By SHELLY STRAUTZ-SPRINGBORN
Michigan Correspondent EAST LANSING, Mich. — Joe Esmer’s tractor was made for pulling. Well … maybe not originally, but that’s why he bought it.
Esmer drives a 1951 Oliver 77. Unlike the tractors he uses every day on his St. Charles area farm, where he grows about 1,100 acres of corn and soybeans, Esmer said his Oliver was purchased specifically for his hobby.
“I saw it on the side of the road for sale,” he said. “Olivers fit the rules in our class real well.”
Esmer has been into competitive tractor pulling for about eight years.
Recently he was a competitor in the antique tractor pull at Ag Expo on Michigan State University’s East Lansing campus.
Esmer got his start after “attending a local farm show. We were at the Mid-Michigan Old Gas Tractor Association show in Oakley,” he said. “Pulling was going on and I got kind of interested.”
It wasn’t too long after that Esmer bought his Oliver.
“I’ve been working on it ever since,” he said, with a laugh. “We don’t golf or anything. We have to have something to do.”
Since being bitten by the tractor pulling bug, the hobby has become a family affair. Esmer’s daughter, Julie, 22, pulls with an Allis Chalmers C. His wife, Diane, is the official photographer.
“We really enjoy the family aspect of it,” he said. “We’ve met a lot of people through our group. We’ve gotten to know people from all over the state.”
“There’s competitiveness to it, too.”
During the tractor pull at Ag Expo, Esmer sat under a tent cheering his competition.
“That was a good pull. He’s going to knock me out,” he said of a competitor who unseated him as the leader in the 4,500-pound class. “I like to see everyone do well.”
The Leslie Tractor Club organized the event for the third year as part of the 28th Annual Ag Expo.
“It’s a lot of fun to see people out here competing with their tractors and having good clean, safe fun,” said Warren Townsend of Munith, Mich., who is a member of the club’s board of directors and event organizer.
The antique tractor pull offered four classes – antiques with a speed restriction of 3 mph, antique plus with a 4.5 mph speed limit, open class and farm stock. About 100 pullers competed in the one-day antique pull. For the first time, the garden and antique tractor pulls were held on separate days.
“It worked real well to split up and make it a two-day show this year,” Townsend said.
Keeping it in the family, Townsend’s father, Leland Townsend of Dansville, Mich., was the show’s announcer, and Warren’s wife, Angie, assisted with recording the distances each competitor pulled.
“A lot of these are family tractors,” Leland Townsend said. “A lot of these guys were raised on them.
But, he also admits there is a competitive edge.
“They may look like stock tractors from the outside, but underneath, they’ve tuned these tractors up,” he said.
The event drew pullers from all over the state, including five from the Upper Peninsula.
“It’s a great family sport,” Angie Townsend said.
This farm news was published in the Aug. 1, 2007 issue of Farm World, serving Indiana, Ohio, Illinois, Kentucky, Michigan and Tennessee. |
