When did it Start for you, Driving Tractors?

[Creature Meadow]

I enjoy getting to know each of you, that is why I post topics like favorite deer rifle, tractors name, garden topics, etc.

So when did you start driving tractors, for some maybe as teens others may be brand new to it. Just curious how it began and when.

For me it went like this.

Somewhere around 10 not sure exactly as Mr. Lewis and my grandmother have been dead for years.

I would get up at 4:30 and head with Mr. Lewis on weekends and in the summers to go with him to the dairy farm for the morning milking. I first drove an old international model no idea brush hogging pastures, mom would have killed him if she had known. I would just drive in circles cutting......

Graduated soon to packing and pulling silage from the bottom of the hill to the top. Start at bottom drop blade and drive to top, lift blade circle to bottom repeat. This was on an old International with dual rears for stability and packing. This went on for weeks and weeks until the near 500 acres of corn was cut.

Then it was a Ford 2000, 3000, 3910 at the golf course.

So for the last roughly 40 years tractors have been a part of my life.

What about you and thanks in advance for sharing.

Jay

 

[skeets]

It was after I bought my first house,, before that big dummy was only allowed on the dumb end of a tractor

 

[hope to float]

Like yourself, I grew up with it. It was always Masseys at my uncles place. I used to get the boring jobs too. Rolling pastures in spring, turning hay in summer, later tramping the silage pit. Scraping yards that were never designed for tractors soon teaches the use of the side brakes.
Then got my own MF135 at about 16. That thing had only 2 speeds when I was busy, stopped or flat out. That was mostly road work.
First time I had a Kubota was at a golf course too. Can't remember which model but it came from a rice paddy. I think it was around 22hp. That one spent a lot of its time pulling the Ford 3910 around the place. I remember the club being reluctant to buy such a small tractor, but when they saw how it could work.....
Then frost killed my trusty 135 and I was tractorless for a few years, apart from work.
And now I have an L3450 Only 4WDs I have driven have been the 2 kubotas.
On a side note, a MF135 fairly screams when cutting silage with a 4' single chop harvester and pulling a trailer.

 

[PHPaul]

8 or so, driving a John Deere B pulling the wagon while my bigger brothers loaded the hay bales.

I'll tell you how fierce I was to drive:

Dad had a small (120 acres) farm and raised cash crops (soybeans and wheat mostly) and corn and hay for the beef critters. Before my time, they kept a few milkers but they were gone by the time I was old enough to remember anything. The old milking parlor was stripped out and used for a loafing shed for the beef critters.

Access to the "loafing shed" was via a Dutch door about 4 feet wide on either end. Of course, this means that access with a tractor was impossible. So all the manure and bedding for 10 or 15 steers had to go out the way it came in: with a pitch fork. The least obnoxious way was to pull the spreader up parallel to the windows on the long side of the parlor, open the window and pitch the bedding out through the window into the spreader.

The deal was, if I loaded the spreader, I got to drive the tractor to spread it on the field. An hour or sometimes two of DANG hard work loading packed bedding with a 4 tine manure fork for the privilege of driving the tractor for 15 minutes to unload it. No wimpy loads either. That spreader better be rounded up in good shape before you started the tractor! Seemed like a heck of a deal to me at the time.

 

[RCW]

Started sitting on my grandfather’s lap crimping hay at 4 or so. MF Super 90.

By 6 or 7, was backing a Minneapolis Moline ZAU and manure spreader down our barns at 100 and 60 feet.

That ‘Moline is mine now. Very cherished, but needs some governor work.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Firefighterontheside]

My grandpa had an international cub with belly mower. We used to ride with him at first by standing on the mower deck and holding onto the steering shaft. I guess when I was around 12 I started driving and cutting by myself.

 

[Vidiot]

My Grandfather knew how to spell the word tractor, does that count?

For me it all started about 178 hours ago AKA last year when I bought my first one. I'm very new to the game and trying to learn what I can.

 

[nbking]

Pretty much was around tractors my whole life. My grandfather had 88 acres of tobacco. He had a Massey Ferguson, and a big and small Case, I could drive them all. But the small case was mainly for planting tobacco. There was a two seat PTO driven attachment on the back that you would sit and drop in the baby tobacco plant and it would dig a hole, drop in the plant with water and put the dirt back up.
The big case was fast, but scary had the two front wheels right in the middle, and mainly pulled a big trailer for harvesting the tobacco.
The Massey was the least used that I remember.
Dad had an old Ford tractor with a belly mower, and also had a bush hog. Now he has a John Deere with fel and backhoe with a MMM.
I recently got my L2501, so just continuing the legacy

 

[Fordtech86]

Been on tractors my whole life,grandparents on both sides of my family had large farms in Illinois,my dad’s side started renting their fields before I was born,my moms side is still farming today with my uncle doing it,growing up during the summer my mom hold drop me and my older sister off at my grandparents on Monday morning before work,would pick us up Friday after work,we grew up on grandpas lap until we were tall enough to reach pedals,we started in the kitchen with grandma,she was Italian and cooked all day long,homemade pasta to die for,once we were old enough to walk beans we did that,I was 8 when I got to run the tractor to pull hay wagons,started with that,then went to pulling grain wagons and cutting and raking hay,scooping and spreading manure,plowing and discing as I got older,best day ever was when grandpa let me run old ugly,the old Oliver 4 row combine,growing up on the farm was the best,being a millennial it’s helped shape me and my sisters,we all are hard working and very successful in life,wife and I finally got our own place and land about a year and a half ago,have a young family,kids are 1 and 3,both love riding the tractor,3 year old can steer it and run the bucket,also can drive the zero turn,both love to be outside and working,trying to do what I can to keep it that way

