I'm getting closer and closer to having a honest farm, as I now have mechanization. Last weekend I picked up a small tractor. We have many things to do around here that would be so much easier with a tractor: digging post holes, trenching for water lines, digging a pond, grading and leveling, garden prep work, moving dirt and gravel around, cutting/raking/baling the pasture, pulling a trailer around...the list goes on. I know , I know, people have been doing all these things by hand for hundreds of years...but why? It's impractical to think a person can find one tractor to do ALL these things, it would cost you $20,000 and could never accomplish everything on the list equally well. So I have to start somewhere, and since I don't have an extra 20k sitting around, an older, small garden tractor seemed like just the ticket.
During the last few years my Dad restored a '49 Farmall Cub, which got me interested in "old iron".
Dad's Cub.
I watch Craigslist pretty closely, and an ad popped up for a Gibson tractor. I did a bunch of research on them and went and checked it out. I bought it that night and brought it home later in the week, a few days ago. It's a 1947 Gibson model D.
Towed it behind our Subaru. It came with a disc harrow, 12" moldboard plow, a spike harrow, and the built-in front dozer blade.
It's not very big (a "garden tractor") but has a torque-y 6 horse Wisconsin AEH engine, split rear brakes, and implements I can use to expand our garden and start cultivating some of our pasture. No PTO (though it does support powered implements if I can track down the PTO pulley that was originally an option) or 3 point hitch, but these things could be added in the future if I find I really need to.
The tractor is in excellent shape: recently painted body, new wheels and tires, and a replaced engine. Gibson will get plenty of work from me...
The first few peppers: hot banana peppers at bottom, jalapenos to the right, a purple bell above, and Hungarian black peppers at top left.
I love the variety of tomatoes we grew this year. Big ugly Purple Cherokee heirlooms are full of flavor, perfect fresh with basil, fresh mozzarella, and a good balsamic vinegar. Early ripening Stupice are fantastic slicers that have yielded the greatest so far, and Sungold cherry tomatoes are the sweetest, best tasting fresh tomatoes I've ever had.
My late-planted carrots are big enough to begin thinning out. Straight from the ground carrots are hard to beat fresh.
And here's something you don't see every day - a potato fruit. The flowers are rarely able to set fruit, as the real action is taking place underground, where the potatoes are forming. However, if your potatoes happen to set and mature fruit, don't eat it! The fruits contain high levels of toxic alkaloids that attack the nervous system (potatoes are in the deadly nightshade family, after all). I'll stick to the tubers, thanks.
