SOMETHING OLD SOMETHING NEW SOMETHING BORROWED SOMETHING BLUE

"Congratulations on the new tractor!" my Dad said, "What type is it?"
"Orange!!" I answered proudly. Apparently I carried the family tradition as my cousin had answered similarly when asked about her new car. In the subsequent homesteading years I have learnt a little more about tractors. Be they blue, orange, red or green. Old or new. Big or small.

Earlier this year my brother, @craigcryptoking and I met at my Dad @quailbreeder, for a two week vacation. He also lives on a farm. Dad, not my city slicking brother. The farm is my Dad's cousins huge industrial family farm. And they have TRACTORS!

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Big ones. Bigger ones. Massive ones. All the names are there. John Deere. Massey Ferguson. Ford. Then there were the retired old favourites. Some were really old. And those were my favourite.

Old tractors make for wonderful photography. As well as bringing a touch of nostalgia. Sure unless you are Amish we've come a far way from horse drawn ploughs and hand sewing the fields. But even the tractors that were in their prime a century ago were vital to the survival of so many farming communities.

Although not initially known as a tractor John Froelich invented the first successful gasoline-powered engine. It was 1892 in the tiny village in Northeast Iowa. And it could be driven backwards and forwards! The steam-powered engines were used to thresh wheat.

Before him the inventor Benjamin Holt patented his first practical crawler-type tread tractor. How far we have come since them! And how much more the tractors are designed and expected to do, than harvest wheat.

For this first #marketfriday of another year I am delving back in time for @dswigle and a rather unique retired market type entry. So appropriate that word. If it weren't for the tractors many farmers would never get their produce planted or harvested for the markets.

My little boy has a shirt with a tractor on it. And the words "Support Local Farmers!" As farmers I particularly love those words. I wish more people, the world over would realize that without the hardworking farmers, and their tractors, they would not eat!