It might be fair to say that southern Alberta farmer Bob Taylor never met a tractor he didn’t like.
You don’t have to spend much time touring around the farm homestead about an hour south of Calgary to figure that out. Taylor still owns a large collection of farm tractors he’s met over the years. There is a small wooden plaque on the wall of the house letting you know that this is Tractor Haven. It is a rescue or refuge so to speak for tractors and other farm machinery and equipment, where their role in western Canadian agriculture is remembered.
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The few dozen tractors lined up across the pasture near his farmyard are just the tip of the proverbial iceberg of a relatively extensive collection of all types of vintage farm machinery showing the wear and tear and weather of close to 100 summer seasons.
“I’m not sure how many tractors there are,” says Taylor, a self-described “wheeler dealer.” “There are well over 100. And I’m still collecting. I’m always collecting. I’m always interested in looking at another tractor.” In fact, it wasn’t long after the interview with Grainews that Taylor was offered a donation of two old tractors to add to his collection.
Taylor isn’t into the tractor or machinery restoration business. He just likes to collect. A few tractors that have been restored or preserved in near mint condition are under cover, but most of the collection is outdoors and exposed to the elements. But, he says it wouldn’t take much effort to get most of the engines to fire up.
“I think leaving machinery to age with a bit of rust just gives it character,” says Taylor. “Much of this older equipment was really well built with steel and cast iron, not like so much of what we buy today that is aluminum and plastic. This older machinery has character we need to appreciate.”
Born and raised on a family farm near Red Deer Lake, just south of the current Calgary city limits, Taylor started his own mixed farming operation in the Municipal District of Foothills south of Black Diamond about 41 years ago. He has other farmland in south and central Alberta, but the Black Diamond-area farm is the headquarters.
Taylor, who is 75, says he really can’t remember a time when he didn’t like tractors. He recalls at the age of three riding on a Massey 25 with his grandfather and there were a couple of John Deere D tractor models built in 1929 and 1939 on the family farm that also held special memories. There was room for an apple box near the driver’s seat and as a little kid he’d sit in the box as his dad drove the tractor. “I grew up riding on tractors,” he says. (About 15 years ago he brought those old D series tractors from the original family farm to his Tractor Haven southeast of Black Diamond. They are sitting in his yard today.)
Wheeling and dealing starts early on
Taylor was in his early teens when he began dealing tractors. One of the first he liked was an International 1530 tractor that was selling for $50, then there was a Cockshutt 40 diesel that was used on the farm, but he later traded that for a John Deere R diesel.
“The first John Deere R I bought was built in 1958,” he says. “It was only two cylinders, but it was one hell of a tractor.” Those tractors were built with a small gasoline pup motor that had to be fired up first so it could then start the diesel engine. That one got used on the farm, but when it came time for repairs, I couldn’t afford to fix them, so I just decided to collect them and I really haven’t stopped,” he says. Not to be totally held hostage by repairs, in his late teens, Taylor attended SAIT (the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology) in Calgary where he took mechanics and welding.
Along with running a commercial cow-calf beef herd, for most of his farming career Taylor was also involved in custom haying services. He still works with his son in custom haying today.
Living close to Calgary, there were a number of successful business people who also often owned extensive farming or ranching operations. They hired contractors to harvest crops.
In his early 20s, Taylor started out as a ranch hand working for Rothney Farms, which was owned by Sandy and Ann Cross (the son of A.E. Cross, one of the founders of the Calgary Stampede).
From there one of his first haying jobs was with Graham Ranches, an equestrian facility, near Millarville (just south of Calgary). It took a bit of time to get the right equipment in the field, but eventually with a John Deere 80 diesel and Hesston Haybine, Taylor had a good system going for putting up about 500 acres of hay in the small rectangular bales. He did custom haying for Graham Ranches for nine haying seasons.
Another successful Calgary business family, headed by Fred Mannix, also had a family farm in the Red Deer Lake area south of the city. “They owned three sections of land and I did all the haying for Mr. Mannix for 39 years,” says Taylor.
