The Antique Tractor Club is a non-profit organization dedicated to the collection, restoration, preservation, and exhibition of early day agricultural machinery & tools, including power and horse-driven farm machinery, or any other equipment of historical value.
Our main event each year is the Annual Threshing Bee. It is held the third weekend in August at the Huntley Project Museum of Irrigated Agriculture approximately 15 miles NE of Billings Montana. This is the time of the year when the club members bring out their latest restoration of a tractor, stationary engine, or demonstrate their expertise in blacksmithing, binding grain, threshing, sawmill operation. Antique tractors and steam engines power the sawmill, thresh the grain, and plow as it was done in the early days. For entertainment there is an antique tractor pull. Our show is different than most in that we encourage members to demonstrate their equipment, not just show it as a static display.
Our members enjoy competing with each other in slow tractor races, where the slowest tractor wins! They also demonstrate their tractor skills in a barrel race, where antique tractors are used to push a barrel across a finish line. A tractor balance, like the teeter-totter that we all played with in grade school demonstrates the operators’ skill (and luck!). The antique tractor pull uses a progressing weight sled. This gives each tractor driver a chance to see if his tractor will out pull his fellow members’ tractor. For the smaller kids, the members sponsor a kiddee pedal tractor pull, where the younger set can test their strength and skills. About the middle of each day of the two-day threshing bee, a parade of power is held, where each mobile piece of equipment is paraded and shown off to the spectators.
On the Threshing Bee grounds, fresh corn on the cob is steamed from a steam engine. Grain is cut with a binder, threshed with a threshing machine, cleaned, ground, and made into bread, all on the same day. A taste of bread is given to those attending. A thresher lunch is available at noon each day. Musical entertainment is also provided during the show.
Our club welcomes and encourages a variety of interests. Some members are interested in antique tractors, such as two cylinder John Deere’s, McCormick-Deering, Farmall, Case, Rumely, Hart Parr, Oliver, Allis Chalmers, Fordson, and others. Other members are interested in the stationary engines that were used on early day farms and ranches to pump water, grind feed, power electrical plants, run stationary hay balers, and even operate grandma’s washing machine. A few members are interested in blacksmithing, using a hot fire from a forge, a hammer and an anvil to form iron into intricate shapes such as gate hooks, steak turners, coat hooks, even to reshape plowshares. Several of the club’s members own and operate steam engines during the show. Steam traction engines were used on early farms for threshing, operating a threshing machine by a long flat drive belt, and to pull large gang plows for breaking up the prairie sod. They were also used commercially to power sawmills and build roads.
The Antique Tractor Club also participates in many of the parades around the Billings area each year (see Events Calendar). The Antique Tractor Club has a potluck dinner meeting in October for the whole family. The club’s membership consists of about 200 families. It’s members’ come from Miles City to Columbus, and Bridger to Lewistown, and even has members from out of the state and Canada.
The club is affiliated with the “Early Day Gas Engine & Tractor Association”, (EDGE&TA) as Branch 29. The EDGE&TA is a national organization that puts its members in touch with other collectors all over the USA. The club meets monthly, every third Thursday, at the Yellowstone Valley Electric Cooperative Hall in Huntley.
