Probably because of my interest in agriculture, my parents allowed me to become a “farmer” in a small way. I got to drive the tractor at a young age. We owned a 1949 model Allis‑Chalmers tractor. It was orange in color and was about as temperamental as a mule. My interest in machines and mechanics may have also had something to do with my getting that “privilege.” Along with the tractor we owned a flat bed trailer, a two‑bottom disc plow, a harrow, a cultivator and a two‑row planter. We also had what was called a “buzz saw” that was operated using the tractor. We seldom if ever used the cultivator, but we used most of the other implements. The tractor and plow were a special team.
I don’t know exactly how it got started, but I assume Dad must have been the first one to use the tractor and plow to plow garden spots for various families in Heber. He was followed by Ted. Later Vard got the job, then Terry, and finally me. Since there were few, if any, other tractors or plows in Heber (maybe one other one) we plowed our own lot beside The Rock House so we could have a garden. Several others in town also planted large gardens so we would be hired to plow their lots as well. Some were regular customers and some only once in a while. I think the charge was about ten dollars for plowing and harrowing for a normal sized lot. Usually the job would take a couple of hours if everything worked right. That was where we often ran into a problem.
The first challenge was to get the tractor started. It didn’t have a starter so it had to be cranked. You had to be a certain size to be able to crank the tractor to get it started. Sometimes it would start right up and sometimes it wouldn’t start for love nor money.
Once you got it started, the next challenge was to hook it up to the plow. You had to back the tractor over the plow since it hooked onto the tractor underneath. Oh I forgot—you had to first remove the draw bar because the plow attached at the same point where the draw bar attached. If you were strong and lucky, you backed the tractor right over the plow and you could line up the attachment without a problem. More often than not, you had to spend a lot of time either re‑backing the tractor or trying to move one wheel without moving the other so that you got everything lined up right. There was certainly some skill involved but also a lot of dumb luck as well. Most of the time it took at least two people to hook on the plow but I got to where I could do it alone.
To plow you usually started in the middle of the field and just went around and around until you reached the edges of the field leaving a furrow around the edges of the field. If preferred, you could start at the edges and end up with a dead furrow in the middle. The plow did a nice job of turning the soil over. You just put the wheel of the tractor in the furrow and the tractor would almost drive its self down the field. You only had to pay attention when you got to the end of the field and had to turn around. Sometimes the tractor would just quit running for no obvious reason. Sometimes you could get off and restart it and sometimes it refused to start (like a mule). I finally learned to just walk away and leave it for a few hours and then come back and start it again and finish the plowing job. Depending on the “attitude” of the tractor, a plowing job could take two hours or a full day.
After plowing the field, you had to take the plow off the tractor, put the draw bar back on and then hook up to the harrow. The harrow was like a large rake that you pulled over the plowed ground in different directions to break up the clods and to leave a nice flat seedbed for planting. The harrowing was the easy part. When you finished harrowing, the field was ready for planting. It always gave me quite a sense of accomplishment to see a field ready to be planted as a result of my efforts and patience with the tractor. It was also a way to earn a few dollars on the side which always came in handy for a high school student.