 

[Lil Foot]

When I was about 6, my uncle let me drive an old lawn tractor around his place whenever we visited. Nothing fancy, not even a real tractor, just a lawnmower, but I was hooked. I probably drove that thing 200 miles on his two acres.
After that, I begged & pleaded with any operator I saw to get some seat time or training on anything tractor related. Then. about 8 years ago, I convinced a neighbor that his B7100 with FEL & BH was exactly what I was looking for, and to please give me first right of refusal if he ever sold it. He came through for me, but has regretted his decision ever since. None of the three tractors he has owned since have done as well as old Brutus.

 

[botaskinner]

1964, parents bought a 1954 vintage 3 bedroom 2 bath house on a 1/3 acre plot smack in Saratoga, California. Phony Eichler knockoff in a decent sized subdivision that was already in decline.
Dad was a frustrated orchardist, and the soil in the development was rock hard clay.

Somehow he found a Massey Harris pony with a set of 4 rippers in the back and a mid Mount blade made from a split length od corrugated culvert pipe.

9 year old me and my older brother spent the whole summer driving that thing all over the backyard, busting the clay and getting it ready for tilling. Probably never got it out of first gear.

We got the soil conditioned well enough to grow several years worth of veggies and newly planted fruit trees.

Dad sold the tractor by 1970, and have no idea where it is now.

I didn't get another tractor until 2015 when I could fully justify the purchase of the B2320 for our own property.

 

[Creature Meadow]

Thanks for all the responses, enjoy reading how each of you were exposed to tractors.

I was 44 before I had my on the L4600DT I have today.

Dad had a old farmall super a we used to garden with. Sold it couple of years after he passed, transmission issues and my brother and I just did not want to deal with repairing.

Mom sold it and brother moved off the farm so I went out and got the L4600, no regrets. Love what I have been able to do with it over last 3 years

 

[shootem604]

I've been driving yard/farm equipment since I was about 6. It started with a Snapper "Forrest Gump" mower (and I own one now too!), then to a McCormick Farmall Cub "C", then various other tractors (MF, JD, Ford) and finally to my Kubota.

 

[Orange4X4]

In 1986 , working for Pacific University , Forest Grove , OR.
Then in 1994 there were two brand new Kabotas when I worked
for the pumping station on Carrollton, TX

 

[torch]

8 or so, driving a John Deere B pulling the wagon while my bigger brothers loaded the hay bales.

That's how it was at my uncle's farm. When the hay was coming in, it was all hands on deck. The young boys, (8 or 10, basically big and strong enough to work the clutch and turn the wheel) drove the tractor pulling the wagon, the men threw the bales up and the older boys (12 or 14) stacked them. At the barn the older boys threw the bales off onto the elevator, the young ones straightened them out and the men in the loft stacked it.

I clearly remember the first time driving. My uncle standing on the rear axle giving me instructions -- right up to the point where he said "Ok, now let the clutch out" without explaining that it had to be eased out. Suddenly, I was on my own...

 

[bucktail]

I started at 7 pulling a hayrack with an H to pick rock. At 8 I was pulling the baler with a jd 4030 while my dad rode the rack. When I was old enough to drive unsupervised I graduated to our 1086. My dad got kicked in the face by a horse and lost his eyesight. My brother and I eased into running the farm over the next couple of years. When I turned 16 I started driving trucks for my Sunday school teacher when my brother and I were drone combining. I chisel plowed with his 4850 when he wasn't keeping up. In college I at a hog farm pulling honey wagons. They mostly had IH 3588s but they had a 1566 and a 3788 too. After college I was mostly done. I've blown the drive out a few times when I was home and pulled my brother out when he was stuck. After a few years my brother couldn't cut it farming on 400 acres and my parents rented the land to the neighbors. I bought 9 acres that I plan to build on. On my way home from working on it I saw a Ford 1100 sitting by the road for sale. When I went to look at it the same guy was selling an L1500dt so I bought that instead.

 

[bearbait]

First time was 7 years ago when the wife and I retired to the cottage. Best thing I've ever bought!

 

[Botamon]

Me, at 8 years old driving the old Oliver 70 while my Mom and Dad spread the hay on the wagon. There's a "hayloader" being towed behind the wagon that picks up the windrow of hay and drops it on the wagon. Note that the wagon still has steel tires, and the date on the photo!

[/IMG]

 

[shootem604]

Very few locals bale hay anymore, or use manual labour to load it. I made good money for many summers as a young chap tossing bales. Never got to drive the tractors though I wish I had sometimes...tossing bales can be hard work.

 

[bearbait]

Very few locals bale hay anymore, or use manual labour to load it. I made good money for many summers as a young chap tossing bales. Never got to drive the tractors though I wish I had sometimes...tossing bales can be hard work.

Yup, that's as close to driving a tractor as I got when I was a kid. Always looked at the tractors with love in my eyes but never got the offer to drive.