Many happy returns for old friends

Next weekend, thousands of enthusiasts will be drooling over vintage tractors going under the hammer in one of the biggest auctions of historic agricultural machinery in Yorkshire.

Love is not the only reason for the attraction. These old machines are also catching the eye of people looking for an interesting alternative investment.

They even have their own magazine devoted entirely to these once workaday – but now it seems highly desirable – sons of the soil. Among farmers of a certain age, these machines have an intrinsic value that goes beyond mere machinery. The basic little tractors are time machines which can whisk take them back to a period when farmers were at the centre of events as a hungry nation demanded to be fed to maintain the momentum of the war effort.

Post-war, with the country in the grip of shortages and all-round austerity, the capacity of these machines to get the job done and increase productivity made them seem worth their weight in gold.

"I had a Ferguson and used to use an International tractor that was made at Bradford," says Stanley Turner, a retired agricultural contractor in West Yorkshire.

He is now the proud owner of two Ferguson tractors from the 1950s and he still drives around the steep hills of the Worth Valley near his home in Haworth

"I used to do ploughing, cutting grass with it, leading with a manure spreader behind me. It revolutionised farming, the Fergie. They took over from the horse. They used Fordsons during the war, but then the Fergie came out – a better tractor. You used to have to start old Fordsons with a starting handle at the front of the radiator. But the little Fergie had a starter on it – an electric starter."

These tractors would keep going forever. If something did go wrong, most farmers could jump off the seat and get them started again without outside help.

"All new tractors now, if they break down in the field, they've got to get their computers out to them," says Stanley Turner.

"All we had to do in those days was get the spanner out and mend them as best we could. Really, they were reliable and if you looked after them they looked after you."

Back in the 1950s, he paid about 300 each for his tractors. Today, he reckons they're probably worth a couple of thousand pounds.

It is the rare models which fetch the big money.

"Since 2005 and 2006, prices have gone up, but I would say that in the last couple of years, they have levelled off, with the economic climate such

as it is," says Oliver Godfrey from the auctioneers, Cheffins.

"They have plateaued a bit, but people are still willing to part with good, hard-earned cash and some people are looking to it as an investment.

"They're getting very low returns from their bank accounts, and they're trying to re-invest it in something that brings them a bit more fun."

Rory Day, the editor of Classic Tractor, says, "Just recently, a general enthusiast bought a tractor from a farm sale at Malton and the exact words were 'My money's not earning anything in an ISA, so I'll buy this tractor and I can have some fun with it. It's what I've always wanted.'

"The very rare, low hours tractors, tractors which haven't done much work, the 'barn-finds' – those have enjoyed a very good trade.

" The slightly more run-of-the-mill Massey Fergusons and Ferguson TE-20s, they've held their value but may have been a little bit slower to sell."

A big fan of the Ferguson and its successor, the Massey Ferguson, is Stephen Moate, a former dairy farmer near Driffield, who quit to run a publishing business specialising in books about farm machinery.

He was six when he first learned to drive his father's Ferguson TE 20.

He would help out in the fields at harvest time, something which would be unthinkable in the health and safety culture on farms today.

"Maybe you remember stooks (bundles of cut wheat) in the field in the days of binders before combine harvesters," he says. "I used to move on from stook to stook while the men loaded the trailers."

He recalls how one of the farm workers would have to put the tractor in gear while he stood on the clutch pedal because, at the age of six, he didn't have the strength to move the gear lever.

"You were very cautious not to let the clutch out too quickly so as to jolt the chap on top of the load. I was so small I had to stand up to get my foot pushed down onto the clutch pedal.

"By the end of the day, you could hardly walk because your leg and your foot ached so much."

As far back as the First World War, some of the wealthiest and most progressive of farmers were already turning away from traditional horsepower in favour of mechanical innovation. It is the survivors from this era which fetch the most money today.

At a recent Cheffins' sale in Harrogate, they were the stars of the show, says Oliver Godfrey.

"We sold the 1917 Samson 6-12 Sieve Grip, which made 67,500. That was a very rare tractor in the UK."

Among those sure to catch the eye next weekend is a Series 3 Field Marshall and an unusual conversion of a Fordson Standard N which was bought as a kit of parts in an army surplus sale and converted into a road roller.

There's is also a more recent Ford 5000 which is fitted with the uncommon Select-O-Speed transmission, an early version of a semi-automatic gearbox.

But many of the tractors on sale at Harrogate will be those workhorses which became common on farms after the Second World War.

Rory Day says that for people opting for these classic tractors, this can be quite a cheap hobby.

"Apart from major repairs, tractors are very cost-effective to run. There's no annual MOT, the licence, road tax is free, and companies like the NFU-insurance have a vintage policy. So the cost of insurance for a 2,500 tractor can be in the region of 35 per year."

He reckons that the biggest motivator that drives these tractor sales is nostalgia, and the child within the man. "Anybody who has had any contact with a farm – at whatever age, five, 10, 15 – a lot of those people when they get older, like to re-visit those memories. And the way to do that is through the purchase of a tractor which they can remember from their childhood."

Cheffins' auction of vintage and classic tractors, stationary engines, implements and spares, from 10am next Saturday, August 21, Great Yorkshire Showground, Harrogate.

Do you have memories of a favourite tractor or of any incidents involving one? Write to: [email protected]

CW 14/8/10