Miscellany

So I had been to a neat little tractor show over in New Hampshire, run by Les Bradley, one of the fellows who hangs around the Tractor Tales board at Yesterday's Tractors.  This would have been in July of 2005. I'd gotten home late enough the previous evening that I left the tractor on the trailer for the night, and had put my soup can on to keep the dew out of the motor.  You can see that the bed of the trailer tilts, so there really couldn't be any starting the tractor without being in the seat to keep a foot on the brakes. For all the time I spent on the deck of the trailer, unhooking chains and so on, I didn't think to take the can off the stack and put it in its customary place in the toolbox under the seat.

Well what with the angle of the tractor to the ground, the can took an unusual trajectory, and I actually thought I had a chance of catching it, but I wasn't yet squared away sufficiently to take my foot off the brakes or the clutch.

Isn't it always the way that there will be a photographer around when you're looking your best?

(Photo by MaryE Yeomans)
 

Almost exactly one year later we have another, and much more dignified, moment on an incline (this one a little bit more steep). Here we have my friend Paul loading one of his tractors onto my trailer, and doing so with much aplomb. Paul is known on several message boards as Fawteen, a Downeast phonetic reference to the Farmall F14 he's driving here, a fine old machine known to all the world and part of  Hancock County, Maine, as The Red Menace.  We decided to travel together to Les's show in July of 2006. That meant hauling two tractors, so I brought along my gooseneck trailer, which has room for two but sits much higher off the ground than the one in the picture above. Don't let Paul's seeming nonchalance fool you, though. He WAS paying attention.

I ordered this trailer with the dovetail and three flip-over ramps, the middle one to accommodate the tricycle gear common on older tractors. I've seen enough folks wheel tricycle tractors on and off of tall trailers using only two narrow ramps to convince me that that's something I'd rather not do. It doesn't look like a whole lot of angle, but to a boy that grew up driving tractors on flat Ohio ground, the trip up over the ramps and dovetail to the deck is steep enough to get and hold my attention.  My first time driving up onto that trailer with a tractor, I backed down off before I was halfway on, just to take a second look and give a second (and third!) thought to make sure everything was in order. And, twenty and more trips later, I'll still occasionally back down if I feel the need.

Let me be very plain about this -- I'll take the ribbing for being more cautious or less experienced than some, but I will also insist that backing or staying away from trouble is the RIGHT thing to do. These tractors have nothing for springs in their suspensions, and you generally are sitting out in the open, and fairly high off the ground.  Things like speeds of 10 or 12 mph and 8% grades can feel pretty darned extreme sitting up there if you're not accustomed to them, and there's a good case to be made for not getting too comfortable with those sensations, so as not to become numb to the hazards.  I've been in situations myself out in the fields on other tractors where things were either very clearly going wrong in a hurry or just didn't feel right, and stopped whatever I was doing. Older tractors typically do not have the rollover protection systems (ROPS) that modern tractors have. If you EVER feel uncomfortable with what your tractor is doing or where it is going, STOP!!  Size up the situation, and then back away, take a different approach, with caution, or abandon your effort.  ROPS or not, there is immense power on those rear wheels, and they can roll over or flip your tractor in less than a heartbeat. On ramps, especially, a slipping wheel can dump you over even more quickly. Care,caution, attention and sobriety are always in order when working around or operating these machines. 

Anyway, we got on to Les's show and had a great time. This was taken as we were loading up Sunday morning to come home. I'm in the background providing absolutely useless supervision of the process.

A quick note about Paul before going on. He's managed to combine the lessons learned as a Michigan farmboy with enough ingenuity to make you wonder why Yankees think they have a corner on that trait,  and a LOT of hard work to carve out a small farmstead on the rockbound coast of Maine. If that sounds appealing, I'd recommend a visit to his site, Someday Farm.  If small farming, critters or contraptions are of interest to you, it's certainly worth a look around.

In 2007, Paul and I took to the road again, going to a show at the Owls Head Transportation Museum, near Rockland, Maine.  Here we are leaving his driveway with my BN and The Red Menace chained down behind the mighty Cummins.
 

I bought the Dodge to get the Cummins. And I waited until 2003 so I could get the one-ton version with the single rear end as opposed to a dually.  I really haven't modified it any, except to add exhaust temperature and turbo boost gauges, and an exhaust brake. And I haven't really done much to dress her up. I don't care for bumper stickers, even . . . BUT I did find the ultimate in redneck pickup truck accessories and couldn't resist.  You can find them here. Miss Karee's grandson Braden is trying to figure out just what they are. He's about eighteen months old in this pic.  His mother (thankfully!) didn't see this moment, but she did wonder how he managed to get himself all over grease.
 

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