Just a quick reminder to everyone to make sure SAFETY is your number 1 priority when pulling. On Saturday, the left side of the drawbar on a Farmall M broke, slinging the front end of the tractor to the right and causing the front end to start rising. Immediately, the right side of the drawbar broke and the M continued rising. As one spectator noted, �I was standing on my tractor and could look down the exhaust pipe...the tractor hung in the air about 5 seconds and it could have gone either direction". There were two imprints on the ground where the wheelie bars touched just before the the front end lowered back down to the ground. However, had there been a hole or had the ground been exceptionally soft where the wheelie bars hit, the tractor would have gone over backwards. Unfortunately, this was a very vivid and eiry reminder to the one spectator looking down the exhaust pipe as he was the one who flipped over a tractor last year while loading a tractor. The driver of this �vertical� tractor was me, his wife. Of course, all of this happened in a span of probably less than 30 seconds and all I could think of was that I hit a hole or that I was doing something wrong with my driving. And it wasn�t even MY tractor! The more I think about it, the more I realize that I was DAM* lucky and it wasn�t my time to go. The breaks on the drawbar were clean breaks so we never know what can happen when pulling. Clean breaks on metal or not, everyone should be sure to check their own equipment before heading to a pull, and again and again while pulling. PLEASE BE SAFE.
Linda
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