I have always liked having field cars around, and I had one for most of the 22 years that I have owned the family farm. That probably goes back to when my grandad rode me around in his Ford model A “jalopi” , before I learned to walk. He had chains on the back tires for traction, an open cab, and a wood box on the back.
As I get older, I like them more for tools than toys. My own first was an old Plymouth Volari 2-door, that I got for $100. It had a carbureted slant-6 engine and automatic transmission. That and the next one were pure toys.
I had it when I met and first started dating my wife. We had lots of good times in it. So much so that we picked the song by that name, by Dean Martin, for our wedding. The name means “to fly” in Italian. The last year I had it, all the brakes were not working, which was interesting and challenging but I don’t miss that part as much as I do the big back seat.
My next one was a Ford Mustang with a fuel injected 5.0 liter V-8 and a standard transmission. It started better than the Volari, but it was a lot lighter and not as good at busting thru hedgerows. It was great for doing donuts out in the open fields. Each of those cars were only useful in the summers, when the fields were good and dry, and I didn’t use them for any farming tasks.
My next one was an old 4-cylinder Chevy tracker, that my wife had bought new, but was no longer road worthy. I thought I had something there that would be good for some farm tasks, but I beat it up too bad the first winter, running around on the frozen ground. The linkage failed on the shifter and I had to use a vice grip on the cable to get it in and out of drive and reverse, with great difficulty. I didn’t feel like fixing that, so I junked it.
There was a 5 year gap after that, unfortunately when our kids were learning to drive. We had to teach them out on the roads with our regular vehicles, just like the city folks do. I got to admit that I was a little scared the first time I took our oldest daughter out on the public road. I wished I would have been been able to teach her the basics out in the field first. Thankfully, her and her 10 month younger sister both did ok.
Our newest field car arrived yesterday. I am going to try and baby this one a little. It is an all wheel drive, 4-door Dodge Durango. The sweetcorn, in the field out back, is just starting to put on ears; so it arrived just in the nick of time. I will be picking that every day soon and it beats the heck out of driving a slow, rough-riding tractor back there.
It has a great suspension and takes the ditches real good. I will be trapping that corn for nussance coons and it will work well for checking those traps each morning. It will also work great for transporting my guns and shooting supply’s to the range at the back of the farm.
I like a field vehicle a lot better than an atv for tasks like those for a few reasons, the first being that they are safer. When I was in my early 20’s, my dad got 4-wheeler and it didn’t take me long to roll it over onto myself as I tried climbing a hill that was a little too steep. Fortunately, the ground was soft and I walked away with no broken bones and no visible damage to the machine.
Besides being safer, they are also much cheaper. I traded my old truck camper, that I was hoping to get $1000 for, for the last one. You can’t get much of an atv for that.
Other advantages are the enclosed cab - just like the tractor cab proponents always argue. It would suck to get caught picking corn or back on the range in a rainstorm, and an open atv. It is also nice to use that closed cab to get downwind of deer, before walking into the brush and wooded areas to begin a hunt. They can smell you driving around them a lot easier in an open atv.
As I get older, I like them more for tools than toys. My own first was an old Plymouth Volari 2-door, that I got for $100. It had a carbureted slant-6 engine and automatic transmission. That and the next one were pure toys.
I had it when I met and first started dating my wife. We had lots of good times in it. So much so that we picked the song by that name, by Dean Martin, for our wedding. The name means “to fly” in Italian. The last year I had it, all the brakes were not working, which was interesting and challenging but I don’t miss that part as much as I do the big back seat.
My next one was a Ford Mustang with a fuel injected 5.0 liter V-8 and a standard transmission. It started better than the Volari, but it was a lot lighter and not as good at busting thru hedgerows. It was great for doing donuts out in the open fields. Each of those cars were only useful in the summers, when the fields were good and dry, and I didn’t use them for any farming tasks.
My next one was an old 4-cylinder Chevy tracker, that my wife had bought new, but was no longer road worthy. I thought I had something there that would be good for some farm tasks, but I beat it up too bad the first winter, running around on the frozen ground. The linkage failed on the shifter and I had to use a vice grip on the cable to get it in and out of drive and reverse, with great difficulty. I didn’t feel like fixing that, so I junked it.
There was a 5 year gap after that, unfortunately when our kids were learning to drive. We had to teach them out on the roads with our regular vehicles, just like the city folks do. I got to admit that I was a little scared the first time I took our oldest daughter out on the public road. I wished I would have been been able to teach her the basics out in the field first. Thankfully, her and her 10 month younger sister both did ok.
Our newest field car arrived yesterday. I am going to try and baby this one a little. It is an all wheel drive, 4-door Dodge Durango. The sweetcorn, in the field out back, is just starting to put on ears; so it arrived just in the nick of time. I will be picking that every day soon and it beats the heck out of driving a slow, rough-riding tractor back there.
It has a great suspension and takes the ditches real good. I will be trapping that corn for nussance coons and it will work well for checking those traps each morning. It will also work great for transporting my guns and shooting supply’s to the range at the back of the farm.
I like a field vehicle a lot better than an atv for tasks like those for a few reasons, the first being that they are safer. When I was in my early 20’s, my dad got 4-wheeler and it didn’t take me long to roll it over onto myself as I tried climbing a hill that was a little too steep. Fortunately, the ground was soft and I walked away with no broken bones and no visible damage to the machine.
Besides being safer, they are also much cheaper. I traded my old truck camper, that I was hoping to get $1000 for, for the last one. You can’t get much of an atv for that.
Other advantages are the enclosed cab - just like the tractor cab proponents always argue. It would suck to get caught picking corn or back on the range in a rainstorm, and an open atv. It is also nice to use that closed cab to get downwind of deer, before walking into the brush and wooded areas to begin a hunt. They can smell you driving around them a lot easier in an open atv.
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