Our Recent Purchase, Headache, Adventure, and Toy

Well, I said I would write this blog post 2 days ago and we see how that went… about as well as our delivery of said item.

Mystery Object

If you know us, or have been following the blog, you know we moved out into the country in December and have 12 acres. Our 12 acres now has a small orchard planted on it and we are planning our next project, a big garden. We lease 7-8 acres of the land to a farmer currently (honoring a lease that was signed with the previous owner). The garden still should be rather large with some room to expand. Some of the area is part of the field that the farmer gave us back, but a large portion of it is grass.


The person who farms our field has nicely offered to disc the garden for us, but it will need to be broken down further before we can plant. So… the moment you have all been waiting for…. What did we buy…….


A TRACTOR! Not just any tractor but a 1947 Farmall Model A and as one person commented of course it is old! We sure love our antiques. We went with a Farmall Model A because it’s small enough to fit in the barn and made to do row crops with a high clearance. We also really like that it looked like the older style of tractors (Pre-WWII) instead of the new style of modern tractors more similar to Ford Model 9N.

Farmall Model A

Farmall was a model/brandname for International Harvester. Most Farmalls were made for row-crops. They were primarily built as affordable, all-purpose tractors for small to medium family farms. It perhaps is one of the most well-known tractor brands in the 1940’s. The model is also a 1 plow tractor. The engine on this model is offset from the seat to be able to see where you are going.

Offset Engine from Seat

Now, we are super excited to have our Farmall tractor. We had been looking at these for a while and we got a good deal on this one. It needs a bit of work though. It needs all four tires and the clutch is stuck, but it runs well. So, after a quick call to my mechanic father to see if he’d help us fix up the tractor, we bought it!

Next step, how to get it home. The guy who owned the tractor also had a tow truck business and offered to drop it off. This is where the fun starts… They came to drop off the tractor and the flatbed truck pulls in the driveway (mistake 1). He then realizes the tractor needs to go into the carport. He tells Jeremy he will have to drive on the grass a little bit to get it turned around. This is where things go haywire.

Sunk Tow-Truck

The truck goes off of the grass more than a little and sinks. Not just sinks a little but buries itself to the axles. …. OOPS. Well, he can’t get out. He then calls another tow truck… which is unable to pull him out…. Then, he calls another larger tow truck and in the process of being successfully removed from the crater he had dug himself rips up even more of the yard and adds to the new pond that’s been dug for us.

It's moving!

Bye-bye truck!

Our temporary new swimming hole

Finally, after being extracted he gets in his truck backs out of the driveway and cuts the wheel really hard and digs one final rut before leaving… wow what a crazy 4 hours. At least the owner of the tractor/tow truck company has said once things dry out he will fix the yard up just like it never happened. So now we hope it stops raining so it can dry out.

One last rut for good measure.

This blog post was partially delayed because the tractor was unloaded anywhere it could be gotten off of the truck safely to lighten its load. So, it was stuck half rolled over a stump and Jeremy and I could not roll it over it. So, special shout out to our good friend who drove over the next day to help us push it under the carport out of the rain that seems to never end this spring.


The bright side to it all is that our 1947 Farmall tractor is home and awaiting its new life on our farm.

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