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  • From: KAKerby AT aol.com
  • To: market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Market-farming] tractor question
  • Date: Mon, 19 Sep 2011 23:18:38 -0400 (EDT)

I'm cross-posting this on a few different groups, so if you're seeing this again, my apologies.  Ahem:
 
I had just about signed off the notion of buying a tractor, in favor of draft horses on the farm.  Without getting into a lengthy debate about which is best, our very careful recent analysis of costs for both found that tractors had one big apparently fatal flaw: namely, fuel prices are just gonna keep going up as far as I can tell, but we can grow the feed here for the horses.  That made a major difference in the operational costs for both over time.  But today while we were at our state fair, I saw a Farmall Super C which had not only been restored, but it had apparently long ago been fitted with a propane tank as its only source of fuel.  I had never seen that before.
 
Now, I don't really want to get another animal that eats propane, thanks to that fuel's similar high-and-going-higher costs.  But, we can generate natural gas here on the farm, and the conversion between propane and natural gas is relatively straightforward.  But how would a gasoline engine be converted to propane?  I can figure out the rest on my own.  Anyone have any particularly good websites or books, or personal been-there-done-that knowhow for retrofitting gasoline engines with either propane or natural gas?  Might just be a tractor in our future after all (but we'll still train up the horses as well)........
Kathryn Kerby
frogchorusfarm.com
Snohomish, WA
Ruminations - essays on the farming life at frogchorusfarm.com/weblog.html



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