Boys' Toys

This 1959 Ford tractor is now considered an antique.  (What does that make me?!)  Clay thinks someone he knows may be interested in buying it.  I hope so.  It's been part of the landscape far too long and I'd like to think it could still be of use.  The bucket is not an accessory; it's there to keep rain and/or wasps out of the exhaust pipe.  There are many attachments:  disks, harrows, a drag blade, and the drop-down mower bar that I personally think of as a weapon of mass destruction.

Steve was as happy as a kid with a big Tonka toy the day we picked up the tractor.  There was an immediate bond and he never lost his affection for it.  He painted and puttered and babied it.  He kept our section of the dirt road graded, augered holes for trees that were later eaten by deer or the horses we boarded, and disked the south pasture that Joel now is kind enough to tend.  The mower bar has a number of sharp, pointy teeth that look like they could chomp through steel.  I always made sure the dog, Dogie, was in the house whenever Steve put that thing to use.  Mother had told me of spending summers on farms when she was a girl and how she would take water to the men who were working the horse-drawn combines under the hot sun.  Thinking of that, every hour or so I'd take a cold soda out to my own farmer as he chugged around the field.  It was pleasant to take a break together and talk about our plans for Farview Farm.

I don't know what the asking price should be for the tractor.  The memories are priceless.