After 11 Months, 'Cassie' The Tractor Is Ready To Roll

AVON PARK - "This week's going to be crazy" said Rebecca Perry as she started reaching into an old tractor's steering column.

On and off for the past 11 months after school, four students repainted the tractor's body and bolted on several parts, finding a few hours after school between their studies as well as their "animal" raising.

They were almost done Wednesday afternoon, 10 days ahead of next Saturday's tractor ride. Brandon Cooper and Randy Richardson helped connect some wires on the tractor.

Perry, with her hands covered in black grease from handling its parts, left to take care of her pigs but shortly came back with her mom, Sally Perry, and two bags of McDonald's food.

Sarah Richardson, the group's "historian," was finishing a scrapbook of the project.

After all this work, they'll only use the tractor once.

Following the tractor ride, the four members of the Avon Park Future Farmers of America's Tractor Restoration Team will raffle the tractor off at a show in Fort Meade later this month.

The money they get from the raffle will be used to help pay for two new barns for the FFA.

'Cassie The Case'

"It took a lot of time," Randy said as he took a short break from handling the tractor.

Last March, the four got a 1965 Case LP tractor donated to them from the Florida Flywheelers Antique Engine Club in Fort Meade. The propane-powered orchard tractor looked like a rusted hulk of what it once was.

As the four students worked on it, Sally Perry suggested naming the tractor "Cassie" as it started getting a character of its own, said Trish Richardson, Randy and Sarah's mom.

The team installed a new flywheel, redid the steering column, replaced the tires and propane tank and then had to remanufacture several custom-made parts from a nearby metal shop.

Tony Kowal, who helped the FFA with the tractor project, thought getting those new parts was the hardest part of the project. Many of the parts were no longer available, while the scrappy rear fenders were unsalvageable.

"Even the decals had to be custom-made," Kowal said.

By late Wednesday afternoon, the fresh red paint still gave off an odor. All that was left were the wires and the decals.

"It's going to be awesome to see this one driven," Sally Perry said.

The Two Barns

The FFA has been selling $1 raffle tickets for a Feb. 23 show at Flywheel Park, where they will give the tractor away.

Perry, who leads the FFA alumni group, estimated they would have already sold about $2,500 in raffle tickets by Feb. 23, when the tractor will be given to a winner.

Construction for the two new FFA barns, nearly completed, would be funded partially by the raffle.

Gary Dressel, coordinator for the high school's FFA, said the nearly completed barns would store 12 steer and 24 hogs, and they should be usable next school year.

Dressel said the students in the FFA, which had 54 members in the high school and 90 members at Avon Park Middle, previously had to keep their animals at their own homes. Many of them live inside the city where that wasn't an option, and only a few had the space to house a pig or a cow.