Dennis Benoit is preserving his family’s and mid-20th century farm history one tractor at a time.

He treasures his machines because they’re priceless reminders of his idyllic boyhood days growing up on his grandfather’s farm in west-central Vermont.

“A 1948 Ford 8N just like this is what I first learned to drive,” Benoit says, pointing to the tractor. “When I was just a young boy, before I could even reach the pedals I sat on my grandfather’s lap and steered the tractor, riding around through the woods or going around the field. I was his shadow.”

An Addison, Vt., resident, his home is just a few miles from the east shore of Lake Champlain. The wide-open landscape, with stunning views of the Adirondack and Green mountains to the west and east, looks much the same as a century ago, with one distinct difference: Cows grazing on green pasture, once an iconic Vermont symbol, are now few and far between as dozens of small dairy farms have gone out of business throughout the years.

But durable equipment that made farming possible is still operating, thanks to Benoit and others like him who understand its importance.

“There’s a lot of history around the county and around the state with these old tractors,” he says. “A lot of people think just like me. They grew up on the home farm and have memories of being with their parents or grandparents.”

Unique collections

Benoit and a small cadre of friends each have their own special collections.

Russ Preston, 70, was raised on a farm, served in the military and spent many years as an over-the-road truck driver.

“Pretty much most of my tractor-collecting has been in the last five years, since retiring,” he says. “I’ve got about 18. Except for a Farmall A, they’re all John Deere. They go from 1940 to ’73. Most of them are two-cylinder vintage. I have three or four that are new-generation John Deere, four-cylinder. My favorite is a 1949 John Deere AR, I guess you could say because of its power.”

But why such a large collection?

“Everybody’s got to have something. We own an acre-and-a-half of land. Pretty much most of it is covered with tractors and trailers to haul things around. My saying is: ‘He who dies with the most toys wins,’” he says with a laugh.

Retired dairyman Bob Bowdish has 13 Farmalls and likes them mostly for the same reason Preston likes John Deere: Because they’re what he grew up with.

Bowdish’s tractors range in age from a 1939 Farmall A — with no starter, all hand-cranked — to models from the 1960s. However, his collection also includes a variety of other apparatus such as a 1946 Farmall M with a mounted two-row picker; a McCormick-Deering Model 100 manure spreader; International Harvester 311 three-bottom plows, 211 two-bottom plows and an International two-row mounted two-point hitch corn planter; and a bucket loader on a Farmall A.

One of his most unique pieces is a 1946 Farmall half-track that was primarily used for logging or working in muddy fields.

“My kids think I’m crazy, but I would hate to see all these old pieces of history go to the scrap yard,” he says.

Wayne Smith left his family’s farm 50 years ago, then ran a feed store, worked for a machinery dealer, and sold fertilizer and feed.

“So I’ve always been connected with farmers,” he says. “We had eight Case tractors farming 1,000 acres when I was growing up.”

Now he has five of his own.

“My favorite’s got to be the ’56 because I remember when that was delivered on our home farm with a belly mower on it,” he says. “It was used to mow at that time and did all the corn planting and seeding. My father drove that many hours.”

He also has a smooth-running, hand-cranked 1938 Case RC which, thanks to a little good luck, he got for a good price.

“I called up the day of the auction and they couldn’t get it started, so I bought it cheaper as a nonrunner,” he says. “Back at the farm when we unloaded it I looked down and said, ‘I wonder what this little lever is?’ I gave it a quarter-turn, the tractor was rolling off the truck, I popped the clutch and away it went. The lever was a magneto kill switch. They’d never turned it on. So I drove it around the yard and haven’t done a thing to the motor or transmission since we bought It. That was the best deal.”

‘Like heaven’

Benoit, who works as a mechanic for Middlebury, Vt.-based Champlain Valley Equipment Inc., says antique tractors are surprisingly easy to maintain and that parts are still easy to come by.

“Compared to new tractors with all the modern-day electronics, these old ones are just so simple,” he says. “About anybody with any knowledge can work on them. They’re just reliable, hard to beat and they’ve outlasted a lot of the newer tractors.

“Of course, they don’t do the work of the new ones, but back in the day these were a pretty good tractor. This was like heaven compared to walking behind horses all day. Farmers thought they had the world licked when these old tractors first came out.”

In addition to a 1948 Ford 8N, his diverse collection includes a 1956 Allis Chalmers D-14 that’s been modified with V-6 Buick car engine.

“It’s got a four-speed transmission, but it’s also got the high-low range, so it’s quite fun over the road, a lot of fun to drive,” he says.

A 1958 Ford 801 Powermaster is Smith’s little “go-to tractor” with a diesel engine and four-speed standard transmission.

“It’s very dependable,” he says. “I use it in the woods to skid out logs. I use it in the winter to plow. It’s got a 7-foot blade on it with tire chains. It’s the first tractor I grab when I have to do some work.

“It’s got a whole bunch of torque to it. I can idle this thing right down going up the biggest hill right in high gear, and throttle it back up and it will pull its way right up the hill.”

A little red wagon

Benoit’s pride and joy, however, is a giant-sized “My Little Red Wagon” that he handmade and shows off, towed behind the Ford 8N, at special events such an annual tractor parade in East Charlotte, Vt. Held in October, this past year’s gathering had 144 entries from several states.

“The wagon’s running gear is an antique John Deere horse-drawn ride wagon,” he says. “I made the red part all by hand from three different pieces of eighth-inch steel. The floor is one big sheet. The sides are eighth-inch-by-12-inch steel.”

To get the rounded corners and edges he started at the center on the front end and wrapped it all by hand.

“We pushed it around and tack-welded as we went and wrapped it around to the center of the back and did the same to the other side,” he says. “Then we smoothed it up, sanded it down and painted it.”

Maintaining iron

Whether equipment is old or new, Benoit says all tractor owners should follow basic maintenance steps, especially in winter.

“Make sure you test your antifreeze because you don’t want a cracked block from an engine freezing up,” he says. “Also, lube and grease them up.”

In addition to protecting equipment, this helps preserve farming history, too, because the high-powered tractors of today will eventually become the old-time tractors of tomorrow.

“If they last as long,” he says. “Tractors today aren’t made to last as long as those old ones were.”

Showing off history

The East Charlotte, Vt., parade is one several places people may see the historic farm machinery that Benoit and others have saved.

Each year, on the first Sunday in June, antique tractor owners gather at Bowdish’s farm to start a roughly 22-mile, slow-moving procession throughout Addison County. Spectators turn out in droves along the route to admire old farm vehicles as they pass through small towns such as New Haven and Bridport, with a stop for lunch at the famous Morgan Horse Farm in Weybridge.

On Father’s Day weekend, many Vermonters ferry their tractors across Lake Champlain to a two-day show at Barber Homestead Park campground in Westport, N.Y.

Addison County Field Days are held in August, and in October, the same weekend as the East Charlotte Tractor Parade, another large tractor ride is held in Willsboro, N.Y., overlooking Lake Champlain’s western shore.

Such activities help people gain an appreciation for farmers of past generations, the machinery they used and the importance of agriculture to the region’s heritage.

Post writes from eastern New York.