Over the weekend I acquired a 1950 John Deere MT single-front. I already had two parts MT machines, so I thought this would be a fun one to add to the collection. In this video we load it up with the Ford F-350, haul it home, and run it for the first time.

The MT was the row-crop version of the John Deere M. The M is unique as it was a two-cylinder vertical engine with a foot clutch. The M also replaced both the models H and LA. The H was the smallest of the horizontal two-cylinder machines.

As I mentioned earlier, the MT was the row-crop version of the M. The M was considered a “standard”, meaning non-adjustable wheel tread and a lower stance. One of the things that interests me about the M is that we used to have a model M on our farm. The photo above is the model M that was once on our family farm. They were popular utility machines, as they were small and easy to use as they had a standard clutch to operate. In the photo above, you can see it connected to a manure spreader. Back then they had an old dairy barn with the large large rounded-roof loft. The cows would be milked and also were fed in the barn. This created a good deal of manure which needed to be removed daily. The M in the photo shows it hooked up to a manure spreader. This would have been the daily task of the tractor–to drive through the barn and haul out the manure. I recall my grandfather talking about the process, mentioning how they would manually shovel the manure into the spreader each day. There’s plenty of manure to be seen on the tractor as well.

Shot in 4K HDR Dolby Vision. If you have an iPhone 12 or later (or HDR compatible Android phone), then the color and brightness should really pop.