[AT] DC Case + Switch From Horses to Tractor

[Chuck Bealke]

On 1/15/2012 2:25 PM, charlie hill wrote:
> Gene,  my dad used to laugh about the old days when farmers here first
> started to get tractors to replace their mules.
> He said they'd do ok plowing with them until they got to the end of the
> field when the last
> thing you heard before the tractor ran off in the canal was WHOAAAA
> WHOOAAAA!
>
> Charlie
> //www.antique-tractor.com/mailman/listinfo/at
Charlie,

The switch from horses or mules to tractors is a pregnant topic.
I remember (fondly) the last of my neighbors to trade his team, a Belgian
and Percheron, for a tractor - a Super A.  He was sad for a while after 
the team left - about like a feller whose dog has died.
Of course, it was absolutely the right thing to do.  He was not far from 
sixty, and had to work a bunch  in summer to cut, rake and put up hay 
from 33 acres to feed Prince and Duke the rest of the year.  The 16-inch 
plow they pulled was heavy as sin, and got no easier to operate with 
age.  I loved to occasionally go watch him plow with them as a pre-teen 
and hear the roots rip as the team strained to turn the earth.
Darned if he did not get almost as attached to the Farmall.  Sure wish I 
had it now - he cared for it like a mother 'til he got congestive heart 
failure and died.

On another topic, if you have been intimate with the embarrassment, 
frustration and other vexation involved in sticking a tractor up to it's 
axles, you might enjoy a link a friend sent me.  It shows a Russian 
tractor cousin with some kind of talent:
http://www.bangshift.com/blog/Crazy-Video-A-Massive-Russian-Kirovec-Tractor-Saves-Itself-From-Certain-Death-in-a-River.html 


Chuck Bealke
Dallas