The Tractor thread...

I have an Allis Chalmers 190 with an 11' plow on the front. I put a 5' Alamo boom mower on the back without the mowing head - a town deal super special. The hydraulic tank and stuff weighed so much that I can now plow uphill in ice. Of course the weight blew an 8 ply tire and so I put a pair of 12 plys on as I got an incredible deal. Now the tire fitter can't get the bead to seat on the wheel and so I have a tractor with one wheel flat and he ran away screaming. Can anyone lend me a snow shovel. Sigh.

I finally got chains for the old 8N thanx to a fellow Forum member

I have owned a 2N, 9N, 8N and now a Jubilee that gets worked every single day. Probably, in their class, the best tractors ever made. My neighbor (well not really a neighbor but lives down the street) bought a shiny newish Kubota (I think about 35HP loaded, I didn't pay attention). He likes to lord it over me, well he did until he was grading the edge of his pond and fell in. One new engine later ($11000 and counting and that was ten years ago) he wished for a Ford 800 too. Yep, he's the guy that also recently bought a 2 year old Beamer 5 series diesel and Sandy dumped a tree limb neatly on the hood - just the hood - $9000. I watched the other day as he zoomed down the road with blue smoke coming out the exhaust - ah well, another turbo should fix that one - gulp. KISS - the secret of life.

My Jubilee is coming up for it's six month service. New points, plugs and clean out the filter, new oil and off it goes for another 100 hours. Love that tractor. If you want fancy, put a very tough to use accurately loader on the front and rumble off for another thousand hours. It does nothing brilliantly but everything kinda OK. My kind of tractor.

They used to make an 4wd adapter for the old Fords back in the day. It ran off the pto and ran a drive shaft up front to a differential. It kept extending out the back so you could still use PTO implements on it though. My Grandfather nearly bought one when he had the chance, but like most farmers, he had other things to spend money on and spent the rest of his life regretting it. I think that would make the old Ford's really versatile. I know the Old Ford 900 could out do my Kubota any day in 2wd drive, but the 4wd and differential lock is what makes it a real workhorse around the farm. I am just ashamed of how I have to do practically everything in 4wd.

I think a clever person who was good at tinkering could replicate that old 4wd adapter. Another option would be to make a power trailer. They were common in days gone by, which was a trailer with a powered axle from a truck, being powered by a pto shaft coupled to a transmission to get the gearing matched to the speed of the tractor. With all the weight on the tractors rear tires AND the trailer, it was actually better then 4 wheel drive. Coupled to a 4wd tractor, the result would be even more amazing.

A third option is installing half-tracks on the old girls. My Grandfather did have that an old old 8n that I never saw, but saw the tracks for it. I guess in the snow they worked well. Screw drives worked even better but were pretty rare, even here in the cold Maine North Woods.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBjlSJf4274

coalnewbie wrote:I have an Allis Chalmers 190 with an 11' plow on the front. I put a 5' Alamo boom mower on the back without the mowing head - a town deal super special. The hydraulic tank and stuff weighed so much that I can now plow uphill in ice. Of course the weight blew an 8 ply tire and so I put a pair of 12 plys on as I got an incredible deal. Now the tire fitter can't get the bead to seat on the wheel and so I have a tractor with one wheel flat and he ran away screaming. Can anyone lend me a snow shovel. Sigh.

It is not the best trick to use, but either will get the bead to "seat:. Just spray the bead with either, wave a torch across it and "BOOM", the explosion sets the bead, but you probably already knew this trick. They also make a portable air tank blaster, which is just a funnel looking thing that directs air on the tire and prevents you from having to use either, which is kind of dangerous. They work really well at seating truck tires.

Best of luck anyway on this.

Quite a few years ago we used to custom hay a farm up the road from us and they would often pasture their cows on this field. It is pretty steep land and straight up hill and we used to worry that the old 120 hp Massey Ferguson would spin out on a cow turd and go backwards down over the hill; an issue when you are pulling a baler and wagon behind it.

