November 2000
Farm Collector Staff
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Vintage classics at the Illinois State Fair
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Classics on the Midway:
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VINTAGE IRON AT THE STATE FAIR
Visitors to this year's Illinois State Fair got a glimpse of the past at an exhibit of antique tractors. Several area collectors hauled beautifully restored classics to the event at Springfield.
Among those displaying tractors were Walter Stevens, who took a 1947 SC Case; Roger Wright, a 1950 Ford; Mark Dozier, 1948 Allis Chalmers C; Tim and Larry Boblitt, Minneapolis-Moline R; Harold Henson, 1937 John Deere B and 1930 JD GP.
One of the newest additions to the group was Mike Boarman's McCormick Deering combine. The just-restored 1958 IH 101 is one of the early styled, self-propelled combines. It has special significance to Mike: it is just like the one that his dad, Lawrence Boarman, and uncle, James Boarman, started out farming with.
Restoration of the combine was completed just in time for a late-May tractor show. Mike drove it to town, but it's a trip he doesn't expect to make often: the 42-year-old combine is a bit of a gas hog, he says!
-Cindy Ladage
Garfield Farm: Farming Before Power
Many living history farms focus on an era just after the first world war. Visitors learn of the impact of mechanization on agriculture. Bui Garfield Farm, just outside Chicago, looks further back than that: the era it re-creates is the 1840s. Predating tractors and technology, Garfield Farm was built when the preferred power - the only power -was generated by animals.
Garfield Farm's roots go back to 1841, when Timothy Garfield settled there, moving from Vermont with his wife and eight children. He farmed and operated a stagecoach stop, later expanding to include a taproom and ballroom. After the railroad displaced the stagecoach, the family concentrated on its farm operation, converting to a dairy in 1859.