[AT] DC Case + Switch From Horses to Tractor

[charlie hill]

I can't actually remember any of my family farming with mules.  I know they 
did and I remember the mules being around but I was too small to be in the 
field and see it or at least to remember it.
My granddad on my moms side actually used a team of oxen a lot.  This was 
before my time but he bought a 100 acre tract of woodland and he and my two 
uncles cleared it with crosscut saws and
a team of oxen.    I can't imagine what a job that must have been or how 
many years it took them to finish it.  By the time I came along it was a 
nice farm.

Charlie

-----Original Message----- 
From: Chuck Bealke
Sent: Sunday, January 15, 2012 5:03 PM
To: Antique tractor email discussion group
Subject: Re: [AT] DC Case + Switch From Horses to Tractor

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

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