Thursday, June 26, 2008

Best Show on Tracks

I attended the Best Show on Tracks at the Dan Best ranch in Woodland, California on Sunday, June 22nd, just before the State of California went up in smoke! It was the largest collection of Best, Holt and Caterpillar tractors assembled in one place. There were over 400 tractors from all over the world in attendance. I only took 129 pictures of which I have included some examples here.


The first pictures are of a 1905 Holt harvester being pulled by a 27 mule team.














Lots of steam tractors were operating during the day.


Note the size of these tractors!





This is a bale press. Hay from the stack is raised onto the platform and raked into an opening. The horses are then driven around in a circle which causes a press to push up from the bottom and form a bale in the box above the opening. The bale is then manually wrapped with baling wire and then the press is released, the door is opened, and out comes a bale of hay. As you can imagine, it took a long time to process all of the hay into bales.