Cyndi's Two Cents

Celebrating 20th century farm equipment

Commentary.

Steam engines, horse-drawn farm equipment, threshing machines and antique tractors in action are the centerpiece for many events held across the heartland this time of year.  A few years ago I attended a Classic Tractor Calendar Club reunion and was asked no less than fifteen times if I had “rustitis.”  The so-called disease as it was explained to me is what you get when you buy your first antique tractor.

John Harvey, founder of Classic Tractor Fever explained to me that if you collect and restore tractors, it becomes a disease.  When you have a disease, you run a fever, thus the name of his company.  “Believe me, Cyndi, everybody around here has a fever!” he proclaimed.

I personally do not have this rustitis disease.  I have a great appreciation for the classic tractors, and truly enjoy seeing them and visiting with those who own and restore them.  Everybody has a story.  Many of them bring before and after pictures.  One gentleman showed me pictures of a tractor buried in a junk pile so deep that only the trained eye could identify it as the precious piece of history that it was.

To many people, the 1978 model 4230 we use on our farm to clip pastures, cut, rake and bale hay, feed big round bales, plant sweet corn and blade snow would be considered an antique or classic tractor.  It’s a solid piece of equipment with no “right to repair” concerns because it certainly does not have software with which we could tamper. Many people who farm smaller acreages or raise livestock have their very own antique tractor and equipment collection – and they use that tractor and that equipment almost every day.

I have attended many reunions and farm events in my lifetime and can honestly say that I have never met a friendlier, more diverse, and more down-to-earth group of people than those I have the pleasure of spending time with at classic tractor and steam shows and thresher reunions.  There are no strangers.

One of my most notable observations is the vast age range involved in this hobby.  It is a multi-generational and certainly not a sexist hobby.  There are typically as many women driving tractors in the daily parade of classic tractors as there are men.  That is truly a reflection of farming and the farm family of the 20th century.

“What we are doing here is about memories,” John Harvey said.   “We were all born in the 20th century.  Our parents, most of our kids were born in this century.  We are talking about a special piece of American history.  We were all there.  We were all involved in it.  Because so many of us were involved in agriculture, the tractor is such a great symbol of what we remember and how farming and how farm families were in the 20th century.”

It is a great way to preserve that piece of American history.  For many of us, that history lives on every time we fire up the 4020 or WD45 to rake a field of hay.