At the moment, its mid feb and had recently rained. There were a few little ploughing jobs in small paddocks. Whenever we have a large paddock to do, we hire a neighbour’s 108 plate set of offset disks and pull it with a NH t9.505. But for the small jobs, I use dad’s old 28 plate offset plough pulled by his Fiat 115-90 tractor.
While giving my son a run down on the ‘quirks’ of a 33 year old tractor (ie, which gears don’t work and ignore that warning light – its always on and watch the temperature gauge…), he was sitting in the seat and asked ‘Where’s the GPS?’. When told that GPS wasn’t available when this tractor was purchased, the next question came with disbelief. ‘So you have to steer it when your plough then….?’
Dad brought that tractor new in 1986 and I still remember the first time I was allowed to drive it. Dad sat under a nearby tree for hours watching me plough with the exact same implement. Prior to this tractor we had a Fiat 750 super with no cabin and hard seat. So, to have a cabin (made by Ferrari no less!), padded seat and air conditioning in a tractor with 115 horsepower (count them … 115 bucking broncos) – Woo Hoo! We were kings!
I smiled.
And wondered what my grandchildren might say about my beloved tractors in the future?
‘But Grandad, why does it have a seat? Do you really have to sit in it? Can’t you just tell it which paddock to go to? Only five hundred horsepower… thats hardly enough to do anything….’