We bought a tractor! You can’t have a real farm without at least one tractor.

Our First Tractor!

We recently bought a 1967 Massey Ferguson 2200 industrial tractor.  The tractor has a 39 hp gas engine. This particular one came with an attached front end loader (with a rated lift capacity of 3,300 lbs) and a partial cab. It also came with a heavily used brush hog (which is basically a powerful mower to cut through brush and dense weeds).

Click through for more pictures and information on the tractor.

Here is a video walkaround of the tractor idling while we inspected it before buying it. Thanks to our local farmer friend who assisted us with inspecting the tractor and taking it for a test drive.

Front view of the tractor.

The tractor comes with working headlights and work area lights in case we ever need to work at night.

Side view of the tractor.

The tractor is 2 wheel drive. The rear wheels are weighted with additional metal wheel weights to help increase traction. The tires are also filled with liquid to add weight and help increase traction.

Rear view of the tractor with the brush hog.

There is only one small problem – we don’t know how to drive it!

There are a number of levers, switches and gears. The tractor has a shuttle transmission with one lever to select forward or reverse, a second lever to select first, second or third gear, a third lever to select high or low, a fourth lever to raise and lower the 3 point hitch on the back, a switch to activate the power-take off, as well as throttle control under the steering wheel. In addition to that, there are 2 levers that control the front end loader hydraulics to move the loader up and down and to tip the bucket.

We plan to practice using it in the open field at first to avoid hitting anything.