The Homestead - Tractors etc.

[sandbender]

I love old tractors, a surprisingly large number are still kicking around farms all across Europe. These are often machines that are kept running by their owners, parts are either robust, or easy to fix/bodge as needed.

One particular engine type may be of interest to readers here, the 'Hot Bulb' engine.

The design is simplicity itself, there is very little to go wrong, which may be why there are still quite a few kicking around. The 'hot bulb' relates to part of the engine that must be warmed up before the engine can be started, commonly this is done with a blow torch however it is not unknown for folks to light fires beneath them. Once the engine is running, the heat of combustion keeps the machine ticking over.

In this part of the world, Hungary, there are many, mostly because there was a Hungarian manufacturer of these tractors in the twenties and thirties, but also because many forward thinking farmers broke down their machines and buried them to make sure that neither the Germans or the Russian nicked them. Once dug up in the late forties they were put back to work.

One of the big advantages of the design is the ability to use a wide variety of fuels, including some very 'dirty' ones including used cooking oil, creosote etc.

Tough little machines. Here is one in Germany being 'started up'.

[video=youtube;Qm6nHPcRT-A]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qm6nHPcRT-A[/video]

 

[British Red]

That is a gorgeous bit of kit!

I can't compete - but I regularly avail myself of my neighbours 60 year old Fordson Major - still going strong and acts as our forklift, brash shifter, JCB etc,


Tractor and fire_1 by British Red, on Flickr

 

[sandbender]

That is a gorgeous bit of kit!

I can't compete - but I regularly avail myself of my neighbours 60 year old Fordson Major - still going strong and acts as our forklift, brash shifter, JCB etc,


Tractor and fire_1 by British Red, on Flickr

Oh that is handy thing to have around, if it has been in the same hands since new then your neighbour has certainly had his moneys worth.

 

[British Red]

He loves tinkering with old kit - runs around in a Series I Land Rover. He restores and sells classic tractors - but the old rusty Fordson is just used. It goes...and goes...and goes!

 

[tiger stacker]

On the A75 near the schoolhouse cafe is a big house(southern side of road) with a blue tractor restored.

 

[Macaroon]

I've just spent a very pleasant hour or so exploring old Eastern Bloc tractors and trucks, led to them from sandbender's great link above...........
There's some truly amazing kit around and all of it not only eminently usable but full of interest and character, too. Although I wonder what the H&S boys and girls would make of all those exposed fly wheels, pto's and flapping belts?

I've lately had to get by on my twenty acres of grass by using a series of 4WD mot failures, little lightweight jobs such as Suzukis and Skoobydoos
which are light enough to skip along the top of the ground without causing any compaction or ruts in the recent wet wet wet, but they're soulless if effective; I can get away with it 'cause we still use the horses for most of the harrowing, mowing and carting etc. We were, up until a few years ago, still building traditional haystacks but the kids just come and fire them so we had to stop.

 

[didicoy]

I still have my MF 65 tractor with loader.

 

[demographic]

We used to have a Fergie 35 and our next door neighbour had a Grey Fergie.
Got a mate with a gas converted Grey Fergie, just has a gas bottle in the transporter box at the back.

 

[Swallow]

Ah. Fordson Major. The favoured ATV of Irish Special Forces. Seen here in the hands of the Leprechaun Special Response Unit.

 

[British Red]

Loving the roll over bar made of box section

 

[Swallow]

Loving the roll over bar made of box section

I think that was required to make it road legal. However I'm not sure how functional it is as a roll bar because it folds (!?) to allow it in the door of the shed. You can see the hinge on the rusty bit half way up. Fortunately it (the roll bar) has never seen action. It's a pretty heavy duty set of pins that hold it in place but I doubt they are up to the forces required.

 

[Spaniel man]

I love old tractors, a surprisingly large number are still kicking around farms all across Europe. These are often machines that are kept running by their owners, parts are either robust, or easy to fix/bodge as needed.

One particular engine type may be of interest to readers here, the 'Hot Bulb' engine.

The design is simplicity itself, there is very little to go wrong, which may be why there are still quite a few kicking around. The 'hot bulb' relates to part of the engine that must be warmed up before the engine can be started, commonly this is done with a blow torch however it is not unknown for folks to light fires beneath them. Once the engine is running, the heat of combustion keeps the machine ticking over.

In this part of the world, Hungary, there are many, mostly because there was a Hungarian manufacturer of these tractors in the twenties and thirties, but also because many forward thinking farmers broke down their machines and buried them to make sure that neither the Germans or the Russian nicked them. Once dug up in the late forties they were put back to work.

One of the big advantages of the design is the ability to use a wide variety of fuels, including some very 'dirty' ones including used cooking oil, creosote etc.

Tough little machines. Here is one in Germany being 'started up'.

[video=youtube;Qm6nHPcRT-A]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qm6nHPcRT-A[/video]

Holy cow, that's a beast of a thing! Makes my old MF35 look like a Dinky toy! I do miss it, but it was a bit 'quirky' to be using regularly.
My 'new' workhorse is even older, a 1952 TE20. Possibly the most reliable piece of machinery I've ever come across. It does pretty much all the heavy jobs that I can't manage with the quad. I just wish it had a loader on it.

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[demographic]

Grey Fergies (TE20's) are an absolute legend of a little tractor.

 

[milius2]

I bought myself a tractor from your way Massey Ferguson 65 (1962) some people say they don't make tractors that good anymore, so we'll see It's under major repairs now, being stripped down naked to be newly born with front loader and that's gonna be a lot of help off my back....

 

[sandbender]

The LifeTrac 6 an 'open source' tractor.

[video=vimeo;75544977]http://vimeo.com/75544977[/video]

I have been following the development of the LifeTrac for a few years now, this is the latest version.

Spec and blueprints for the tractor here, more of their machines here.

 

[Macaroon]

There's some really interesting stuff on that open source ecology linky - thanks for that

 

[pwb]

Lovely machines and boy can that hot bulb move.

Not exactly homestead but this little Kubota is used at work .

The Kubota was used last year to cut the grass for hay using a hayter swipe then turned it with an old hay turner . We borrowed an old Case to run the Massey bailer to bail the hay.

I recently discovered this cool old pic of my Dad on his old Allis Chalmers , he told me that those are a couple of German POWs on the trailer that used to help out on the farm.

Pete.

 

[British Red]

This is our "tractor" (although we also have a ride on mower)


VB 21 Rotovator by British Red, on Flickr

I was rotovating the raised beds today. I did about a thousand square feet (plus weeding edging etc.). It occurs to me that, without some form of "assisted soil cultivation" homesteading would be a miserable experience. Now its perfectly "doable" to have a rotovator (although to be entirely self sufficient a larger one than ours is needed), horse and plough, small tractor, even oxen. A spade thouh is just not going to cut it.

 

[Macaroon]

"I was rotovating the raised beds today. I did about a thousand square feet (plus weeding edging etc.). It occurs to me that, without some form of "assisted soil cultivation" homesteading would be a miserable experience. Now its perfectly "doable" to have a rotovator (although to be entirely self sufficient a larger one than ours is needed), horse and plough, small tractor, even oxen. A spade thouh is just not going to cut it."

They used to reckon that a fit strong man working sixty hours a week could just about keep on top of an acre of good ground, in order to keep it in good heart and productive; and that's sixty hours a week averaged out over the seasons!

A miserable experience indeed, and no doubt a very unpleasant and painful old age in the times when old age began in your fifties.............................No thankyou!