[AT] Small Farm Tractors vs Garden Tractors

[Robert Brooks]

About 7 years ago when I first brought home Elmo my 1948 Cub I had a 
neighbor ask me to bring my truck over and pull his BIL out of a 
ditch.  They have a long narrow gravel driveway, with ditches on either 
side, and apparently he wasn't paying attention when off the edge of the 
driveway and managed to both drivers side wheels of the pickup in the mud 
up to the frame rails.

Well Joan had the Blazer so I offered to bring Elmo over and pull him 
out.  His comment was no they had already tried to pull the truck out with 
his new 20HP Wheel Horse and if that won't pull it out, it would be a waste 
of time to try with an old 8HP tractor.

I convinced him that it was worth a try and that if Elmo couldn't pull him 
out then I would run the truck over when Joan got home.

At the time Elmo had calcium in the Ag tires and weights on all 4 wheels.

I hitched the chain they had used with his tractor to the draw bar and 
pulled the truck out in about 1 min.  I didn't even get the tires to spin.

Seems there is HP and then there is a tractors ability to do work.

What Dan didn't understand and should have is that my little 8hp Cub out 
weighed his Wheel Horse by at least 1500 lbs and that the Cub was geared to 
pull not mow lawns at 10MPH

So there really is a big difference between a farm and lawn and garden tractor.

Bob
rbrooks at hvc.rr.com
Elmo 1948 Cub
Rock Tavern, NY




At 08:57 AM 3/8/04 -0800, Kiser, Rick wrote:
>I consider my Gibson A and my David Bradley walk behind as farm
>tractors, and my Wheel Horse mower/tractor as a garden tractor. The
>Gibson is around 8 hp, the D-B is 2(?) the Wheel Horse is 14, but I'll
>bet the Gibson could pull the Wheel Horse backwards.
>Since the first two had all sorts of implements available (plow, harrow,
>disks, cultivators, etc) and the Wheel Horse only had a few (cart,
>mostly), that helped to differentiate them, too.
>
>RickinNW-WA
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Doug Tallman [mailto:dtallman at accnorwalk.com]
>Sent: Saturday, March 06, 2004 11:07 AM
>To: Antique tractor email discussion group
>Subject: [AT] Small Farm Tractors vs Garden Tractors
>
>  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
>
>
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