farmer. Being one of the senior workers, I spent a lot of time on maintenance and fixing stuff the younger guys broke! This is where I grew to love JD4020 diesels and later JD4430's for their power, look, and feel.

After college and the Marines, I landed a job testing prototype farm equipment. The requirements of the job were blueprint reading (didn't have it), good welding skills (well, farmer-level fixes), and ability to travel a lot (YEP, that's me!). Good attitude helped some too............

I spent two years helping to build, operate, modify, test, destroy, and analyze failures on self propelled windrowers, sugar beet diggers, liquid manure agitators, tractors, and other stuff. I got to spend winters in California and summers in Canada! It was great, but I grew tired of all the travel, right about the time I got married..............

So I lucked into the job managing the prototype shop. The least senior mechanic was like 17 yrs on the job! They were true craftsmen that could build anything. I learned so much watching these guys build stuff. They built most of their equipment without jigs, so they would have to fabricate fixtures to get accurate measurements from points in space to where parts were located. It was awesome watching/helping them.............

My first tractor, a well used JM model M with sickle mower, cultivator, and plow was a nice fit to help care for my Dad's huge garden. Life was good. We kept the homestead mowed, and the garden area worked up in fine style.

Later, I was able to inherit my Wife's Granddad's first tractor, a 1929 McCormack Deering 22-36 (model 15-30). It had sat outside, uncovered with an upright exhaust, since 1945. I got it in 82, and in three years (we had 2 kids in the interim), I had it running! It was a beast. Sadly, when we moved, I had no place to store it, and two museums turned me down to take it, so I gave it to a buddy.

My last tractor purchase is the Kubota BX2200, with FEL, MMM, and tiller. It is a FINE machine.

Tractorin’ has been an important part of my life. Building stuff for it is therapeutic to me. And watching my son and daughter come out to help me build something or burn a few rods is truly priceless to me.

When my daughter asked about making a metal candle holder deal, I purchased a scrolling bender and some 1/8” strap (about 40 ft!) and told her to have at it. That was some quality time watching her cut it and shape it, then weld it up, and see it sit on her mantle today.

My son helped me weld up a harrow, and we have great discussions about who’s weld gave way whenever a tooth snags a root and breaks off. Quality time!

Sorry this is so long..................Best Wishes,
Ron

 

[hudr]

I have a lot of fond memories growing up on a farm/ranch. We have always had cattle. People ask me why we keep them since Dad passed. My answer: what else do you spend extra money on? Guess I just don't know any better
I also know a lot of the stuff I did at 8 and 9 years old would make a Child Services' worker faint today. But I think a lot of kids today miss out a lot along those lines.
I started operating the 2 cylinder JDs around 8 simply because I couldn't reach the clutch on the 5020's we had at the time. But at 12 I was left alone for hours pulling a disc while Dad was working another field.
I remember in High School a buddy of mine went w/ me to check the cows. It was in the high 20's and sleeting rain so of course we wound up pulling a calf in the back of the pasture, in a low spot, near nightfall (how do cattle know?). S.O.P. for me was to him an experience he still talks about (apparently, me too).
Talking about time standing still, I wish sometimes I could go back to those days: Checking the equipment about daylight, working til lunch, having a sandwhich in the field (usually while fixing something that broke) then getting to the house about dark where Mom had a hot meal cooked w/ plenty of sweet ice tea. I'm getting teary just typing this.
Sorry to ramble.
I would love for my son to be able to say he is a 3rd generation rancher if that is what he wants to do.

 

[jimmy1]

farmwithjunk, this is a great storey as are the other posts. Growing up on a farm has taught me so much about life and the practicle side of things that after being away from farming 20+ years I can still apply what I learned there to any situation and know that I will make good decisions. Many young people do not have that opportunity today and it is unfortunate. There is nothing like the pride you feel with accomplisments like getting that field plowed and the thought that you knew you could do it.

I have a step son in law that spent his first 32 years of life going to school getting degrees. He finally decided he wanted to teach and has been teaching high school for the past 4 years. His wife has 3 horses that they had always boarded out. Recently they were able to buy a 113 acre wooded property with a small shed, house and some pasture area for the horses, and their dreams seem to be falling into place exept he has absolutely no idea about how do do any thing that does not come out of a book. So he asks me to help with building the first fence, adding a lean to the shed for horses and so on and it is amazes him to see how practicle experience manages to get things done with little fuss and how much fun it can be. To his credit he tries to see the other side of things and our relationship improves eveytime we complete a new project. he said he would not change what he is learning now for anything, so I guess it is never too late but glad I was lucky to experience it young.

