Let’s Talk Tractors
PAQUETTE’S HISTORICAL FARMALL MUSEUM TAKES TRACTOR ENTHUSIASTS ON A TRIP DOWN MEMORY LANE HAVE A TRACTOR FAN IN YOUR FAMILY? Gather up and make a beeline for Leesburg, where you’ll find the extraordinary Paquette’s Historical Farmall Museum. Discover everything you never knew about tractors by exploring the museum’s collection of 200 tractors, plus another 100 combines, graders, loaders and other historic farm equipment pieces. “We’re trying to collect one of everything,” says Stewart Paquette, owner and founder of Paquette’s Historical Farmall Museum. Looking at his impressive collection, one would assume Paquette grew up on a farm – but that’s not the case. “I’m not a farmer. I knew nothing about tractors growing up,” says Paquette, who owned a construction and paving company for decades in his native New 22
Hampshire and later in Leesburg. “I sold my company in 1998, and my wife and I decided to take time off, travel and see America.” Paquette found himself at a crossroads in life when his wife passed away after a two-year battle with cancer in 2007. “I didn’t have my business anymore. I didn’t have my wife of 40 years anymore,” he recalls. “I felt I wanted to do something, and I knew God had something for me to do.”
FLORIDAGRICULTURE | NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2020
A MUSEUM IS BORN While watching RFD-TV one evening, Paquette’s interest was piqued by a Max Armstrong program about tractor pulls. “Up in New Hampshire, we had horse pulling, but I didn’t know about tractor pulling,” he says. “I decided to buy a tractor.” And so he did – but not just any tractor. Paquette wanted a red International Harvester (IH), a legendary brand that was once considered the greatest single agricultural enterprise in the world. Paquette traveled with a friend all the way to a dealer in Canada to buy his first tractor – a 1959 International Harvester 560. “We fi xed it up and painted it, and then I found some other tractors that were in need of repair,”
PHOTOS: JENNIFER SIDELINGER
By Jessica Mozo
