Braggin' time with pics!

My Great-Nephew drove my Ferguson TO-30 in the County Fair parade yesterday.

Did I mention he's 10 years old. That kid is gonna have so many girlfriends!
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Is your liability insurance paid up? That doesn't look too smart to me.

A friend and neighbor thought his 13 year old son was ready to go on his own with a 4020 and an 18' disc. The kid is forever 13.
 
You're right. I'll keep him away from the tractor and inside playing video games until he knows how to operate a tractor.
 
Surely the video game comment was a joke. Heck he want never learn to run a tractor sitting on his arse playing video games. I was taught to run my first tractor at 11 or 12. 135 massey Ferguson. and i have one of my own now.
 
I think it's awesome. Teach him some respect for equipment now and maybe he will turn into a respectable piece of society. I say keep up the good work. the more he learns now the smarter he'll be in the future. It's all this over protection and coddling thats turning each future generation in to bigger and bigger idiots with no common sense
 
Guess Dad thought I was careful enough to start driving the 9N pulling the binder when I was 8 years old. By the next year I was driving about everthing else on the farm. Hated driving the 3 old JD D's that were made in the 20's - those D's should have been declared a crime against humanity.
 
I was just going to say that as well. We were taught to respect the equipment, and couldn't drive by our self until we could safely operate it. I remember driving tractor when dad was along teaching us how to drive. He would pick a safe spot and then holler Stop! Stop! just to see if we would react quick enough in an emergency.
 
Boy, that brings back some memories! I grew up on an 8N Ford, with that same Dearborn loader. I started running it at about 10, too.
 
I think I was 8 or 9 when I learned how to grade with my uncle's Fergie. My dad rode with me the entire time but then I got to finish it up. Most of the time prior to that I spent hoeing or in the potato grading shed, so I was happy to get on the equipment. Had a farm license when I was 14, and was driving the water truck, etc. My dad and grandpap were really strict about safety, however...and I'm glad. I'm the same way with my 10-year-old daughter.

I remember one time, showing up at my grandpap's place on a new motorcycle, without a helmet. My grandpap told me to get in the car..he drove me back to my house to get a helmet because he wasn't going to let me ride it back home without.

On the other side of the coin, in our community, were the accidents involving kids and heavy machinery. We learned valuable lessons from their misfortunes...
 
You did good. Always one jackhole gotta rain on the parade. I wonder how some of these guys ever had kids of their own. " No honey,it might get stuck in there."
 
Looks good. Everybody is so fast to assume just because they are young that they can't handle. My 12 and 10 yr old boys can drive my tractors way better than my wife can and she grew up on a farm! I was put on a JD 60 at the age of six pulling the baler and hay rack and I did just fine.
 
Hi Nice to see he can drive the tractor that well, I went to look at a tractor I was gonna buy to restore. and an 8 year old was with his dad driving the other tractor pull starting it. I have lots of experience with equipment and figured the kid did as good as I would of.
the only comment I would make is there an age limit/ licence requirement in your county for driving the tractor and on the public road, that I assume the parade was on, there are restrictions where I live in Canada. could be interesting if something happened and cops and insurance got involved as others said.
I would have absolutely no problem what so ever with him driving on private land. I bet he drives better than the 95 year old that dropped his tractor at my shop for me to fix it!.
regards Robert
 
It depends on the kid, our last 2 were twin boys, one would haul two wagons of grain to the elevator with 7 or 8 hundred bushel behind a 1586 when he was 12, and the other one did not go to the elevator until he was 19 years old. Of course, that was back when people did not drive 10 mph over the speed limit all the time
(regardless of conditions)
 
All these comments on driving at an early age, our son loved our Cub Caddett. At the time was only machine on the place. I welded a hand clutch handle for him, and taught him to turn off the key if in trouble. He took both hands to push the clutch in, then braced one arm and put it into gear and droped the clutch. Plum wore out the engine driving around the yard.
joe
 
Needed a tractor driver last weekend in the hay field picking up small square bales. Only had 107 to get off the ground so I had my 3 yr old grandson do the driving....Yes I DID!!

Figured what the he??...was flat bottom ground and the tractor was his Dad's little 4520 with power reverser.....yup.....first 2 or 3 times he pulled it back to reverse when I hollered whoa...lol...he soon learned not to do that.

After that he done great, but still needs practice steering....oversteering the corrections..lol.....

He has had plenty of experience driving his little battery operated electric gator all around the farm yard, so it was time to move on up to something else.
 
There was an 8 year old on a small International pulling a full hay wagon a little too fast and the combination jack-knifed as it was turned into the farms drive way. He is still 8 years old.

Children do not have the maturity and experience or common sense most adults have.
 
The adult that was supposed to be looking after that 8 year old must not have had much common sense or he would have known his kid could not handle the situation. Thats the difference, recognizing what your kid is capable of, or anyone else for that matter. The US is well on its way to the nanny state you desire, the exact reason competency has declined.
 
When I was 11 my job was to take the loaded grain trucks home and auger the wheat into the bin. No spotter or help. I am shocked when I think about that. I think I was a pretty responsible kid but I started early. I was the youngest and everyone else left when I was 10. I was automatically bumped up to second in command. My least favorite task was disking wheat stubble.
 
Oh for crying out loud! He was in a PARADE in first gear the whole time. The entire parade route is paved and the maximum downgrade was MAYBE 1%. He had been taught 4 ways to stop the tractor-including dropping the counterweight and bucket. I was right in front of him on a Farmall H. My brother was right behind him on a Ford 2600. All the other tractor drivers in the parade were informed of a rookie driver and were happy to help look out for him. The PTO shaft is capped.

His 2 biggest fears are hitting something and rolling over. To say he takes tractor driving seriously is an understatement.
 
Lots of worse things a young lad could be doing these days... I think its good to teach them early. I was probably 6 or 7 when I started driving around the farm.

Congrats to both you and the lad ;)
 
I think that is wonderful. Dan, don't let the safety cops get you rialed. If you teach them when they are young to both operate and respect the equipment....it goes a long ways as they get older. You did good! My 8 year old grandson kept bugging me to let him run the skidsteer. It is a Cat 252 B machine...not a toy. I thought to myself "this is the safest machine on the farm. So I let him start learning. I set up 4x4's on the ground with additional 4x4's stacked on top of them. His job was to use the pallet forks and pick up one 4x4 at a time and move it over to another stack 15 ft away. He got to use every control there was on the machine. That was about 3 years ago and he can handle that skidsteer as good as I can now. He also knows that if he "rodeos" any of my equipment...he gets his a$$ busted!
 

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