Miss Avery wait for her pull!

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Miss Avery, a 1911 Avery 30-Horse Special Operator Saskatchewan steam tractor owned by the Murray family waits patiently for her exhibition pull at the truck and tractor pull July 24 at the Park County Fairgrounds. The tractor was transported to the fairgrounds thanks to Rick Johnson and Johnsons’ Oil and Water Service.

TRACTOR TRADITIONS - POWELL TRIBUNE

Miss Avery has lived a life. She’s seen the prairie and watched the
farmlands change, she’s traveled to research centers and been on
display at the county fair.

Until 1999 she lived in Montana where a couple shined her up and got
her back on her feet. Then she followed Bruce Murray to Powell where
she was showered with love and affection by his family for decades.

Miss Avery is a tractor, but not just any tractor. She is a 1911 Avery
30-horse Special Operators Saskatchewan steam tractor. At 114 years
old she’s one of about six left in the world (one is in the
Smithsonian) and one of only two or three still operational.

Bruce Murray, and his father before him, broke the ground of
Murraymere Farm out with a team of horses, Bruce’s grandson Kenton
said. When Bruce began seeing a lot of the old farm equipment get
turned into scrap, “it really bothered him.”

He began collecting antique equipment from neighbors, as farms sold
and old equipment was left behind. People began to donate the
equipment to Bruce as word got around.

He was very passionate about, “just trying to preserve and respect
the past.”

Kenton’s father Keith also collected, and while Kenton has collected
some, he’s more into cars and trucks, he said.

“But I appreciate the old equipment and a lot of this old stuff we
did farm with, but not all of it,” he said.

They’re grateful they don’t have to use it, Kenton’s sister Val
joked.

The Avery was designed for prairies, specifically large farms in
Canada where farmers needed to pull gigantic equipment on fields that
may be hundreds of acres. Due to the weight of the tractor several
extensions are bolted onto the wide wheels to bear the weight and get
it across the prairie.

“They had to get something bigger because [horse] teams were unable
to do the amount of work they needed to clear the prairie,” Val
said.

Following steam engines were early versions of oil pull engines that
worked on kerosene and petroleum products, followed by diesel
tractors, Kenton said. The progression all started with steam power,
which started with stationary power units to run in factories.

Preserving and collecting these old machines is about keeping the
machinery from the salvage yard and keeping the collection together to
honor their father and grandfather’s work, Kenton said. Many times
when collectors die the collection is sold off, and a few of the
tractors in the Murray collection have come from sales like these. The
family’s first steam engine was purchased from the estate of Oscar
Cooke, a collector in Billings who owned Oscar’s Dreamland where he
would put on shows.

The Murrays have also exhibited their collection, most recently taking
Miss Avery to the Park County Fair where she was on display and
participated in some exhibition pulls during the truck and tractor
pull grandstand event.

Modern agriculture is now removed by several generations from machines
like steam engines. Young generations don’t know what one is or have
never seen one operate, Kenton said, so showing off Miss Avery is
educational and also shows how far we’ve come.

The Avery kicked off the truck and tractor pull with two exhibition
pulls and ended the night with a spark show.

“We did, you know, at least three pulls so the people that were
there during the anthem, at least saw it,” Kenton’s son Wyatt
said.

When the old tractor did its spark show, it didn’t add more power to
the tractor’s pull, “it’s just a cool spectacle,” he added.

In his opinion the second pull was probably the best demonstration of
the tractor’s power. It had the most pressure and audiences could
see it perform as it would have years ago.

“The announcer was joking that, ‘Oh she’s going to keep going
right out of the fairgrounds,’” Val said.

The tractor was prepared and operated for the fair by family
friends of the Murray’s Lance Streets and his wife Jolene with
assistance from Kenton’s younger son Levi.

The tractor had to be winterized, drained, the flues had to be cleaned
of carbon deposits, the firebox had to be cleaned out and the machine
had to be properly oiled.

“Lance has been doing this for awhile now,” Kenton said.

Lance is a family friend from Montana; his father Roy would sell wheat
to the Murrays and caught the “steam bug.” Since then Lance has
gotten training and certification to operate the steam engines. He
even met Jolene while working on one of the Murray’s other steam
engines at Homesteader Days.

“Love at first sight over a steam engine,” Val said.

Truck pulling also goes back to the early days of machinery.

“You have to understand, this is where it all began, steam traction
engines, that was the first mechanized machinery besides horse drawn
that they started to farm with,” Kenton said, adding, “And then of
course it became friendly competition of neighbors comparing tractors
and, ‘Well mine’s got more more power than yours,’ and so on and
so forth.”

This turned into tractor pulling, said Kenton who remembers the glory
days of the sport in Park County when he was a kid.

“It’s just something I’ve been fascinated with my whole life,
plus we’re farmers to boot,” he said. “So I really