Tractor collection brings community together

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This article was published 13/08/2021 (1600 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

CYPRESS RIVER — After spending three years buying up vintage four-wheel-drive tractors, Ken Harpelle decided to put his collection on display for the very first time this summer.

Starting on July 28, the 62-year-old farmer lined up all 19 tractors outside his property just north of Cypress River and invited the public to view each piece of machinery at their leisure.

Harpelle told the Sun earlier this week that he finally debuted this collection in reaction to the COVID-19 pandemic, which has forced local attractions such as the Manitoba Agricultural Museum in nearby Austin to close their doors for long periods of time.

“With all the local fairs being cancelled because of COVID for two years, we couldn’t parade them around or anything like that,” he said on Tuesday. “So I decided to set up a display and have people come on out whenever they could.”

The Sun finally got the opportunity to view Harpelle’s collection in person on Wednesday afternoon, right before he was about to put his tractors back in storage for the year.

During this personalized tour, Harpelle said his collection consisted entirely of Steiger and Versatile models manufactured between 1963 and 1985.

Being born into a farming family, Harpelle grew up driving some of these very same four-wheel-drive tractors in the field, which left him with a lifelong appreciation for the vehicles.

“I just fell in love with the feel of power and the smoothness of them,” he said. “Even though we were small farmers, we always ran four-wheel-drives, and I just love the way they manoeuvre.”

As such, Harpelle and his wife Agnes decided to actively start buying up as many rare Steigers and Versatiles as they could find starting in 2018, discovering some decent deals through websites like Kijiji and eBrandon.

While the pair acquired a couple of models in Westman, they were sometimes forced to travel to small Saskatchewan communities like Paradise Hill and Maple Creek to claim their prize, trips that sometimes took a couple of days to complete.

Once the pair hauled each tractor back to their home in Cypress River, Harpelle then went to work restoring each model to its former glory, whether that involved replacing an engine, patching up some rust holes or slapping on a fresh coat of paint.

Some restorations were more challenging than others, with Harpelle’s 1973 Steiger Allis-Chalmers 440 requiring a lot of TLC after being used as a heavy road construction vehicle for years.

“So we had to do a lot of mechanical work to it and we had to do a lot of scraping and soaking, getting all that tar off,” he said.

“So repainting, doing the cab, all the tires had to be redone. That took a long time, too.”

However, Harpelle maintains that all this hard work eventually paid off, since all 19 tractors are now fully functional.

He’s particularly proud of getting a 1963 Steiger 1700 back into working shape, especially since that model was originally built by the company’s founders — brothers Douglass and Maurice Steiger — in a barn before they began establishing broader manufacturing operations across North America.

Plus, Harpelle said his collection attracted a lot of visitors throughout the two weeks it was on display, which provided a nice distraction from the pandemic and the ongoing drought that is currently plaguing Prairie farmers.

“Everybody was quite amazed. I don’t think they’ve seen that many four-wheel-drives in one place at one time before,” he said.

“We also had a booth set up, like a gazebo, so we could do everything in the shade and have a cold drink and snacks and stuff. We had lots of kids come out, too, which was kind of fun.”

Because of this positive reception, Harpelle said he would like to display his tractor collection every year moving forward for the public to enjoy, especially since he’s always looking to add a couple of new models into the mix.

“I’ve got a few good leads just from people coming to visit this summer, which is kind of nice,” he said. “So I’m still going to be buying tractors.”

» kdarbyson@brandonsun.com

» Twitter: @KyleDarbyson