“I found it was always good working for these business people because they always treated me fairly,” says Taylor. “They were good people and they understood that you had to make a living too. If I worked for another rancher, they can be pretty cheap outfits. But, with these business people, I usually worked by the acre and got paid by the acre, and even in poorer growing seasons, I was still able to make a living. They were terribly fair.”
John Deere favourites
While farm tractors might be the centerpiece of the machinery collection, Taylor really has a collection of collections. There are horse-drawn moldboard plows and sickle bar mowers — even he finds it hard to imagine today if he had to start cutting 500 acres of hay with one of those horse-drawn sickle bar mowers. Taylor has a collection of grain augers and threshing equipment, old balers and horse harnesses. Inside his house, there isn’t much unoccupied space on the walls that are otherwise covered by photos, artwork and other memorabilia. And if you need service manuals for tractors and machinery, he has hundreds of them.
Are there any real favourites in all of these collections? Well, Taylor’s proud to have the John Deere 1929 and 1939 gas, steel-wheeled tractors that he grew up with in the yard. Among the few tractors stored under cover, in one shed on the farm are the first and second John Deere model D tractors that came off the production line in Minneapolis in July 1945. He has an official certificate confirming the production of those tractors he bought at an auction about 10 years ago.
And one of the most unique pieces of equipment he acquired is one tractor made from two John Deere D gas tractors hooked in tandem. The tandem tractor is an aftermarket modification that wasn’t a real common modification but was tried by a few people. (You can see a few of these tandem tractors in operation if you search them out on YouTube.)
Scott Garvey, a former Grainews machinery editor, says building tandem tractors was a thing more common in the 1950s and ’60s, when brands were slow to recognize the growing demand for much higher horsepower models. “I wouldn’t say there were all that many of them built,” he says. “I think a lot of the ones that exist now may have been built a bit later in that time period when the tractors were older and cheaper, so they were a cheap way to double the horsepower.” One online writer credited the interest in tandem tractors for being the inspiration for the first Steiger tractor.
With a fair bit of complicated modification, the front wheel assembly of both tractors is removed. The rear tractor is attached to the body and drivetrain of the front tractor directly behind the driver’s seat of the front tractor. The two tractors are coupled so the rear tractor has all of the controls, but the horsepower of the two tractors (about 40 horsepower each) is combined to produce an 80-horsepower unit. Taylor says the two D tractors used to make the tandem unit are about 70 years old. He bought the machine about 20 years ago — and it’s still running.
Every piece has a story
You can learn lots about people and machinery and western Canadian history touring the farmyard and machinery collection with Bob Taylor. “Just about every piece of equipment has a story,” says Taylor, citing an example. “I bought that old Cockshutt 80 tractor from a farm west of Nanton. The guy used to feed the hogs with the tractor and after chores were done, he’d drain the hot water out of the radiator and have a bath. That was in the days before people had running water and hot water tanks.
“A lot of people don’t appreciate this old stuff and the history that goes with it. I like to keep old machinery around because it helps us remember the past. If we got rid of everything every time we bought something new, we would forget. It’s kind of cool to think that farming started out with horses and a few small pieces of equipment, and look where we have come today with the size and scale of machinery that is used. We are really spoiled.”
Taylor says, for example, it is pretty neat to look at the horse-drawn Ideal Giant mower he used as a kid. Outfitted with a seven-foot sickle cutter bar and pulled by a team of horses, it was made by Deering between 1893 and 1911, while just across the yard are the JD 4440 tractors powering 10-foot-wide mower-conditioners. Times have sure changed.
Taylor’s philosophy in life is to do things that make you happy. He’s still cutting and baling hay, still running 200 head or more of commercial beef cattle, having coffee with his good friend and retired ranching neighbour Sam Lockhart, and every once in a while he gets out for a drive in his sporty, bright red 1998 Neon Plymouth car and he’s always keeping his eye out for another tractor to add to his collection.
“I believe we need to do something every day that you enjoy,” says Taylor. “And it’s also important to make a point of doing something that you always wanted to do — before it’s too late.”
While Tractor Haven isn’t an official museum and the Taylor farmyard isn’t exactly within eyesight of the well-travelled Tongue Creek Road, Bob says he still gets a fair number of visitors also interested in remembering Prairie agricultural history.
