[AT] When did you start collecting old tractors?

[Mike Sloane]

I moved to our rural location in 1970 and quickly realized that I needed 
something more than a walk-behind rotary mower to deal with grass, 
weeds, and snow. A friend gave me an old David Bradley two-wheel tractor 
with a sickle bar and scraper blade. I limped along with that for about 
a year and decided I needed something a little more robust and 
comfortable, so we bought a brand new Economy Jim Dandy with mower deck 
and blade, which worked OK. Then a neighbor asked me if I wanted to buy 
her uncle's "old farm tractor". At 90 years old, he had been using it to 
farm his property, fallen off of it, and died. It turned out to be a 
1955 Farmall Cub with a Fast hitch and all kinds of implements - 
cultivators, plow, fertilizer spreader, disks, seeder, flail mower, etc. 
Unfortunately, when he fell off, he had been spreading fertilizer, and 
the neighbors pushed the tractor into the shed with the hopper still 
half full. The fertilizer had rotted out the bottom of the spreader, but 
everything else was fine. The only thing I didn't have was a rotary 
mower. I still have that tractor, and it still runs like a top, but 
since then a whole bunch of old tractors "followed me home" (on the back 
of my trailer). I ended up selling the fast hitch and all the implements 
to a gentleman from MA who is still using them to do vegetable farming 
with a 1952 Cub that I sold him.

Most of the various tractor I own or have owned are shown here: 
<http://public.fotki.com/mikesloane/>, as well as some of my other hobby 
and professional stuff.

Mike

Indiana Robinson wrote:
> When did you start collecting old tractors?