Farmall Cub

As Barnyard said, here in Kentucky they were and still are used to cultivate tobacco. Some farmers would move them from one patch to another in the back of a pick-up truck. Farmers love the cub for cultivating, the only reason I've heard anyone say they liked the A better, is not for power, but because of the dual touch control (separate lift for front and back). My Great Uncle's first tractor was a cub, and he loved it! Dale.

I just wanted to give Dusti a BIG THANKS! He has given permission to add the three great photos to our home page rotation. I think it will be a fantastic addition for our friends and visitors to see. It illustrates some of the great family history many of us share with our Cubs.

Dennis

As others have hinted at, the Cub was really marketed at the GI returning from WWII, or the suburbanite moving out to the rural truck farm, who wanted to farm some small acreage and or run a truck farm. They were extremely popular in Kentucky especially in the tobacco growing areas. A lot of larger farms also purchased Cubs for simple tasks, plowing the home garden, plowing snow, cleaning up barnyards, pulling wagons, mowing, etc. The Cub was perfect for the smaller tasks, where a larger tractor was just too big to fit or too heavy. Also, the price of a Cub was geared towards someone who was just getting into farming, or replacing a mule for plowing a field.

The A and Super A are excellent machines, but just a bit too big for normal mowing jobs, quite a bit heavier, and certainly more expensive. You really don't want to get into your lawn with an A, because you'll definitely see tire ruts in the early spring and late fall. The A has some significant advantages over the Cub though, double the horsepower, independent front and rear hydraulics, 540 RPM PTO turning the correct direction with the standard sized PTO shaft, etc. Cubs are still pretty popular around here, like Jim said, along Rt. 104 below the escarpment in the truck farm area, but you also find a lot of Super A and C tractors too.

The move towards yellow paint was really just a marketing thing, coinciding with the introduction of the Cub Cadet tractor in 1961, and really a push towards lawn and garden equipment. People had definitely pushed the cub in this direction with the 60-inch belly mowers, and they had also found their market in the industrial sector mowing roadways and parks. There were not many tractors around at that time that could run a 60-inch mower, but still light enough to haul with a small pickup. Even the Super A, 100, 130, 140 tractors push around 2000 pounds without attachments, so they're significantly heavier and larger than a Cub.

Bill

gitractorman wrote:As others have hinted at, the Cub was really marketed at the GI returning from WWII.

Not sure exactly where I saw the picture, probably the VA hospital at Knoxville, Iowa.

The photo was of a group of GIs shortly after WWII, at a US government facility, with a number of Farmall Cubs, learning or practicing farming skills.

Dennis wrote:I just wanted to give Dusti a BIG THANKS! He has given permission to add the three great photos to our home page rotation. I think it will be a fantastic addition for our friends and visitors to see. It illustrates some of the great family history many of us share with our Cubs.

Dennis

On a related note, and since the topic is Cubs and Farming, here is a post Dusti made several years ago and allowed me to copy to my web site.
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=49742&p=414698&hilit=bi+vocational#p414698

My grandfather replaced his mule with an A in the late 50's. He always said it was the closest thing to plowing with a mule he could find. He also said it was akin to a mule in that it didn't respond well to cussing. We still pulled mule middle buster behind the A to plow up potatoes. That tractor didn't have a starter or any hyd at all and that little old man could start it on the first crank at 72. I know because just a few days before he died I had cranked it so much the water was boiling in the radiator and he had to show me up with one weak pull. That is a memory I will never forget and believe me he would have never let me. His A was a cotton field machine before he bought it. The p.o. finally realized a bigger tractor was needed and Pap bought it for $300. I wish I could find that old tractor.

My dad and uncle farmed approx. 500 acres from late 40's through mid 70's. We raised small grain, corn and tobacco. and also fed sheep, hogs and cattle. We baled lots of hay and did some custom combining and corn picking. We used the following equipment Oliver 88, Oliver 77, Oliver 66, Oliver S55, David Brown 990, Oliver OC3, AC HD 3 dozer and a FARMALL CUB. They purchased the cub in 1958 with cultivator and corn planter. We used the cub for three years pulling a Holland tobacco transplanter however when we got the S55 we begin using it for the transplanter. The cub was used for cultivating approx. 4 acres of tobacco and approx. 3 acres of truck patches. The planter was never placed on the cub. It was the best tractor ever for cultivating tobacco. I liked it better than the A or 100 series. We never used the cub for any other farm work.

In the 1960's, when i was growing up, the folks who lived across the street had a small farm(I am guessing maybe 15 or 20 acres).

They used to have a larger farm, before they sold the land my housing development was on.

Their tractor was a Cub, and that was what made me get one, years later.

My first cub experience was mowing ammo bunkers as a holdover in Fort Dix NJ in 1965....Worked in the Hay Fields as a kid with some Farmalls but no Cubs....