A regular sight for me this past fall has been the awesome farm machines that I have met on my road enroute to the big city. Not sure what they call these huge machines but to me in my old jargon they are “combines” or “corn binders”. Regardless of the name, they manage to take up two-thirds of the paved road surface and defensively I have to slow down and move over to let them by. The other new farm monsters I see regularly are tractors, usually hauling one or two or sometimes even three grain trailers behind them. Occasionally, too, they pull gigantic manure canisters with the biggest tires imaginable. (I won’t get into the leaking manure hauler which caused a big “stink” in our little village last year).

Seeing these big machines casts me back to when I was in my late teens. My parents had just moved to a rural area near London, Ontario where my father was hoping to live a childhood dream of raising horses. We had twenty acres of farmland on a gravel road, neither of which impressed me at the time since it was so far from my friends. However, because we lived about 30 km from my first year at university, I was looking forward to being able to drive to school in my father’s 1960 Chevrolet Impala. (There weren’t too many students at that time who could drive to school in such opulence even though the car was seven years old).

One hot summer Saturday in 1968, having just woken up (teenagers tend to sleep in a lot), I noticed my mother driving into our driveway alone – she seldom drove anywhere without my father- and I was curious. Apparently, she had driven back from Lambeth – a good sixty kilometres away – where my father had just picked up a second hand tractor he had purchased for $200. He was driving that tractor all the way home!

When he arrived, I was less than awed by the “new” faded red Massey Ferguson tractor sitting in the driveway. It was a relatively small, open-engine machine with no cab. It had a spring supported steel seat and four gears: neutral, reverse, slow and fast forward. Sitting on the seat the engine gave off considerable heat and I could only imagine how hot my poor father must have been driving that thing so far on such a scorching day. 

Still, it was a vehicle that I could drive? Thankfully, my dad was anxious to let me drive his latest acquisition and he briefly showed me how to drive it – right then and there. He stood behind me on the hitch bar behind the seat and I drove it all the way to the creek and back. Slow but fun!

Dad told me he had also bought a two-furrow plow which he would be picking up soon from Mr. Maddell down the road. Suddenly, I was very excited by the thought of plowing our entire twenty-acre farm! When I eventually got to try plowing, though, it was not easy. I’d dig too deep, then not deep enough and after I completed one trip to the creek and back, leaving a crooked uneven furrow, I realized this was not easy. Clearly these farmers possessed a great deal of skill which I obviously did not have. 

As I found out later, these farmers also had more powerful tractors and seven furrow ploughs. Two furrow plows were history, even then. My dad came to the same conclusion as plowing was obviously not his thing either. He ended up hiring a local farmer to tend our field the next year, including plowing, fertilizing and seeding the land. But in the fall, the corn binder came, operated by a contractor with a roving monster machine. The driver worked day and night, harvesting the corn. I can still recall seeing him on that machine, field lights glowing ahead in the evening as he cut the corn stocks and deposited the kernels into the grain trailers behind. I watched him finish the job and promptly move on to the next field. What a production! What stamina!

I didn’t see this amazing harvesting scene again though until my recent move to our current rural village. When my father unexpectedly passed away the year after that my harvest experience, my mom sold our “farm” and we all moved back to the city. That was the end of my rural life…until now.

“I’m back”, as they say. It’s sixty years later and things have changed. The combines are bigger and the tractors – oh those newfangled tractors – are huge!

A few weeks ago, I was walking on a local village street, and I noticed my neighbour had a giant tractor and grain trailer sitting in his driveway. I asked if he had sold his truck and replaced it with the tractor (smile). He told me that he had driven the tractor home the previous night from a farm field his family leased about 30 km away. He mentioned that coming home it had been snowing and driving the tractor had been difficult, particularly with the high winds blowing the snow across the roads. He didn’t want to turn on his field lights for fear of blinding on-coming traffic. I knew what he was talking about as I had been driving in those same conditions bringing my grandson home from scouts the previous night. It was difficult to drive. I looked at his tractor and realized it was one of those massive vehicles that take up two thirds of the road. I didn’t envy his predicament in that snowstorm.

I told him about my dad’s Massey Ferguson and he invited me to look at his New Holland “limo”. I was anxious to compare the two. There were five steps up to the enclosed cab. I asked if the newer ones had an elevator to get up? Inside were two seats, one a comfortable driver’s seat which he sat in to explain to me how easily it operated. Sadly, I can’t remember his instructions. But I did realize it definitely was not the simple transmission I had seen many years ago. It seemed more like a car I thought. I wondered about the second seat which was not as fancy, but definitely comfortable. He told me that when he was in the fields he would sit in that seat to read his book. The tractor operated by itself using a gps program. Apparently, the field program can be mapped out ahead of time and the tractor drives itself under the watchful? eye of the operator. I must say this tractor was impressive, but very big! I certainly couldn’t see it pulling a two-furrow plow.

Of course, the grain trailer was big and equally impressive and had its own auger to unload the grain. Looking at it, I couldn’t imagine ever having to change its tires, or for that matter, for either vehicle. Where do they service these brutes?

How can farmers afford this type of equipment I thought? When I look at the farmers surrounding my village it is clear that farming is big business with huge investments. Twenty acres like my parents had is nothing. More land should bring greater economies of scale. But land is not cheap, particularly good arable land (without trees?). There’s lots of talk these days about how folks can afford housing, but I wonder how young persons can ever afford to start up a large farm with investments needed to buy or lease combines, tractors, grain trailers, and associated implements, not to mention to also build silos, barns and, of course, a house.

Living here, I have a whole new appreciation for the farming business and, of course, those incredible road-hogging tractors! And wouldn’t it be fun to sit in a gps programmed monster and read a book?