It's a girl thing — we'd like that on the record before the story gets told wrong down at the feed store. Some girls buy shoes, we buy tractors!
She's a Ford 2N, built somewhere in the middle of the 1940s, back when most of the country's steel had bigger jobs to do. Eighty-odd years old and still rust-red from nose to fender — which, around here, we take as a compliment. Rust is basically our house color.
We found her on Craigslist, down in Olympia. The whole ad was four lines long, and we keep coming back to the last two: "Pretty good tractor. Needs brakes." Reader, we have never read a more Wild Roots sentence in our lives. Pretty good. Needs brakes. Don't we all....
What the ad left out: she wasn't so much parked as planted. We drove down to Olympia ready to hitch up and go, and found her buried to the axles in weeds and dirt, like the field had been quietly trying to keep her. It took a tow company to get her free — a winch, a whole lot of patience, and eighty years of Ford hoisted up out of the blackberries. "Needs brakes," the ad said. It did not say "bring a crane."
Here's my own confession, while we're being honest about needing work: I've always wanted to rebuild an old Porsche. The whole daydream — weekends with my hands in an engine, coaxing something beautiful and stubborn back to life. A 1940s Ford tractor is probably not what that dream had in mind. But she's old, she's lovely, she needs a lot, and she's mine to bring back. Close enough. Closer than I expected, honestly.
So there's a 1940s Ford parked where the wheelbarrow used to live, and a fix-it list that opens with the word "brakes." We have no earthly idea what we're getting into. We've never been more sure about anything.
Welcome home, old girl.
