David / 69 and counting!
Happy to have bought 2003 Monte SS High Sport - yellow, kindly used, over 10 years ago. It had been leased in Wisconsin. Have kept it out of Iowa winter conditions for recent years, so it still looks pretty original. I need to break down and replace the Goodyear RSAs again, one year soon! 174,000 miles.
My non car hobby is collection and restoration of older John Deere equipment.
Green and yellow make good combinations!

Monte at home.

 

Hello! I've driven a lot of John Deere equipment, but never restored any! Plenty of tractors, windrowers (we called them swathers the first grass seed farm I worked on) and combines of various sizes in wheat and grass seed...I miss it. I think the coolest old piece of equipment I've seen was on the last farm I worked for..and it wasn't a John Deere, nor was it mobile...it was an extremely old, well-preserved wooden seed cleaner with beautiful antique lettering. I wish I knew how to repair and restore equipment, but I can only be grateful for the years of my life I spent carefully running it.

 

Hi Karen...regarding your Canadian border comment, my roots are off to the east: in Southern Ontario, where windrowers were swathers too.
I have seen some of that fancy art on older wooden farm machinery too. My dad acquired a primitive grass seeder - about 16' wide across the narrow box, that had a jiggling delivery mechanism, driven by the single carrying wheel. The operator pushed it forward using 2 handles, like a wheel barrow. I need to get it offered to the local museum some time. It has some of that fancy lettering and decoration, like you described on the fanning mill/seed cleaners.
Regarding old JD stuff, today after I cleaned and parked my Monte, I painted the parts of a horse drawn walking plow. I might put some red pin striping on it, as I have another old one that had some visible during the sanding process.
Whether these Monte Carlos survive to be such collectors' items will be interesting!

 

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