Two years ago I helped plow this field. Because of the curve of the moldboards, I had to plow up hill on the steepest part. I was using the 8830 Ford Tractor which is about 200 hp and four wheel drive with powershift and all the creature comforts of home. Anyway Alfred stops by, shakes his head and says, "we sure have come a long ways in farming."

I was pulling a 7 bottom plow as I was doing this, sod rolling off the moldboard as if it was nothing. We really have come a long ways with equipment these days. It is just paying for it all. A disk harrow that costs more then what it costs to build a house. Tractors that cost 1/2 million dollars. Milking parlors tipping the scales at over a million dollars...just out of control is what it is.

The fact that you can do these things to those tractors speaks volumes. Heroic half tracks and spirals are outside my league here in the relative tropics.

Tractors that cost 1/2 million dollars. Milking parlors tipping the scales at over a million dollars...just out of control is what it is.

I used to buy my equipment at a used tractor dealer and used is a polite term for the junk he sold. Once in a while he would get good old stuff. Hay farmers would get tired of wrestling with the old junk and get new only to find they couldn't keep up the payments. The only ones remaining now are running junk. When you cash flow the fancy stuff and take into account years when there is no hay to speak of, it just doesn't work.

Million dollar milking parlors, hey son warm up those hands and squeeze those teats. That was a the job when I was 7 years old b4 school. Held me in good stead for well endowed lady friends and probably accounts for the brain damage.

I think the answer is leased tractors. On the dairy farm, they turned a few back this year because it was a tough year and could not afford to pay the lease on them any more, and that worked out okay. There was a few times we could have used them, but got by. The problem is, some implements require 400 hp tractors to pull them and the biggest owned is 200 hp, so come planting season, we got some leasing to do. The bigger tractors should be available though because those bad boys are just not selling and the repossessed rate is high on anything over 300 hp right now.

As for the milking parlor; it isn't 1975 any more I am afraid. I was out in Ireland and saw some of their larger dairy farms and was shocked that they were 70 cow farms with 100 acres. My word it was like stepping back in time to when I was a kid and shoveling manure by hand. (Yes, even at age 38 I did that). With 1200 cows, you aren't milking many by hand that is for sure; even with the computer-aided million dollar parlor the boys are milking cows 3 times a day, 24/7/365-1/4 days per year...it never stops. Milk is ALWAYS going into the tank. The 70 cow farms are just no longer profitable...the creameries won't even pick up the milk unless x amount of pounds is produced every other day.

Come on NS--I think it comes down to one's idea of profitable. The Amish around here all milk around 20 head & to them that's profitable. Most of the small family farms are milking anywhere from 40 to 80 head & that keeps them comfortable with kids going to college & the whole routine of living life on life's terms--& yes, we have a couple farms milking approx. 1500 head & are in debt up to their eyeballs with all the BIG machinery & such. For the most part, the BIG dairy's are as much killing the Mom & Pop farms as anything. Well, I gotta go see if my new to me flat bed is going to handle a 5' round bale And yes, the creameries still pick up out here twice a day ( 10 small operations)--most small operations share a centrally located dump station.

It is no secret here, the killer is the creameries refusing to pick up milk citing transportation issues between farms spaced so far apart. But if you have 10 small farms, that is the reason...there are still farms to pick up milk at in close proximity. As is, last month a local creamery shut its doors forever; Garalicke Farms out of Bangor. Ours is now heading to Oakhurst in Southern Maine.

The funny thing here is, we have gone from 400 farms down to 180, BUT production in Maine milk has stayed the same; less farms just the ones that survived have had to get bigger, and because of technology and better feed management, cows are producing twice what they used to. It is going up some more too, and you would be surprised, it has nothing to to with artificial growth hormones because no farm that I know of, uses that here in Maine. Mostly it is about the quality of feed, and cow comfort.

