Paint Your Wagon

I know that you have been awake all night in anticipation of the next photo of our tractor restoration.  I could tell that you were a closet tractor enthusiast from the minute that I met you.

Here she is, fill your boots

The old girl's looking a bit rough at the moment but this should be lowest point.

I have just looked at our farm accounts yr ending 1964 and they show that we paid £749 10d for the tractor when it was new. 

The value of vintage tractors rose quite a lot about five years ago and this was partly a speculative bubble, a bit like Dutch Tulip fever in the 1600's.  I suspect that it will actually cost more to restore the tractor than it will be worth at the moment; that's the nature of these projects.  The object is to preserve a bit of the farm's history.

We have a lot of tractor enthusiasts in this part of the world and there is a fair bit of debate about whether it is "right" to restore tractors at all.  Some people think that it is sacrilegious and that you should leave them in original condition. 

"Yeah.  Jwa. Key"

The old girl's looking a bit rough at the moment but ...

We had a visit from a neighbour who collects old tractors and he is very much of the "non-restoration" school.  He looked at what we doing and pulled a face of intense disapproval.  You would have thought that Rolf Harris had got his paint brush out and added Jedward as guests on da Vinci's "The Last Supper" If anyone from Channel 5 is watching, that last sentence is not a pitch for a new television format, OK?

My view is opposite to our neighbours but is just as strongly-held.  Everything on the farm should to be tidy and ready for work otherwise it gets sold or recycled.

Here's another photo