Henty marks 100 years of Farmall and Howard innovation

A perennial favourite with field day visitors, the vintage tractor and machinery display will celebrate three milestones in the centenaries of the Farmall tractor and Howard implements plus the 60 years of the Henty Machinery Field Days. 

Henty and District Antique Farm Machinery Club president Kerry Pietsch said members will be staging a large display of Farmall tractors, Howard rotary hoes and tractors plus farm machinery typical of the field days in the early 1960s.

Mr Pietsch will demonstrate an antique hammer mill, a 1960 Pulv-o-mill manufactured in Sydney, to make chaff from sheaf hay.

“We will have a P model hot bulb Bulldog tractor manufactured in 1950 and owned by Justin Burns – before starting up, the hot bulb is pre-heated to glowing red by a blow torch. Diesel fuel is injected onto that red glowing area which makes the fuel combust,” he said.

Among the older tractors will be a David Brown 880 Selectamatic which was built by David Brown from 1965 to 1971 in England and features a 46hp David Brown engine. 

Andrew Newton, Alma Park, will display a McCormick-Deering AW-7 tractor which was manufactured by International Harvester at Geelong from 1957 to 1960 and was a unique Australian evolution of the earlier AW-6 models. The AW-7 was the standard tread version of the Farmall AM-7 and a cousin to the US-built International W-400.

A 1963 Fordson Super Major, exhibited by John Kilo, was a 54hp tractor manufactured from 1961 to 1964 by Fordson in England and was sold as the Ford 5000 in the US. 

A 1957 Massey Ferguson 65, exhibited by Chris Menz, was a moderately popular tractor produced in 1957 in Detroit and in 1959 in England. The Massey Ferguson 65 managed to become popular among tractor operators despite coming late to the party when the Fordson Major and the Nuffield 

were already meeting demands for a more powerful tractor. It was eventually discontinued in 1964 and replaced by the MF165.

Visitors will be able to see a Lanz Bulldog D2206 tractor manufactured from 1952 to 1955 in Germany from Lyle Burns, Burrumbuttock. It was a 22hp two-wheel drive tractor with a one-cylinder diesel engine. Sales of the new generation alloy piston full-diesel Lanz tractors, including the D2206, started in Australia from 1953.

Max Hogg, Table Top, will have a 1950 Bulldog tractor and Justin Burns, Burrumbuttock, a 1950 Model P Lanz Bulldog tractor.

Pleasant Hills farmer Trevor Terlich will display an 8.3L, six-cylinder 1962 Minneapolis-Moline G705 tractor which originally retailed for $7000 (US) in 1965. 

A 1960 New Holland Super 69 small square baler will be displayed by John Kingston, The Rock, vintage motorcycles including Douglas, Indian and Harley Davidson from Nick Bedggood, Henty, and stationary engines and a 1951 Fordson E27N tractor from Barry and Josh Menz, The Rock, and Peter Shields, Wagga Wagga.

Graham Salau will have a popular farm ute in its day, the Holden HZ and Colin Eulenstein, Henty, a Moffat Virtue two stand shearing plant. 

Peter Cronk, Lockhart, will have a display of Howard rotary hoes. Arthur Howard registered the company in 1923 after experimenting with rotary tillage on his father’s farm at Gilgandra, NSW. 

Powered by an internal combustion engine attached to a subsidiary frame supporting five rotary hoe cultivators, Howard patented his invention in 1920. The business moved to Northmead in Sydney and Howard introduced new models of rotary hoes and tractors. 

Kerry Pietsch, Pleasant Hills, is bringing along a Howard DH22, manufactured between 1931 and 1953 in Sydney, making it one of the longest running tractor models ever produced. 

Jindera farmer Jonathan Schulz has a collection of 60 tractors to choose from and will be bringing a John Deere 435, one of seven in Australia with a GM motor and was manufactured when John Deere was changing between the twin cylinder to vertical multi-cylinder motors. 

He will also display two Farmall tractors – a Farmall Cub, the smallest tractor manufactured by International Harvester and imported by the family from New Zealand, and a Farmall H, a medium-sized two-plow row crop tractor produced by International Harvester from 1939 to 1954. 

Ken Paton, Table Top, has a collection of 16 tractors and will exhibit Farmall’s first general use row-crop tractor, the Farmall Regular, manufactured from 1924 to 1932, and the Farmall F-30 row-crop tractor made from 1931 to 1939.

Mr Paton, who has five Farmalls in total, said the Regular remains in original condition while the F-30 is fully restored.

“The club is making a real effort to celebrate the history of the Farmall, which was important to agriculture – the Farmall is one of my favourites as they are unique looking and a bit rare in Australia,” he said.

“The normal tractor in America is a three-wheel Farmall but in Australia it is a four wheeled tractor – a few came out during war time as dealers took anything they could get out of America so graziers often ended up with a Farmall instead of a four wheel tractor they might have ordered. 

“Farmers growing crops such as vegetables, tobacco and sugar cane needed a Farmall.”