MeInMaine Blog

Tag: maine farm tractors

  • Ford 8N, Farmall Super M And John Deere B Maine Tractors.

    Maine Tractors Plowed, Tilled, Planted, Cultivated And Harvest The Crops.
    Haying Operations In Maine Doe Around These Long Time Stalled Relic Farm Tractors.

    Sounds like just a bunch of letters but mention old Maine farm tractor model numbers and many of us get excited.

    Our ears perk. We stop to listen. To add our two cents to experiences with our favorite old Maine farm tractors. What’s the glamour of an older, slightly faded, tad rusted big wheeled Maine farm tractor that is an antique and used only in parades for some?

    Many of us got exposed to time on that Maine farm tractor growing up.

    Or working for a Maine farmer that had a few as we were kids earning money to help out at home. Or we had a Grandfather, Uncle Bob who owned a farm and had a machine shed full of tractors. Usually the same color, brand, make too. Loyalty of the machine you drive started long before Harley Davidson and Indian motorcycles.

    Personally I am an International Harvester Farmall red kinda guy.

    But green and yellow are the colors of many others. Or Ford blue (or gray, red in the case of the old 8N).

    These iron horses, old Maine farm tractors are tempermental, quirky and getting parts is getting harder for some. Have a 1953 Super M International Tractor that is needing a valve job and a new fly wheel ring because of a missing tooth. And improvising around the Maine farm still happens with needed repairs. Finding someone to do them is getting harder as the mechanics that have the know how die off.

    I was destined to not waste the sunshine of last Saturday afternoon and had bought a new fuel glass sediment bowl metal keeper with adjustment tightener.

    Well the one they sent was for a Massey Harris farm tractor so now what.

    . Too small. Tried to use part of the tightener on the basket wire to no avail with the good one I had. Nope. That’s not going to work.

    Because the hay needs mowing, the project had been delayed a week for parts. And so I could put in a new tractor battery. It was just time. Past time because the weather was right. So locate a hose clamp hanging on the chicken house wall on a nail that will work just fine. The bowl is flat on the bottom, the screw of the hose clap makes it nice and snug as it tightens. No stripping.

    So time on a tractor seat in a Maine farm field over last weekend sure has made around the buildings, the back field with the apple orchard look much better. Trim and tidy.

    The sunset while the over head hawk circles, looks for scurrying 4 legged lunch morsels as field mice race in all directions.

    Looking for new cover.

    The moose on the edge of the woods just calmy watching me as I mow strips, study the distant hillsides. The same ones my Dad, brothers, Uncle Finley before all of us did working the soil, the Maine farm dirt. From the perspective of a Maine farm tractor seat.

    I know exactly the love of old iron Maine farm tractors. And have had the question posed, how much would you sell the Super M for? Not for sale, older than I am and part of my childhood on a Maine farm. No hesitation, doubt about it. We spend a lot of time together on farm “projects”, the Divine Miss M farm tractor and I.

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    I’m Maine REALTOR Andrew Mooers, ME Broker
    207.532.6573
    info@mooersrealty.com

  • Her Breathing Was Labored, You Could Hear A Popping, Respitatory Condition.

    The International Super M Farmall Tractor Keeps The Maine Farm Groomed, Worked, Up To Snuff.
    The International Super M Farmall Tractor Keeps The Maine Farm Groomed, Worked, Up To Snuff.

    Less oomph, barely able to get out of her own way and knowing something was wrong.

    She was born in 1953. Most of her years spent working hard on the same Maine potato farm. Laboring, straining out in the fields, no matter what the weather, any season. Dependable, not asking for much. Giving her all. No whining, complaining. Until now.

    The Super M tractor pulling the bush hog on a Maine farm was operating mostly on three cylinders. Power loss. The noticable pop in the air breather signalling something inside the engine, the valves were not working like when she was shiny new. When she first arrive at the farm in “Vacationland” from out west on a flat bed railroad car destined for Houlton Maine.

    Motor job. Not tractor engine replacement. But an appointment with Dr Rairdon, er I mean mechanic Bob Rairdon in this business of tractor repair most of his 76 years. I remember the last motor job done by Elmer Snell who worked on the farm and who kept everything mechanical purring, whirring. He is gone now and another mechanic needs to perform the update to the engine. While internal, replacing the fly wheel ring too that caused issues during routine farm operations when the starter stuck on, draining the battery. Interferring with the planned farm operations under sunny blue skies signalling time to make hay while the weather cooperated.

    New sleeves, the valve head reground, new rings, bearings and stem to stern part upgrade, replacement where wear and tear shows on an internal exam.

    Some asked me why not just buy a new, bigger tractor and store, keep the old girl, the super M Farmall International iron horse hidden away in a corner of the farm.

    Out of sight in the machine shed under cover, put out to pasture so to speak. Too much history, time spent on this old girl to park her. I need her to keep the farm intact, groomed and she knows her way around the lay of the land in Maine.

    The International Farmall super M tractor is scheduled for surgery soon and I finished up the bush hogging with less power, a little lower gearing. But like an athelete playing hurt, sick, injured thru the playoffs, she declared she did not have time for as Carly Simon sung, “the pain”.

    I’m Maine REALTOR Andrew Mooers
    207.532.6573
    info@mooersrealty.com.