JimRB
Veteran Member
My uncle is semi-retired and is a bit hunched over. On the other hand he is in his late seventies so that is to be expected. The family farm is around Ossian, Indiana which is the eastern edge. Corn and beans country. My cousin and my uncle were working on getting the combine ready. Beans and corn have another week or so before they are dry enough to economically harvest.
My uncle was not interested in old iron until he was nearly retired. He had a run of a few decades of fixing things up, buying and selling until he started losing sensations in his hand which makes it hard to work.
He had a few poppers. Two that were his and two that he had restored and was storing for a someone. He had a yellow 430 popper but it had vertical cylinders. Beside that was the JD he farmed with for years. He bought it new in 1958 and it was one I rode on when I was a pup 45 years ago. He was sort of embarrassed about the leaks on his tractor. He was just spraying some freshen up paint before he got into the proper restoration mode. Of course his idea of freshen up paint is more of 3/4 restore.
The steel spoke one he really liked with the straight pipe. We tooled around the yard on it. First time I drove a tractor that has a arm operated clutch instead of foot operated.
We took out his propane power 520. This is another pride and joy as they only made less than 800 units. Another hand operated clutch. We rode around the 15 acres of woods for a while looking at Ash borer death. He was using the 520 to move around combine heads.
In the barn were some more modern diesel power JDs. Nothing huge as they are only farming 550 acres on mostly flat land. Case combine was sort of small with a 25 foot head while those high production or filthy rich folks might have bigger combines with much wider heads.. Again they are running a small farm.
My uncle was not interested in old iron until he was nearly retired. He had a run of a few decades of fixing things up, buying and selling until he started losing sensations in his hand which makes it hard to work.
He had a few poppers. Two that were his and two that he had restored and was storing for a someone. He had a yellow 430 popper but it had vertical cylinders. Beside that was the JD he farmed with for years. He bought it new in 1958 and it was one I rode on when I was a pup 45 years ago. He was sort of embarrassed about the leaks on his tractor. He was just spraying some freshen up paint before he got into the proper restoration mode. Of course his idea of freshen up paint is more of 3/4 restore.
The steel spoke one he really liked with the straight pipe. We tooled around the yard on it. First time I drove a tractor that has a arm operated clutch instead of foot operated.
We took out his propane power 520. This is another pride and joy as they only made less than 800 units. Another hand operated clutch. We rode around the 15 acres of woods for a while looking at Ash borer death. He was using the 520 to move around combine heads.
In the barn were some more modern diesel power JDs. Nothing huge as they are only farming 550 acres on mostly flat land. Case combine was sort of small with a 25 foot head while those high production or filthy rich folks might have bigger combines with much wider heads.. Again they are running a small farm.