[AT] Small Farm Tractors vs Garden Tractors

[Doug Tallman]

 With the talk of the Cubfest, Farmer mentioned that he may have a few
other small tractors from other lines that would have been competitors to
the Cub. His statement fell in with the subject of my latest newsletter for
the Vintage Garden Tractor Club. I'm not looking for a fight or trying to
weasel in on the Cubfest, just trying to start some tractor discussion. A
question that I get asked a lot is what is considered a garden tractor and
where do we draw the line between them and a small farm tractor. There are
a lot of tractors like the IH Cub and BN, AC B and G, JD L and others that
could be considered either way. My 1923 Centaur was powered by a 5 HP,
single cylinder New Way engine. They advertised that you could farm
anything with it that you could farm with one horse, 25-50 acres.  They
even offered a special hitch that would allow you to use the horsedrawn
equipment you already had with your new tractor. A picture of this tractor
can be seen at: http://community.webshots.com/photo/81167315/81182280SDTATc
 Most of the big, early walk-behind machines were geared towards the same
thing. After all, you had to walk behind the horse or ride on the
implement. Today we don't have a problem believing these were garden
tractors although they were originally promoted as small farm power. The
actual garden tractors from the same era were litle more than motorized
push hoes. I agree that this was a different era in all aspects of
gardening/farming, but would these be considered the "Cubs" of that era? My
1938 Utilitor powered by the AC-4 Wisconsin was rated at 12-16 HP depending
on RPM. It was also originally billed as "small power for the farm". When
we get to the newer equipment, a lot of the lines had actual lawn and
garden equipment along with the small farm power. This seems like it would
make an easier separation of the two but I know from personal experience
that a lot of these small farm power tractors spent their lives with people
that put out larger gardens and never saw any actual farm work. My answer
is to let the owners decide what they want their equipment to be displayed
as. What do you think?



                                                      
           Doug Tallman                  Join us for the 2004 regional show
           dtallman at accnorwalk.com              in conjunction with      
           VGTCOA Ohio Regional Director   Ashland Co Yesteryear Mach club
               Greenwich, OH USA                July 9-11, 2004