It was a fluke! I actually had a chance to attend Praireland. No rain, I wasn’t fired. The planets just aligned right. I never commit to a tractor event in September. I can’t. Harvest is rush season for a grain hauler.
I’m not complaining, but it was time to take a day off. I’d only had one day to myself at the beginning of September. While everyone was celebrating Labor Day, I labored.
Originally, I had agreed with the elevator manager that I wanted to go home early to mow and bale my yard. Catch up on laundry so I have clean clothes. We negotiated further, and I had Saturday free to play
I’ve written about this previously, but my idea of relaxing needs reassessment. I didn’t just attend the tractor show, I “worked” it. I’ve never paid much attention to the goings on inside the loop the railroad tracks create.
Praireland can be termed a working show. There’s far more beyond lines of old tractors on display. Flea market, restored buildings, Praireland’s museums, the railroad, sawmill, everything to expect at a steam show. Saturday’s schedule includes an antique pull.
This leads back to the “test” plot. There’s a corn field that needs to be harvested, and dirt work for next year’s field preparation. Some of the corn gets picked, and since Paul Scheerer has a collection of antique, John Deere combines, some corn gets shelled. Actually, all the corn gets shelled, just not all with one machine. The ear corn gets processed through a stationary belt driven sheller. Past modern technology.
Without much arm twisting, Digger Dave got me to disk stalks to make the plowing easier. His Farmall Super M was attached to a rolling shreader followed by a disk. There was a Farmall H with just a disk behind it that I swapped over to operate. It’s not like I didn’t know how to drive that.
I did a couple of rounds on a Minneapolis Moline G707 pulling five bottoms. To date, that’s the biggest power I’ve operated with a hand clutch.
There is nothing better than farming in the past on my day off from modern farming.
Editor’s note ~ Thanks to Patrick Wombles for some of the photography.
