There I am, “operating” grandpa’s tractor in 1960. A few years later I would be doing actual work. The setting is an apple and pear orchard on US 50 about half way between Sacramento and Lake Tahoe. We visited the grandparents around Easter, when there was snow on the ground, and late Summer, at the start of harvest season. As a city kid, I enjoyed doing chores around the farm with grandpa.
Here is a better shot of the tractor with my dad sitting next to me. This is not your typical Farmall high wheel model, because fruit trees are a different type of agriculture than rows of corn or soybeans. You can see the trailer attached, that was used to haul crates of just picked fruit. When the disk cultivator was attached, you had to maneuver under the branches and this relatively short model was good for that, and it could turn “on a dime”. Some google searching reveals that this is an IH model T-20 “crawler”. It had a four cylinder gasoline engine with a magneto and crank start, as you can see.
With the current downtime I was digging around in dad’s boxes of photos and fired up the scanner. Expect more posts in the near future.
Nice photos. Cute hat. Chances are, somehow, somewhere, that crawler tractor still exists and might still be at work.
I am consumed with jealousy.
My family also lives in that region of NorCal, and I’m always noticing these small tractors in yards and orchards being used as ornaments; I don’t think I’ve seen any in person outside NorCal
I’m a native and lifetime resident of Northern California (FYI, no one over 30 says NorCal, though in fact residents of far Northern California, which I am not, don’t consider anything south of Redding to be Northern), I just assumed these little tractors were used everywhere. And I’m a city slicker. But living along the Coast now, where row crops have mostly taken over from orchards, now I realize the difference in application. Ag equipment is pretty specialized. Cool pictures!
Correct about NorCal as well as the other abomination SoCal.
I recall when Sunnyvale was nothing but orchards and there were fruit packing plants there. Now the only “fruit” there is Apple.
Great submission, Nikita!
Thank you.
Interesting how IH model numbering must’ve been reshuffled, because the pictured T20’s descendant, TD20, was a huge tractor, in comparison.
What a cool tractor. We midwesterners never really saw these. Among their benefits is a seat with a backrest!
LOL, looks like this backrests resting days are long gone!
Neat story.
Today this brought a flashback to an early lesson in Murphy’s Law. I was operating a T6 which was a slightly evolved version of the featured tractor. I was a little older than Niki seen operating the 20, although maybe not as experienced. Anyway, the lesson… either by design or because some access cover had been left off there was an open path from the “deck” to the steering clutch Steering clutches were massive rotating “drums” under the seat, deep in the heart of the tractor’s drive.
Despite knowing the rules, I didn’t put a tow chain away and instead left it loose on the deck. What could it hurt? Sure enough, per Murphy, some way somehow, the chain found its way into the access hole to a steering clutch. Faster than I could think “what was that horrible sound?!?” the rotating steering clutch gobbled the chain up and wrapped it up into a tight entangled mess that obviously brought everything to a stop.
I don’t recall exactly what the fix was to extract the chain, but I do recall that it was a miserable task and that I got a lot more careful about thinking that some loose item would be okay near moving machinery.
Better that tow chain than your leg. The vibration of the machine will make those chains slither along, just about like a snake, until they find someplace a little lower. A lesson well learned. We look back upon those times fondly now, but there was serious risk, too.