This past Wednesday my family and I had a chance to go up to my Aunt and Uncle's and visit with our extended family. It is always fun to go up there because that is the families home place and they are doing a great job of keeping it up and bringing back some of the buildings that were breaking down. But, the other reason that it is fun to go is because my Uncle is a tractor collector ... specifically Minneapolis Moline and all related stuff.Above is a picture of my uncle on his Moline Universal tractor. This tractor was produced in the teens and was called a universal because there were attachments for plows, cultivators, binders, and more. Some of the implements that could be used attached in any interesting way. In order to use the plow for example you took of the back portion of the tractor (the back two wheels and the seat) and then attached the two bottom plow and switched the seat over.
A picture like this really shows how far we have come in farming ... even for small scale farms like ours.
Really cool!
ReplyDeleteAlthough (dare I say it?), it's also the introductory element in what lead us to Titan Farmers.
Horse drawn stuff would stay on in mainstream farming until the 50s, but after that it remained in farming use (keeping in mind I'm excluding ranching, where horse use remains strong) only in the hands of those who simply would not change, could not change, just liked horses, or who had a religious reason to keep equine farming.
But, farming based on equine power had to remain "small" by definition. Power equipment farming appears to know no bounds in terms of scale . . .
Unless, of course, that scale is limited by the price of petroleum. . .
Anyhow, neat photo, and sorry for the editorial.
"...it's also the introductory element in what lead us to Titan Farmers..."
ReplyDeleteIt looks and functions almost exactly like a TroyBilt tiller with a front drive unit and a tilling unit mounted behind the drive unit. So it might be more relevant to allowing the easier establishment of the home garden or the small market garden than the Titan farmer.