One for the boys

This afternoon popped over to see Dr Bulldog. I thought he only had some oldtimers and was surprised he had a modern tractor in the yard, a Schlüter Super 450 built around 1971 (I forgot to ask). He was getting it ready for it's up and coming MOT.

Although built near Munich, very rarely see a Schlüter but when I do always think of SonofThunder (who has regularly commented with encouraging words) and County Tractors from the UK. While Jürgen's tractor is a small 2WD, 48 HP model (the gear change on the dashboard console), Schlüter went the same way as County building monster tractors, probably technically ahead of their time and both went under around the same time. Nowadays they would probably be doing good business. County was a long way ahead on horsepower until, in 1978, Schlüter built a 500 HP monster in preparation for a possible contract from Tito's Yugoslavia. The motor was, in fact, a 1200 HP ships diesel reduced in power as no gearbox was available to deal with the power. The contract didn't materialise and so it remained a prototype but held the record as being the biggest in Europe in the early 2000s. The tractor is still in use.

Jürgen reckons he may have some old photos of a County used on the local golf course and will try to let me have a scanned copy.

With continuing cold, dreary but now the dry weather had been feeling like a washed out flannel all day so getting out and having a chat with Jürgen buoyed me up. The rain & snow yesterday was very welcome, well at least the moisture was, the cold not. Yesterday evening could not get out of 1st gear, despite sauna, wood fire crackling and delicious homemade pizza/flan type dish I tried out for the 1st time. Called "Elsässer Flammkuchen" here, from the much fought over Alsace region, so I guess the right name is "Tarte flambée alsacienne". A drop of freshly pressed, unfiltered white wine (grape juice) would have been right but that's only available in the autumn. We need to get spring sorted first and survive the fantastic summer before that happens.

Hoping Sunday will bring the forecasted sun and a bit of warmth, especially as we have family over. Hope all find their breakfast eggs.