As for the Amish; they are different because (here anyway) their only customers are Amish within their own Amish community. One farm that went organic, does deliver their small farm milk to area stores and sell it locally, only because Maine is one of 8 states that allows the sale of unpasteurized milk.

Our main challenge is the price of grain. With 40% of corn production going into ethanol, we are getting hammered with quadruple grain bills from that of a few years ago. Even in Iowa though, they understand that ethanol derived from corn is a short term proposition and are investigating ways (as is the University of Maine) to get ethanol from other sources. For instance, a one acre corn field gets about 400 gallons of ethanol, but a one acre pond of cat tails generates 650 gallons of ethanol and does not require using land that can be used for food to grow. In fact, Minnesota alone can provide for up to half of the ethanol currently needed in this country for the ethanol requirement without adding additional acres of cat tail production. Needless to say, other states could easily generate the rest to meet the requirement. It is just a matter of time before America realizes, using corn to drive around with, is just plain dumb. When it takes 1.2 gallons of fuel to make 1 gallon of ethanol, the math is just not right.

NoSmoke wrote:It is no secret here, the killer is the creameries refusing to pick up milk citing transportation issues between farms spaced so far apart. But if you have 10 small farms, that is the reason...there are still farms to pick up milk at in close proximity. As is, last month a local creamery shut its doors forever; Garalicke Farms out of Bangor. Ours is now heading to Oakhurst in Southern Maine.

The funny thing here is, we have gone from 400 farms down to 180, BUT production in Maine milk has stayed the same; less farms just the ones that survived have had to get bigger, and because of technology and better feed management, cows are producing twice what they used to. It is going up some more too, and you would be surprised, it has nothing to to with artificial growth hormones because no farm that I know of, uses that here in Maine. Mostly it is about the quality of feed, and cow comfort.

As for the Amish; they are different because (here anyway) their only customers are Amish within their own Amish community. One farm that went organic, does deliver their small farm milk to area stores and sell it locally, only because Maine is one of 8 states that allows the sale of unpasteurized milk.

Our main challenge is the price of grain. With 40% of corn production going into ethanol, we are getting hammered with quadruple grain bills from that of a few years ago. Even in Iowa though, they understand that ethanol derived from corn is a short term proposition and are investigating ways (as is the University of Maine) to get ethanol from other sources. For instance, a one acre corn field gets about 400 gallons of ethanol, but a one acre pond of cat tails generates 650 gallons of ethanol and does not require using land that can be used for food to grow. In fact, Minnesota alone can provide for up to half of the ethanol currently needed in this country for the ethanol requirement without adding additional acres of cat tail production. Needless to say, other states could easily generate the rest to meet the requirement. It is just a matter of time before America realizes, using corn to drive around with, is just plain dumb. When it takes 1.2 gallons of fuel to make 1 gallon of ethanol, the math is just not right.

We have several Amish families in easton, Maine and they all milk their cows by hand and have two collection points that the creamery comes to collect from...very interesting facts you have here...thanks for posting them!

This is a project my son and I are working on. It's a 1944 John Deere. It was pretty rusty and didnt even turn over when we picked it up. We managed to get it running and its starting to shape up. More pics to come as we progress.
BTW, If anyone needs a 1947 for parts we'll be selling it.

mr1precision wrote:This is a project my son and I are working on. It's a 1944 John Deere. It was pretty rusty and didnt even turn over when we picked it up. We managed to get it running and its starting to shape up. More pics to come as we progress.
BTW, If anyone needs a 1947 for parts we'll be selling it.

1944 jd.jpg

John Deere B....narrow front end?

mp, I'd guess about every barn in Freetown has an old JD at about that stage sitting in it--Outstanding project

My dad and I have always wanted to rebuild an old tractor, but our dream is a bit different; we would like to do an old bulldozer. I think that would be great. I grew up on dozers and even today with everyone crowing about excavators...man I just like my bulldozers still. (Not saying they are better then an excavator, just saying I prefer operating them.)