Russ' Vintage Iron

OMAHA (DTN) -- Last month, I wrote about my good friends, the Dreessen family of Kennard, Nebraska, and their amazing collection of International tractors. Their group of 51 tractors started from just one Farmall M tractor. Read about them here: https://www.dtnpf.com/….

After I wrote that column, I got to wondering how many tractors farmers really own. I know some with just a couple of tractors and I know farmers with 51 tractors -- so there is a bit of range there.

What would be the average?

I ran a poll on Twitter in mid-September for several days asking the question: "How many tractors do you have on your farm?" The four choices were "0-5 tractors", "6-10 tractors", "11-20 tractors" and "Over 20 tractors."

Both "0-5 tractors" and "6-10 tractors" tied for the most with 37.7% of the vote. Next was "11-20 tractors" with 20.8% and "Over 20 tractors" was last with 3.8%.

Seventy-five percent of the farmers who responded to my poll had anywhere from one to ten tractors. And then nearly another 21% had 11 to 20 tractors.

So, what do these results tell us? My thought is that most farmers really do like to own tractors and they have quite a few.

I remember going to a local farm equipment auction when I was a kid, and a neighbor and friend bought a John Deere 3010 tractor by bidding just once. After they got his number, he turned to the rest of us standing by him and said, "You can never have enough tractors."

For as long as I live, I will never forget this. And to bid just once -- how cool!

I suppose some will look at more tractors as more work to keep them running. Others, meanwhile, will look at the same situation as an opportunity to work with tractors.

Everyone's circumstances are different. Some needed a trade-in to have enough money to buy another tractor while others kept every tractor they have ever owned. This was the way my friends managed to end up with over 50 IH tractors.

My dad and uncle had the same three tractors during my childhood -- a John Deere 620, a 4010 and 4020. I can remember them borrowing a neighbor's John Deere 60 at harvest one time as we had an old elevator in the corn crib that still ran on a belt. One summer they put a sickle mower on a friend's John Deere 4010 and mowed hay with it while our 4010 was on the sprayer.

When I started farming with my dad, they began to buy tractors separately. My uncle bought a John Deere 4640 and then later a 4450. We bought a 4440 and another 4020.

None of the other tractors were traded in for these new-to-us tractors. I guess it helped to be financially better off (and older) than my uncle and dad were at this time.

When we moved to the farm we are at now, about 25 miles to the north of the rest of what we farmed, including the hay fields, we needed another loader tractor to load hay in one spot and unload hay at the home farm. My Uncle Jack had a 1955 International 400 with a Dual loader for sale, so we bought that.

I am a green man through and through but the one IH we own is a tractor that could sit for months and still start every single time. We have done very little to that tractor in the nearly 25 years we have had it.

About that same time, my parents had moved into town and my dad was considering what he was going to do for snow removal in the winter. Instead of buying a snowblower, my dad bought a John Deere 520 with factory three-point with a three-point blade from a neighbor.

None of our other tractors would fit in his garage so this tractor is at his house most of the time to push snow -- and sometimes give the neighbor kids tractor rides.

We currently sit at 10 tractors on our small farm. We use five on the farm and another five are two-cylinder tractors that we drive in small-town parades and go to tractor shows with. We do occasionally use the older tractors on the farm.

I harrowed a field with the 730 this spring. The 620 is usually on the auger in the fall -- as it has been my entire life.

The 630 has three-point so we use it on a three-point blade and mower. We will drive the 50 or 60 (as well as the other two-cylinders) to check cows when they are in the east pasture at the other end of the farm during the summer.

All our tractors have their own chores on our farm. Maybe we need some more! You can never have enough tractors!

Russ Quinn can be reached at Russ.Quinn@dtn.com

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