What "brand" did you grow up with??

[r356c 375]

6 hours ago, elcamino/wheelhorse said:

Why was the fairing one grove tractors

 

Not all grove owners kept their trees pruned back in the day.

The fairing would let the tractor squeeze through overgrown trees without breaking their branches off.

 

These days, I notice most groves are kept trimmed with a sickle bar attachment set in the vertical position.

Most tractors have air conditioned cabs too.

 

[Dakota8338 115]

Growing up in a very rural area of the deep South no one mowed their lawns unless they lived in town.  When dad's old mule died, he purchased a tiller from Mr. Coleman's Hardware (something like a Western Auto, with more emphasis on farm & sporting goods [hunting & fishing]).  It was quickly realized the little tiller was not capable of handling the garden, much less the "patch" (roughly five acres) used for corn & field peas plus the running viney things like:  cantaloupes, water melons & cucumbers.

 

Next dad purchased a used David Bradley two wheel walking tractor.  It came with a turning plow, middle buster, cultivators, disks, dirt blade, trailer and sickle mower.  The disks and sickle mower offered very little in the way of utility or usability.  The David Bradley was a work horse and produced many gardens before it was retired, when dad purchased an International Harvester 140 tractor.  It was also used, but only just a few years old when he acquired it.  A belly mower was all that came with the 140, but in time dad located and purchased:  cultivators, middle buster, pan plow, front end loader, dirt slip, a set of harrows and a woods rotary mower.  I was already through school and had long been gone from home by then but In 1989 dad purchased a new Kubota L245H with its own front cultivators and rear tool bar to work from for the three point hitch.  All the equipment which would attach to and work with the 140 would also work attached to the Kubota.

 

Myself living where things necessitated a little more respectable look, I first purchased a Craftsman's 22 inch wide push mower, then when the oldest daughter was large enough to push a mower, I purchased a second Craftsman's push mower.  In 1976 I pulled the old tiller from mothballs dad had purchased so many years previously and replaced the little 2 1/2 HP engine with an 8 HP engine and I used it for 1976 & 77 to have a very small garden, but we raised a few fresh squash, tomatoes, potatoes, etc, which was something the cotton farmers daughter I had married though was part of ever home.  In the early spring of 1978, I purchased a new C141 8-Speed Wheel Horse with a 12 inch turning plow, 42 inch rear discharge mower and a 36 inch tiller.  Later I purchased a used WH grader blade, and much later a Briley dirt blade to attach to the WH's Clevis Hitch for the C141.  In the early 80's I purchased a trailer I wanted, which came with an old David Bradley garden tractor turning plow, middle buster, cultivators, dirt blade, brush cutter (32 inches IIRC, rotary mower).  Take the junk to get the trailer.  I cut the cultivators down and welded a pull/ pivot bar in place so it would work from the C141, attaching to the frame just like the tiller and it made working young seedlings much easier than using the tiller alone.  After modifying the DB Cultivators, I did the same thing with an old horse drawn harrow, only I attached it to the clevis hitch much like the plow rather than the frame like the tiller & converted cultivators.  I still have the old C141 (and all of its equipment), a newer 1995 Toro/Wheel Horse 312/8-Speed, I purchased used about 2000, which came with a 42 inch side discharge mower, to supplement the old C141.  In the late 90's I restored dad's old David Bradley two wheel walking tractor.  I located and purchased a new pair of new 15 inch cleated Agr tires & tubes like what came on it from Miller Tire in Wauseon, OH.  It isn't used much, but I still have it and all the old DB equipment too!

[r356c 375]

How can I forget, the sling blade.

I remember seeing prison work crews using these to clear ditches that powered equipment could not get to.

 

I've owned one at one time and they work well with little effort with the right technique.

Use full shoulder movement arcs with a one handed straight arm grip sort of like a golf swing.

Let the weight and momentum of the blade do the cutting.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edit: Ed K's grandson would most likely correct me that is is 'angular momentum' and not the implied 'linear momentum' that the operator of this tool should use to his/her advantage.

 

Angular momentum is additive; the total angular momentum of a system is the (pseudo)vector sum of the angular momenta. For continua or fields one uses integration. The total angular momentum of anything can always be split into the sum of two main components: "orbital" angular momentum about an axis outside the object, plus "spin" angular momentum through the centre of mass of the object. -wikipedia

Edited June 29, 2017 by r356c

[Dakota8338 115]

That sling blade is certainly something that will build calluses and toughen one's hands for sure. 

[mikeeyre74 289]

Reading these stories is fascinating, especiallywhen the writer is talking about being a kid in the 40's and 60's growing up..  Being just "a puppy" still, at 42 years of age as I type this, I grew up in the mid 80's when I can recall my dads first mower. I think we had about an acre of lawn in Bethlehem, CT at the time and dad scooped up an old Honda rear drive self propelled bagger walk behind from the dump that he used for quite a while. After that, a Toro front drive walk behind 21" cut came along brand new from the store that he quite preferred, as it was 2 stroke and quite powerful compared to the Honda. I was still too young to play with these at the time they came about. 

 

A few years ago, when I decided that I no longer cared to mow my lawn in 14 minutes with a Scag walk behind 48" commercial mower and wanted to drag that out to the best part of an hour instead (what the!?), I started looking at old garden tractors and seeing which ones met my fancy. I'd always admired the Cub Cadets and knew they were built like tanks.. and that's where my search began. And then it occurred to me.. my dad had a tractor back in the mid 80's and it was red. That's all I knew. So I gave him call and he can't remember what model it was, but he knew that it was a Wheel Horse and that it "was already old" when he got it. I called my mom next, who was (divorced) down in N.C. now, and she also thought it was a Wheel Horse, but didn't know a thing about them. She said there's a picture of my dad riding it in the photo albums she has in storage, and I've been begging her to get that out for me ever since.. but she's still packed up from the move down south. Eventually, when she gets that album out, I'll post it up here and see if we can't identify it. I'm fairly certain it's a mid 70's model B or C series, and I'm positive that it's a gear drive model. We'll get to the bottom of this together. Anyway, that's when I ditched the idea of Cub's because then I know I had to have a Horse, because I had history with one.. and it's the first tractor that I ever drove, because I did have some seat time on it eventually when I was 12+ years old or so, but I can't recall much about it other than what I've already mentioned. 

[r356c 375]

A Tramontina machete and my Yazoo Big Wheel Mower is still the E ticket ride for heavy Florida overgrowth clearing.