With the introduction of America’s Lend Lease Program in 1941 colourful new tractors began to appear on British farmland. At the time work on the small farms of the West Country was mainly horse-drawn, any tractors in use being, most probably, a Standard Fordson being driven by a Land Army girl, a dull green machine with a folded potato sack on the seat to provide a bit of comfort. Now names from the great plains of the American West were shipped over the Atlantic, Allis Chalmers, Farmall, Oliver, Massey Harris, Case, John Deere and Indianapolis Moline. All can be found in vintage tractors parades of today. Odd to remind oneself that the final payments for all that machinery was made just a few years ago in 2006.
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