WAVELAND, Ind. – Mike Simpson twice beat cancer while continuing to farm and build a collection of 30 vintage tractors he restored himself.

Nearly 40 years separate his oldest tractor from the youngest, a 1964 International Harvester 1206 the company made under its Farmall line.

He did have a little help from his wife, Yvonne, with sanding the rust off the tractors before he painted them in a shop that used to be a hog barn on their Indiana farm.

“I’m pretty proud of him for as much as he’s been through,” she said.

Simpson, 74, is pretty well-known in his community not just for his love of antique tractors but sharing them with others.

For years, he and his wife along with their children and grandchildren each used to take a tractor from the collection and drive together in parade fashion about eight miles from their farm in Waveland to the annual Russellville Round Up.

Usually, they showed up with about a dozen tractors for people to see during the huge two-day community event featuring things like games and a bean dinner.

Simpson said he savored the moments when people came out of their homes to watch the machines travel slowly to the festival and back to his farm.

“It’s enjoyable. You’re just idling around not in a hurry,” he said.

Placing all the tractors in the front yard of his home for public viewing during Memorial Day and Labor Day weekends is still a tradition Simpson tries to keep alive.

Simpson said the first tractors he restored were a 1936 John Deere A that belonged to his grandfather, and a 1950 Allis Chalmers WD his father, Forest, used before he left farming in 1955 to work at a bank.

His parents later operated a grocery store where Simpson helped as a teenager and kept his father’s tractor in a storage area while dreaming about becoming a farmer himself. “Farming was in my blood,” he said.

He was plowing gardens for people around town when he jumped at an offer from a customer at the grocery store to farm her 15 acres. “I was thrilled,” he said.

Simpson said he worked during his last two years in high school at a local International Harvester dealership.

He later found a job at a printing company in nearby Crawfordsville but was laid-off six months later after he and Yvonne had recently married.

Simpson said his major break into agriculture happened when he became a “glorified hired hand” at a farm, receiving 20 percent of the profits as a partner in the operation.

In 1972, the Simpsons began renting their 242-acre farm where they raised mostly corn and soybeans along with some wheat, hay, cows and hogs. They bought the ground five years later.

After restoring the tractors handed down from his father and grandfather, Simpson said he started adding his collection in 1988.

Simpson said most of his tractors were purchased and used on his farm for a while until taken out of full-time service and restored.

He repeated the process and worked on the tractors in his spare time even after diagnosed with Hairy Cell Leukemia in 1995 and later colon cancer.

“A hobby gone wild,” is how his daughter, Michele, described her father’s passion for restoring the machines.

He was also slowed down – but just temporarily – from a broken collar bone and major bruises sustained when he and his tractor wound up in a creek after his brakes locked up on a bridge.

Simpson said most of his tractors have special meaning for him.

For example, 25 of his tractors are International Harvester models because of the bond for that brand developed from working at the dealership. Some of his tractors once belonged to an uncle while another one, a smaller Cub Cadet, was owned by his principal from high school.

Simpson said a few of the other tractors bring fond memories of hauling dirt and other acts of “horse trading” he performed to obtain them without cash.

“It kind of makes you wonder where all of the time went,” he said.

Some of his ability to fix just about anything might come naturally but Simpson said he also learned a few things along the way from the beginning, like the go cart he kept running as a child and the new engine he placed into his first car.

Those skills came into play when restoring his father’s tractor that was engulfed by flames in a fire started while harvesting corn in the mid-1970s on a dry, windy day.

“I didn’t think we could save it,” he said.

It’s been two years since Simpson restored his last tractor due to a lung condition because of the chances he might inhale some of the spray paint and other chemicals.

He struggled but was unable to pick a favorite out of all his tractors.

“I’m kind of proud of all of them. Kind of like kids. You can’t pick out just one,” he said.