The Rural Voice, 1991-09, Page 31hours of tinkering to make them run
again. Brian, who wants to be the
fifth generation to farm the Gross
homestead, loves this part of the work.
It occupies the winter months and
slack periods of the summer.
Finding parts is not a big problems,
Gordon says. "Since the tractors we
work with come from the late 1940s
and 1950s period, there are still parts
available." The men do their own
cleaning of the machines and co-oper-
ate with repainting them, which is
done in the summer.
One restoration in particular was a
labour of love for Harold and involved
a bit of detective work to find the
tractor he wanted. In 1989, with a
sizeable collection already in place,
Harold decided he wanted to hunt
down a tractor he'd used when he op-
erated a threshing gang in the area
between Auburn and Blyth. He'd sold
the Case D Diesel 500 tractor 15 years
earlier, but after two weeks of hunting
he found it again. He first traced the
tractor to a farmer in the Lucknow
area but he had died and it had been
auctioned off. The auctioneer was
helpful, went hack in his records and
found the tractor had been sold to a
man near Tiverton. The auctioneer
found the buyer address, but he'd sold
it to a man at Neustadt.
Harold went to visit the 70 -year-
old owner, who was still using it. The
gentleman admitted that the big, heavy
tractor, which lacked power steering,
was getting to be a bit much for him.
Harold bought the machine for $1500
and only had to do a minor overhaul to
get it working as good as new. Now
repainted, he estimated last year the
tractor might be worth the $4,600 he
first paid for it back in 1954.
Harold says the Case D was the se-
cond tractor he'd used on his threshing
gang — he started out with a Case LA
Harold and Bernice Gross stand with their collection of tractors, including the first
new tractor Harold bought in 1954. It's a economical hobby, he says.
in 1947.
Once the only way to bringing in
the grain, Harold recalls getting into
the business of operating a threshing
gang in a round about way when he
got married in 1947. The couple had
bought the farm next door to the Gross
homestead and a threshing machine
came with it. So to pay the way, he
started out thresh-ing neighbours grain
at a cost of $5 or $5.50 an hour. By
the time he finally gave in to the trend
to combines in the mid -sixties, the
cost had risen to a princely sum of $7
an hour. It meant that a farmer might
pay $30-$35 to have the crop threshed,
not including his own time.
And not including the food served
by the women of the community.
"We had some great home -cooked
meals and lots of pies," he recalls.
The farm wife whose turn it was to
host the threshing gang often got help
from her immediate neighbours, and
returned the favour for other farmers.
There was more fun than work
involved in threshing, Harold recalls.
"It just seemed like threshing time was
a time to get farmers together. I don't
say we're still not friends, but we
don't get together as much."
Memories of those days come back
for Harold as he looks at his old
tractors, but these aren't just museum
pieces. Gordon says his tractors still
get regular work on the farm because
they come in handy for moving wa-
gons or raking hay, and they're a lot
more convenient to get on and off
because they don't have hydraulics in
the way. However, the lack of power
steering makes them heavier to use.
When events like the Thresher
Reunion in Blyth come along how-
ever, the Gross family will wash and
polish the tractors until they gleam in
the sunlight. They probably look
more glamorous than they ever did in
the working days of their early farm
life. They've earned their dignified
life after the thousands of hours of
faithful service they gave to their
owners. They certainly deserve a
better fate than slowly rusting away in
a neglected corner of a farm yard.
To tractor lovers like the Gross
family, preserving a piece of Ontario's
agricultural heritage is a labour of
love.0
SEPTEMBER 1991 27