What’s old is new again at the Pennsylvania Farm Show.
Students at two FFA chapters in Lebanon County, specifically at Eastern Lebanon County School District and the Lebanon County Career and Technology Center, refurbished antique tractors and entered their projects for the judging competition.
While the project books, presentations and videos will be judged on Saturday, ELCO’s tractor, a 1960 John Deere model 430 S, already won Best of Show of the 11 tractors entered into the antique tractor competition this year. Best of Show and several other categories have already been judged prior to the presentation judging in two days.
ELCO FFA instructor Madison Hetrick said the project was the perfect example of the 2024 PA Farm Show theme titled “Connecting our Communities” being fulfilled. The tractor remodeled by ELCO was donated by Wengers of Myerstown while the CTC tractor came from River Run Produce in Marietta, Lancaster County.
“This was a really great project for the group and I am happy they got to do it,” said Hetrick. “We’re thankful for everyone who donated parts throughout the project and also the two adult volunteers who provided oversight.”
The approach the students took to their work was quite different for their respective projects.
At ELCO, 11 students worked on the tractor at various stages since last March, with senior Dawson Ocker serving as project lead. At the CTC, Jacob Nicely of Palmyra worked mostly solo between mid-September until last Friday to restore the classic 1943 Farmall BN tractor.
“The goal was to get it to run, repaint it and bring it back like it was coming off of the showroom floor,” said Nicely, who said he developed an interest in mechanics a few years ago.
His mechanical interests were further piqued after he and another CTC classmate built and entered a log splitter at the 2023 PA Farm Show.
“I really liked the mechanics of things and I thought that project and the one this year would be a good test of my mechanical skills,” said Nicely. “We placed first last year, and the one thing that really stuck with me was how simple it was, it wasn’t overly engineered. It was on the simple side, a basic log splitter.”
For Ocker, his desire to enter a remodeled tractor developed thanks to his brother having previously completed the same kind of project for the farm show a few years ago.
“My brother restored a tractor with a group of guys when he was in high school and I talked with Miss Hetrick and thought it would be a good idea to restore another tractor,” said Ocker. “I thought it would be a great experience and I would learn some new things along the way.”
One of the biggest lessons learned by both Ocker and Nicely when asked that question elicited the same response. “Time management” was the response given during their individual interviews.
“How to balance time to be able to do school work, homework, work and be able to fix and finish a tractor,” said Nicely, who also works part-time three days a week at Jonestown-based Blatt and Tillett Truck and Tractor Repair LLC. “You really have to learn how to manage your time.”
“Having a bigger project like this you really have to manage your time, make sure you are taking advantage of what you are given,” said Ocker, who also has a part-time job at Wengers of Myerstown. “You really don’t want to be fooling around when you are trying to work. It pushes your estimated time of being done, pushes it back further. It really makes you cram for a deadline.”
An additional lesson learned by Ocker, who lives in Richland, involved being organized.
“Little things, nuts and bolts because when you don’t know where you put them, sometimes it is kind of a problem,” he said with a laugh. “You end up buying replacements or new hardware because you put something down and forgot where it was.”
Since neither are experts at painting, there were valuable lessons learned during that process, too.
“I definitely learned a lot by doing this, especially with the whole repainting aspect of it since I’ve bever done painting before in my life,” said Nicely. “The painting took at least three weeks, close to almost a month to complete. This was a good experience in case I have to do it again in the future.”
“It was a long process and we spent many nights sanding. About three-fourths of that sanding was by hand instead of using a palm sander,” said Ocker. “We were taking it down to the metal but we didn’t want swirling grooves since that would show through the paint. We got as much of the old paint off as we could so the new paint would hold better.”
Before either tractor could be repainted, they had to be in running order. Gas tanks were emptied and cleaned, batteries and tires replaced and various engine parts given some TLC after being idle for so long.
Nicely said the CTC tractor had sat outside at River Run for over 10 years, so moss and vines had grown over the tractor and the carburetor needed to be thoroughly cleaned as well. While ELCO’s tractor didn’t run right away after some initial work, the CTC tractor didn’t have that same problem.
“The motor turned over freely,” said Nicely. “Ten years seemed like 10 minutes.”
No matter the outcome come Saturday, both students feel like winners after completing a project of this magnitude.
“It’s a really cool feeling to look at something that isn’t at its best potential and then looking at it when it’s done,” said Ocker. “You can say, ‘Wow, I did this, I made this happen.’ It’s something you did that you can look at and be impressed by, so that is cool.”
Once the Farm Show ends, the CTC tractor will go back to River Run. Nicely said the owner plans to have the tractor at his booth at the 2025 PA Farm Show. ELCO’s tractor will be on display for a while at the school, and Ocker added that the students would like to enter it into several tractor judging competitions.
Until 3 p.m. on Thursday, Jan. 11, you can vote for the CTC or ELCO in Lancaster Farming’s Reader Choice Awards. Vote here. Winners will be announced Saturday, Jan. 13 on the Lancaster Farming Stage.
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