[AT] Homemade tractors.

[Francis Robinson]

    Has anyone here ever owned or used a homemade tractor? I never have but 
have always been fascinated by them. I used to see a bunch of them setting 
around parked for good during the early 1950's. Most were made out of an old 
car or truck chopped down. A lot were made out of Model A Fords. Many were 
built during the war (WW II 1941 to 1945) or just after when tractors were 
really hard to come by. When I was at BSU in the early 1960's they were 
still using cut down Model A Fords to pull ganged golf course reel mowers to 
mow much of the campus. The only other thing I saw used for mowing there was 
Farmall Cubs with rear mounted flail mowers used on rougher grounds. Did I 
just say "grounds"?   ;-)
    A lot of homemade tractors were small and narrow made just to pull a one 
horse wheat drill down rows of standing corn. I also remember a lot of CUB's 
and Pony's being narrowed up for wheat drills. A lot of them ended up 
turning over...
    Larry, I believe I once read of a lot of Economy tractors being set up 
to pull one horse wheat drills.
    I have two one horse wheat drills that  are strictly "yard art". One of 
them has a few good sized bullet holes in the sheet metal guard panels. 
While I always fess up eventually I do enjoy giving the grand kids a line of 
crap as they come along about my having been attacked by Indians while 
working in the fields...   ;-)   I bought these at sales, we never planted 
any wheat like that during my lifetime. We always had one field of early 
corn that we could get picked in time to plant wheat. We only grew about 20 
to 30 acres of wheat.
    The grandkids usually half believe the Indian stories since they think I 
am old enough to have been attacked by dinosaurs.   ;-)   A couple of other 
tales I like to work in on them involve how I used to play the grand piano 
in the marching band and that I was once in the Olympics. My event? Why 
javelin catching of course...   ;-)



--
"farmer"

Our wretched species is so made that those who walk on the
well-trodden path always throw stones at those who are
showing a new road.  ~Voltaire

Francis Robinson
Central Indiana, USA
robinson at svs.net