A Jeep Is Better Than A Tractor

Over at famjeep.com, I posted an article about our visits to both Jeep and antique tractor shows -
Show Time

While I've gotten a couple of responses like "a Jeep just wasn't heavy enough to be a good plow tractor", I've also heard some great Jeeps on the farm stories. I'd be interested in hearing your stories, especially about early CJ5s. (I know I posted in the flat fender section, but I think most folks read posts from all areas).

Barry

 

My jeeps will easily out-pull my Ford 8N. More traction than 'tractors' have.
But a tractor will turn much tighter, which can be crucial in the garden.

 

I have used Jeep CJs to pull an 8’disc harrow. My CJ6 was a yard tractor carrying chicken feed, firewood, tools, etc. all the time when I first got it together. It just pulled out my 8n and Cherokee last weekend and there is always a use for the winch.

 

Not an early CJ5 (they didn't yet exist) but my father used our 47 2A for farm work. For a while----

It was hopeless on our place (steep ground) with a 2 bottom plow or any of the other 1950 era tillage equipment. It only sort of worked raking hay. Sort of because it didn't turn sharp enough. The Willys farming experiment was a short run for us and it was quickly replaced with another "tractor", a Cat 22 (which fit the place near perfect). But that 47 was the vehicle I learned to drive-sometime before I was 12. And it was the one that cursed me with a life-long addiction to both mountains and Jeeps.

 

Turning was a problem. One of my favorite stories was from a guy who said he was 6 or 7 years old and his dad came home and said "Tomorrow your uncle and I are going to be plowing and you are going to drive the jeep with the disc." He said it was the best day of his life. i questioned how some one that small could handle the jeep. He said he only need to let the clutch out to get started and showed me how he would put his left leg outside the jeep and hold on to the steering wheel to push the clutch in. When he got to the end of the row, he turned the key off. His dad would then stop his tractor and turn the jeep around for him. He said it was a 3-point disc and that would have made it easier. I've heard a number of stories of very young kids driving jeeps. Lots of wood blocks on the pedals. A different time.

 

I have heard stories like this and suspect there might have been just as may "fails" as success when using the jeep as a tractor. It was those other things that a Jeep can do that made it special. i don't think you were cursed. I'd say you were blessed. If you going to be addicted to something, what could be better than mountains and jeeps?

 

I disc my garden each year with the CJ5 or the YJ.

But I have to be every careful on the turns not to get boxed in, since I can't reverse the old horse-drawn disc harrow.

 

Did you buy the disc or did it come with the garden? I often advise owners of newer model jeeps who want to do some garden work to search out old horse drawn implements. With the warning about getting things turned around.

 

As I recall, I took it as 'scrap' from someone.

As an old draft horse teamster, I regret that a lot of horse drawn mowers, tedders, etcetera, were worn out by being oversped behind motorized equipment.

 

No, but not a big deal - a single gang disc harrow, about 6 ft wide. The wood tongue shortened to about 4 ft. and a coupling on the tip for a 2" trailer ball.

I cast some concrete weights for the mounts above the discs.

 

My dad used to bale hay at large cattle ranches near Likely, in Modoc County, CA, every summer through most of the 1950s and '60s. Most of this time, he was working for Miller's Custom Work, based in Susanville, CA. These are little-kid memories, so take this with a grain of salt, but my recollection was that Bob Miller's innovation was in using Jeeps, not tractors, to pull the balers and probably some other equipment. He had several red and white CJ-5s, easily recognized. You could unhitch the trailer and, presto, you have a Jeep for running back to the ranch house, into town, hauling stuff, whatever. They were also used for weekend recreation in the surrounding mountains. You just don't see folks throwing a case of beer in a tractor and heading for the hills.
As the company expanded into other work (my dad bulldozed many a mile of logging road from the seat of a Miller's Custom Work Caterpillar), the Jeeps were, obviously, super utilitarian runabouts. I presume this is how Dad got into Jeeps in the first place.

 

Not a flat-fender, not early, not a 5--but a beater 1978 CJ7 with power-steering. Power steering and my hayfields are a good match for the hay rake. I use the 7 every year by choice--it's comfortable--sort of!

1.) The picture is posed--the grandkids don't ride like that.


2.) The chore four-wheeler and partial garden prepper.

 

[QUOTE="1.) The picture is posed--the grandkids don't ride like that."

Sweet! We used to ride like that all the time -- but not when towing sharp farm implements!

 

When I added a picture of the 2a pulling a baler and wagon to my display, I got tons of stories. One from an old guy who said his dad worked on a dairy farm as a field hand, responsible for hay and other feed. He said his father had him raking hay by the time he was 10. His father's only words were "Whatever you do, don't run over or on top of the windrows." He didn't heed the advice and he said the Jeep started going slower and slower. The hay had wrapped around the drive shaft. He said it took him what seemed like an hour to cut the hay away with a pocket knife. I told him they actually made shaft guards just for that purpose and he said "Now you tell me."

 

It's too cold here--------

 

[QUOTE="... He said his father had him raking hay by the time he was 10. ...."[/QUOTE]

Different times, huh? When my dad died, and I saw his Social Security records, they showed he'd started baling hay (above board and paying into Soc. Sec.,) at 9 years old. And, even more off-topic, here's my dad, as a teenager, working on a Crosley.