In 1956, when my Grandmother sold the family farm to my father Ivan Lee Andersen, I was two-years-old. It was not a big farm by any means, just 80 acres. At its peak we had 40-50 head of beef cattle that we had custom butchered for people. We also had 700 laying chickens and a door-to-door egg route in two local towns and 20-30 head of hogs at any given time. Add to that a very large, productive garden, and we were very well fed!

Dad needed a tractor when he first started farming, so he went to the John Deere dealership to buy an “A”. When he discovered that the dealer sold the one he had been looking at, he went to the Oliver dealer in Scottville, MI, , F.J. Reader & Sons and purchased an Oliver 60 with cultivators and a single bottom, 14” trailer plow. So begins the saga of our Olivers. He had an Allis Chalmers WD 45 that came with the farm, but he would not let me or my brother drive it. It had no electric starter, only the hand crank or it had to be pushed down a hill to start.

Needing to speed up his operation, Dad purchased a Oliver Super 88 Diesel from a dealer in Clare, Michigan, named George Fullerton. That Super 88 had so much power and it got the fieldwork done so much faster that the Allis was no longer needed and it was sold.

As the years went by, the operation increased in size and my brother and I got involved. Dad bought an Oliver 77 Diesel to take some of the pressure off the S-88. He was also in need of a smaller utility tractor, so back to the dealer in Clare, where an Oliver 550 was purchased.

In 1972, Dad made some major changes in the farming program. All of the cattle, pigs and chickens were sold and all the corn, wheat, oats and hay fields were never to be planted again. There was a new cash crop on the rise and it was asparagus. The entire farm was plowed up and planted to the new crop. With the increase in acreage of asparagus, the Oliver 550 became the tractor of choice and more were needed to pull the asparagus pickers. We found one 15 miles south of the farm. The old farmer sold it to Dad, but said that the block was cracked. It came home anyway. After looking it over, we determined that a 59-cent soft plug in the head was all that was needed. It has been a worthy tractor ever since.

Turn to page 10 of Oliver Heritage Issue # 17 to read the rest of The Andersons and Their Olivers Story and for more exciting Oliver Facts and Infomational Articles!