The grip of the tractor on the human mind is peculiar but real. I can never shop at Morrisons in Idle without thinking of 'Tractors' – the enormous International Harvester plant which took over from Jowett Cars and was humming away when I was on the Telegraph & Argus.
Pateley Bridge's toyshop is always an enjoyable sight as well. Guardian readers concerned about children playing endlessly with 'war toys' will be revived by its contents. The healthy children of upper Nidderdale clearly prefer model farm machines, combine harvesters, seed drillers and of course tractors by the yard.
And now we have National Tractor Weekend, which prompts this post, following an email from Newby Hall which cautiously describes the coming event as 'a weekend with a difference'. If you have tractor fans in your family or salon of buddies, real-life versions of David and Bert in The Archers, this is the outing for them. It's on 9 and 10 June, rthe first of which is the UK's second National Tractor Day.
Newby is always excellent value anyway – lovely place, ace tearoom and a great history including an ancestor of the resident Compton family who was unfortunately murdered by brigands in Greece. For the past five years, the Yorkshire Vintage Association has held its annual rally there, and now that exhibits have topped 1000, this has become the National Tractor Weekend.
Even those immune to internal combustion and traction engines should be intrigued by some of the ingenious machinery on show. For example, there's the 1920s Hart-Parr 'Bootstrap', a rig operated by a tractor which lifts itself into the air using its own power. There will also be three rare Fowler Gyrotillers, huge caterpillar-tracked machines which carried out deep cultivation on difficult land.
One of them is the biggest ever made, and it will galumph around alongside hundreds of other veteran machines, while sideshows offer rides, tractor races and demonstrations of mechanical tree trunk-sawing, threshing, baling, milling and manufacture of reed mats. The weekend is highlighting five makes which eventually came together in the American White Motor Corp. One of them is Hart-Parr which claims responsiblity – remember this for trivial pursuits and pub quizzes – for adding the word 'tractor' to the English language.
Final proof of tractor power. One of my London colleagues who kindly loaded the pictures accompanying this post on to the big Guardian's system, told me:
My brother owns several of these vintage tractors, so these events are very familiar to me.
Please make your own tractor-related confessions below. Meanwhile, here's a cheery little clip from YouTube of a Bootstrap doing its special thing.
