Vintage Tractors, Steel Plows Shine
Published: Friday, April 9, 2021
Antique tractors are relics. They can be found buried in the weeds or tucked away and resting in an old barn. Repairing old equipment takes patient devotion and locating parts may require a bit of luck. But these old relics still have their special day.
Can you imagine turning the soil over across a 160-acre field in less than three hours? History was on display when men and women of all ages converged on the Robin Roberts farm south of Argos last Saturday to prepare a fresh new seedbed for the upcoming crop year, with the help of 28 antique tractors and moldboard plows.
The beautiful start to the day with a bright sunrise and the morning air left some plow drivers with a little windburn. The winds were howling and raw, but everyone still toughed it out layered up in their Carhart bibs, stocking hats and hooded jackets.
The large group of tractors and plows worked steadily across the field from west to east covering the full length of the field from one end to the other, whittling each land down into a narrow island one bottom at a time. A mark was scribed into the sandy soil on the headland so they knew where to trip the plow out of the soil at the north and south end of each land.
At noon, all the tractors, plows, farm pickup trucks and equipment trailers lined up and parked along the north edge of the soybean field across the road from the residence of Tucker Lee Thayer, who organized the plow day event.
Everyone was given a chance to warm up in his shop and have lunch before the afternoon session of plowing resumed. More land was needed to continue plowing in the afternoon, so a neighboring farmer to the east allowed them to plow his field as well.
Richard Norman of Akron drove his John Deere tractor and Massey Ferguson plow 29 miles to join in the fun with fellow farmers. Jerry Pearson of Plymouth told me there were three generations of his family at the plow day. He went on to tell me how he grew up driving his Oliver 60 tractor and one-bottom plow that they brought that day.
An estimate of 75 to 80 spectators gathered throughout the day in the fields to reminisce with others and to discuss the tractors they grew up with as a child, like John Deere, Ford, Case, Allis-Chalmer, Farmall or Oliver. No matter the make or model of tractor being used, everyone jumped in to help one another if a repair or adjustment was needed to keep this ageless iron going throughout the day.
Moldboard plowing is a lost art of conventional tillage that is best described as an implement that cuts the soil, lifts it up, and turns it partly upside down by means of a curved plate known as a moldboard. Just ahead of the curved plate is a disc (coulter) which is a vertical knife that slices the soil allowing each moldboard to turn the soil over more easily.
Each moldboard has a share and a shin that is fastened around the moldboard. This is designed to shear off the soil and gently lay it on the side leaving the soil partially turned over. There's also a landslide that leaves a polished, clean sidewall and trench that the trail wheel of the plow follows which is called the furrow. The furrow is the path or shallow trench that the next tractor will follow.
It was once believed that this type of tillage was needed to bring the nutrients to the top of the surface for a fresh start for seeds to be planted. In part, because of organic farming, the moldboard plow is slowly making its way back into common tillage practices. This type of tillage allows the farmer to bury or incorporate heavy crop residue and break up compacted soils. It is also helpful with weed control. As a general rule of thumb, the horsepower needed to pull a plow is generally 20 to 25 horsepower per moldboard bottom on a plow.
I want to thank Argos farmer, Terry Nelson, for bringing his UTV and driving me throughout the fields so I could cover this historical event. And I need to give a special thanks to Tucker Lee Thayer for inviting me to his plow day in Argos and providing fellowship with area farmers throughout the day.
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