Editor’s Note: This is the fourth installment in an ongoing series of videos from November 1 at the 100-Plus Years of Progress show.
The Sandhills Antique Farm Equipment Club brought out its vintage tractors to “Ederville” for the 100+ Years of Progress Show in Carthage, North Carolina, in November and showed how those tractors did much more than fieldwork.
The club, based in Lillington, North Carolina, belted up a 1935 Deere Model B, a 1948 Farmall M and a 1949 Oliver 77 Row Crop. Watch them run a sileage cutter, a tobacco stick/gang saw and a corn sheller from the 1940s in the above video.
Alvin McArtan is a charter member of the club, which was started in 2000, and was at the show to help the club demonstrate its old-time farm machinery and tractors.
“We got together, six or seven of us one Sunday afternoon,” he said. “We'd been talking about a club to try to preserve history, educate youth and people older that didn't know anything about it. That's the reason we did it.”
He brought his 1948 Farmall M and a 1949 Oliver 77 Row Crop tractors. A 1935 Deere Model B donated to the club was also at the Ederville show. All three were belted to various machines that farmers like McArtan used.
McArtan was born in 1939 and grew tobacco in Linden, near Fayetteville, until 2000, using the machines like the ones the club was demonstrating. The tobacco stick saw came from his home community, used to cut 54-inch-long wooden strips to hang tobacco leaves in barns to dry. The corn sheller was in a grist mill near his home. The Papec sileage cutter was donated, and the club restored it.
Current club president Kurt Winpegler came to the show with his two young sons, who have some tractors of their own.
“I grew up on a ranch in Colorado and have just always been intrigued with old-time equipment,” he said. “I'm an old-time guy. I like technology and stuff, but I think it's just cool how in those days, they were way ahead of themselves as far as engineering and stuff like that.”
“You know,” says McArtan, “we think we're smart today. But there were a lot of people smarter than we were. They didn't have computers and all that stuff and had to figure it out.”
Here’s a look at the machines and tractors the club brought to the show featured in the above video:
- 0:00 – McCormick-Deering Farmall starting 1935 John Deere Model B
- 1:18 – Running The Papec, a 1940s sileage cutter made by the Papec Machine Co. in Shortsville, New York
- 2:53 – Starting a 1949 Oliver Row Crop 77
- 3:17 – Running a 1940 tobacco stick (or strip) saw
- 4:24 – Starting a 1948 McCormick-Deering Farmall
- 4:33 – Running a 1940s corn sheller