I do not have a kodac moment on a tractor because I was around them from as early as I can remember. I was driving them by the time I was 6 for things like raking hay,driving the wagon for picking stones, turnips and more thing as I grew older. The first tractors we hade were a Ford Ferguson with a trip loader ( I think that is what it was anyway. Maybe someone could correct me if there was no such Ford but it was small and grey) and a M;Cormick W4. The W4 had to have blocks attached to the clutch and break so I could reach them.

Yikes I need to stop rambling on. Great thread.

 

[RalphVa]

I don't remember when I first started driving a tractor or car or pickup, the last 2 long before it was legal for me to do so. First car on a paved road was one of those Studebakers that look almost the same front and rear.

First job driving a tractor was to steer it and work the clutch while mom and dad and sister harvested corn ears. Think I was plowing by myself somewhere around age 12. We had a Case tractor of some sort, one of those with both a hand and foot clutch.

Grandpa had a Farmall B. Think that's what it was. It's the one where the seat is kinda off to the side. Drove it a little bit.

Wish they had cotton pickers and round balers back in those days. Spent plenty of time pulling boles and dragging a 100+ # bag of cotton between rows. Hauled lots of those rectangular bales of hay by hand. Even experienced harvesting of peanuts when the harvester sat in the middle of the dusty field with all the peanut plants being brought to it.

Ralph

 

[NHTC30]

I started driving tractors and pickups about age 11. We had about 40 or so acres of cotton, and about 50 acres of soybeans. I was allowed to disk some, and pull the tumbling harrow, but that was pretty dangerous as it was attached by chains which could be caught in the lugs of the rear tires and pull the thing up on the tractor with you (my mom actually did that once). I always wanted to do the cultivating, but when the beans and cotton were small, dad thought he was the only one who could do that, and he always thought he was the only one who could cultivate the cotton at any size. He did let me plow the beans when they got taller, usually the last time they were plowed. When I was about 13 or 14, dad was setting the plows on our old square beam cultivator on our WD Allis Chalmers (two row) and while pulling on a wrench, he threw his back out. I HAD to do all the cultivating after that, he couldn't sit on the tractor, if he was standing or lying down, it didn't hurt him too badly, but sitting was painful. I guess that was my "Kodak" moment, when I learned I could do a lot of things I hadn't been allowed to do with the tractor before.

I loved planting beans with that old WD, it had a single front wheel, and it was so light in the front with a 4 row drill behind it that when you picked the drill up, and popped the clutch it would pull the front off the ground. I'd just hit the turning brake, and it would turn on the back wheels, then hit the clutch and drop the front down in the marker track. You could plant in high gear and drive about as fast as the tractor would go. Dad always told me I had too many curves in the rows though, he always wanted straight rows. I used to tell him that the curves just made the rows longer and you could grow more beans that way.

 

[Farmwithjunk]

Dad did ALL the planting until he gave up putting out a crop. My first time planting was my first corn crop. All 15 acres of it. My biggest year, I did less than 50 acres but I always enjoyed planting time. My first recollection of driving a tractor was around 5 or 6, sitting on dads lap at first. By 8 I was raking hay on my own. There was never a time when an adult wasn't close by until maybe 11. The time when dad had me to start plowing while he was out of town was his "throw the kid in the lake and see if he can swim" moment with me.

I swam just fine thank you!

 

[bx23barry]

Well we moved off the ranch when I was in second grade. My dad was in the navy so I grew up more around my grandpa. He still had horses for planting/cutting/raking hay. I remember riding the hay rake 5 miles down the road to rake a neighbor’s hay one time. My mom and grandma brought us a big picnic lunch. Had a great time that day. I was driving the old jeep around at maybe 5 and one of my uncles would bring over a tractor for bigger jobs (have good memories of a td-9). My grandpa retired to the foothills and worked as weighmaster at an asphalt hot plant next door. I would spend much of the summer dreaming of running all the kool equipment there or at one of my uncle’s farms playing farmer. I always liked the equipment more than the work. Other than working part of my way through college working hay I have made most my living in the automotive/heavy equipment world. But I always go back in my mind to the early days on the ranch.