History of our ‘G’
The John Deere ‘G’ was one of 75 ‘G’s sold in New Zealand including G, GM, GW’s.
Ours was built in 1948 and sold to J J Richardson in Canterbury.
My father bought the ‘G’ in the early 1960’s, I don’t have a specific date, but sporting a front end loader made by a local engineer, utilizing the remote hydraulics for lift and a manual trip bucket, the tractor was used for general clean-up work, but the major effort of the ol’ girl was to load 150 ton of Lime into the spreader annually in the Autumn.
In the late 1980’s with the upgrade of farm equipment I removed the loader and retired the ‘G’ to belt-pulley work and pulling the feed-out wagon. I remember being stopped by an interested tourist down the road with the feed-out wagon behind in the early 1990’s, astounded that a machine of this vintage was still in commercial use. At the time I replied it was just something available to do a job. But when I thought about it, the job was from late March, till September, daily. But as farming practices changed in the mid 1990’s the ‘G’ was seriously retired to belt-pulley work, being saw bench for firewood and hammer-mill for pig and chicken food.
2001 saw a heavy snow storm where the shed the ‘G’ was housed in collapsed over and around her. After months of deliberation with the insurance company, we extracted her from the rubble. I removed the sparkplugs and drained the fuel, gave her a tow to expel the water from the cylinders, replaced the plugs, new fuel cranked, and it fired on the 2nd cylinder as per normal. This motor has never been apart, it is today as was built in 1948. 2010 saw the ‘World Ploughing Match’ staged a few kilometers from my farm. I was not to proud to drive the ‘G’ and parade the 3 days in the raw state of condition it was in against all the restored machines participating. There was a huge contingent of vintage machinery, as the vintage club was a main contributor to the running of the main event. Of the numerous examples of models of John Deere ‘twins’ mine was the only ‘G’ present. They are a bit rare in our part of the world. This event however, kindled a fire in the belly as to consider a start of restoration project.
2011 saw a milestone in our farming career, as the surviving 4th generation, farming the original block of land bought by my Great Grandfather in 1911. We have only a few century-owned farms in our young country. We decided to have a family reunion to celebrate the event and this prompted the restoration of the ‘G’ for a focal point and to provide rides about the farm to view buildings and structures as they had changed with farming practices over the generations.
Surfing the web to source parts I found ‘Steiner’ site to be quite user friendly and eventually purchased most of the parts from there. These included: muffler, air stack, steering wheel, seat bottom, back rest, radiator cap, clutch cover, carburetor kit, and decal set.
I drove the ‘G’ to the local paint & panel shop and began disassembly. Followed by sand blasting, panel beating, and prep for painting she rolled out of the shop 2 weeks in advance of the reunion, and immediately became the latest gem in the local community.
We made a sled out of car seats welded to an upturned bonnet to tow the grandkids around over the holidays; some of the bigger kids had a lot of fun on it too.
April 2012 saw the Local Agricultural Show, and we paraded alongside a strong contingence of vintage tractors and machinery.
The next call for duty is my youngest daughter is to marry in March 2013 and has asked for the ‘G’ and dray for the bridal carriage.
Rob Watson
New Zealand
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