If you ever get stuck behind a tractor on the road, you can usually bet they’ll be turning off shortly. But that wasn’t the case for one father-daughter duo, who drove a vintage tractor halfway across the country.
Farmer Urs Koch and his daughter Claudine drove from eastern Ontario to Kelowna, B.C., to buy a 1957 Deutz tractor they’d found on Kijiji.
When they first made it to Kelowna, the seller told them the tractor wouldn’t start. But after Koch made a phone call to his uncle, who he says knows tractors “in and out,” they were able to run some tests and have it up and running later that day.
With no truck or trailer to haul the tractor across five provinces, Koch and his daughter began their road trip home. They took turns driving the open-cab tractor, with the other tailing behind in their VW Touareg.
Although they were donning tank tops in some towns and hats and mitts in others, the weather wasn’t the toughest part of the trip. Like anyone who’s passed through Ontario can attest, getting through the massive province always takes longer than anticipated.
With the tractor topping out at 30 kilometres per hour, it took the pair more than two weeks to get back to their family farm in Alfred and Plantagenet, Ontario. They left Kelowna in the afternoon of July 30th and arrived in the early morning hours of August 16.
Koch told CBC News that driving at such a slow pace gave them the chance to understand the history behind some of the small communities they passed through, since it was easy to stop and read the plaques.
“You [get to] see everything one foot at a time,” he said.
But Koch and his daughter agree, their unique road trip wasn’t just an excellent chance to soak in rural Canada’s scenery—it was an opportunity to spend quality time together.
