MOTHER'S HANDBOOK

Article Tools

Print

E-mail

Comments

RSS

Choosing and Using a Tractor Part I

If you live on and work a piece of land of any size, you'll eventually find yourself faced with a task that human muscles alone simply can't handle. Perhaps you'll need to spread five tons of lime over a couple of acres of rundown pasture, or drag some kitchen-sink-sized stones from the vegetable garden. Maybe you'll have stumps to pull, logs to skid, or acres of brushy land to mow, plow, harrow, and seed to grass.

And when that time comes, you'll have two choices. One is to hire someone with a tractor-or perhaps a team of horses-and the appropriate implements to do the job for you. Most communities have a "custom" worker who can be called upon to do plowing, harrowing, seeding, mowing, and other tasks for a set hourly rate. If the job you have in mind is a one-shot or occasional deal, such as preparing a new garden patch, that may be the best approach for you.

But if you find that you could use the services of a tractor more or less regularly, you may decide that the money you spend hiring others to work for you might better be put toward a machine of your own. After all, when hiring work out, it's rarely possible to have it done exactly when you'd like it to be-when the field first becomes dry enough in the spring, or when the hay is just right for cuttingbecause there may be others in line ahead of you, or because the custom worker has a job to do on his or her own land.

By owning your own tractor, you'll be able to light into those big jobs when you're ready, not when someone else is. And if you have the time and inclination, you may be able to offset some of the cost of that capability by doing some custom work yourself for others in the area.

How a Tractor Works: The Basics

Everyone knows what a tractor looks like: It has two big, cleated tires in back, two smaller ones in front, a steering wheel, and a seat for the driver. What's less obvious, though, is that a tractor is much more than a powerful pulling machine with low gearing and high ground clearance. To understand that fully, let's take a look at the simplest type of "tractor" I know of.

In northern New England, where I live, the doodlebug (Fig. 1) is fairly common. These are make-do farm machines improvised by taking an old pickup truck-usually one so badly corroded from exposure to road salt that it can no longer be used on the highway-and stripping it down to a bare motor and chassis. The springs are blocked up for increased clearance, and oversized tires are mounted, often fitted with chains for better traction. The result is a singularly ugly machine, but one that works surprisingly well for light-duty chores-hauling pumpkins from the back field, dragging a hay rake, or cruising the edges of the woodlot for firewood.

Still, there are many more jobs that a doodlebug can't handle, because it lacks two vital features found on nearly all tractors. The first is a power take-off, or PTO.

A PTO (Fig. 2) is a splined shaft driven by the vehicle's engine. It's located behind the operator's seat, between the drive wheels, so that when implements like balers, mowing machines, manure spreaders, and rotary tillers are drawn by the tractor, they can be powered by a detachable drive shaft extension. The utility of the PTO isn't limited to running field machinery, though. A wide variety of other implements can be PTO-driven, as well. And since a live PTO can be engaged when the tractor is in neutral, it makes a tractor into a versatile stationary power unit. (Be warned, though, that not all PTO systems allow this!) A partial listing of commercially available PTO-powered devices would include winches, arc welders, air compressors, cement mixers, posthole augers, irrigation pumps, and electric generators.

Another advantage the doodlebug doesn't have is a three point hitch (Fig. 3), which means that implements can only be fastened to it with a simple one-point arrangement, in the same way you'd attach a small boat trailer to the back bumper of a car. That system is satisfactory for implements that simply need to be dragged along behind-such as a set of smoothing harrows or a wagon-but when closer control is required, things can get considerably more complicated.

Plowing with a one-point hitch, for example, calls for the use of a trailer plow (Fig. -1). As its name implies, the trailer plow rides on wheels; the depth of its bite is regulated with a system of levers, ratchets, and control rods. While that system works-similar controls have been used with horse-drawn machinery for more than a hundred years-it's cumbersome to adjust and makes for long-bodied implements that are difcult to turn around in a confined space.

The three-point-hitch plow illustrated in Fig. 5 is much simpler. The two lift arm pins on the plow fit into sockets in the lift arms on the tractor and are secured with snap-on linchpins. The upper end of the plow frame is attached to the tractor with an adjustable top link. Once the plow is mounted on the tractor, it can be precisely controlled from the driver's seat. By moving a control lever, the operator activates a powerful hydraulic cylinder that raises or lowers the lift arms and determines how deeply the plow bites into the soil.

The three-point hitch makes it much easier to turn around at the end of a row, too, since the implement fastened to the hitch can be lifted clear of the ground, reducing the assembly's turning radius to that of the tractor alone. Furthermore, three-point-hitch implements are easier to transport, particularly if you ever need to take your tractor on a public road. A set of three-point disc harrows, for example (Fig. 6), can be taken anywhere you can drive the tractor, provided that you raise the hitch enough to keep them from digging into the roadway-but the road commissioner is not going to be pleased if he finds you pulling a set of drag harrows (Fig. 7) along the centerline, slicing the asphalt behind you as you go. (That sort of use won't do the harrows much good, either.)

Finally, hydraulics provide increased traction for heavy pulling chores. Imagine, for instance, that you want to drag a big stone out of your potato patch. To do that, you'll mount a drawbar between the lift arms of the three-point hitch, and fasten a pin-mounted grab hook to the drawbar (Fig. 8). Once the offending rock has been dug free to the point that a heavy chain can be fastened around it, the chain's other end can be fastened to the hook. Then you can simply ease the tractor ahead until the chain grows taut, and carefully add more throttle until the stone comes loose.

RSS | Comments | E-mail | Print