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billionth farm where ever you are: What most Americans don't realize is just how luckey they were to have the Boston Tea party and then 13 colonies broke away from the British crown, to become the USA. Truth is for most of our families who came to North America 300 years ago, our forefathers were all ecaping opression in Europe. Since that time the Canadian govt just cant make up their mind whether they want to trade with Americans or Europeans. About every 10 to 50 years they flop one way then the other. In the 1950s they decided Europe was the trading partner of choice. Man did we ever get a belly full of European tractors, most of them not climatized for starting in cold weather. This was particularly true in Eastern Canada. You could actually buy two 60 hp European tractors for the price of a 560 diesel. Now it took the two of them to do the work of a 560, but banker didn't know that so unless you were operating with your own money, you bought European tractors. I often wondered if those bankers went out on cold mornings to tow start those tractors Two things about those first European tractors; they were not climatized for our winters, and secondly were designed for a higher grade of diesel fuel than we used in North America. These tractors left eastern Canadian farmers with quite a sour taste for European tractors. Probably took more than a generation to loose that. Those 886 that I spoke of, most were bought by 50 cow dairy farms to do forage harvester duty. They wanted torque of the 360 rather than economy of the 358. IH dealer lost his livelyhood, and today there is not even an CaseIH dealer in the area. Yes you can talk all the items that caused the IH downfall but in our area those German diesels were the final straw.
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