The Farm - Part Nine

Ford 601 Workmaster

As you might imagine, you need a certain amount of farm equipment to run even a small farm like ours. The beast above is a Ford 601 Workmaster. I bought it from a farmer in Sellersville and actually rode it up Route 309 from Sellersville to our farm in Quakertown.

The Workmaster was made from 1957 to 1962 and was a 4-cylinder, 8 valve, liquid cooled engine with only 48 horsepower. While that doesn't seem very powerful, that tractor was geared in such a way that it was able to pull a variety of farm gear. It also was incredibly fast for such a small engine. During the time we owned it, we used it to pull a manure spreader, bush hog and a variety of carts and wagons.

It sat outside in all kinds of weather and while it didn't look like much, would start flawlessly every time. They don't make things like this anymore!

In addition to the tractor, we also had a good-sized manure spreader:

Manure Spreader

For those of you that don't know crap about manure spreaders, think of it as a large open trailer that gets towed by the tractor. You fill it up with horse, sheep, bull and pig feces and then take it out to an open area of the field. The PTO (Drive mechanism) on the tractor spins and the manure is slowly moved from the front of the spreader to the back, where it's ground up by mechanical teeth and distributed evenly onto the field. This enriches the soil and returns organic matter back into the field. Sort of a win/win for a farmer.

We had 13 horses at one time that produced enough "by-product" that the spreader had to be emptied weekly. One very cold winter day, I took the tractor/spreader out to the field when it was VERY full of manure. When I turned on the PTO to start the spreading, I heard a sickening BANG coming from behind the tractor. I realized that the chain links that moved the manure to the back grinder had snapped. I spent the rest of the weekend UNLOADING frozen manure from the spreader to get to the chain links to replace them. I also remember laying on my back under the spreader on one of the coldest days in memory using every curse work I could muster up and even invented a few new ones. Helpful hint - Don't let the manure freeze in your spreader before spreading it.

In addition to the tractor and spreader, we had an 8 foot wide bushhog to cut the grass in the field, an ATV (two at one point) with a cart for moving grain and food around:

ATV next to trampoline

We also had a Ford F150 pickup truck that our oldest learned to drive when he was maybe 13? He became pretty good at driving on the farm years before he was legally able to.

The tractor and the ATVs were favorites for the kids. They would race one another in the field behind the barn or take the tractor into the woods at the back of the property "exploring". I got home from work one day and the kids informed me that they had accidentally buried the tractor up to its axles. We couldn't dig it out, so we had to call a tow truck to free it. The tow truck ALSO got stuck and had to call in a bigger tow truck normally used for big rigs to get us both out. It was a very expensive afternoon.

Running a farm was a lot of hard work, but very rewarding.