Kevin Fry Collects 25 Vintage John Deere Tractors

Classic John Deere Collection Rises in Tasman

Kevin Fry still remembers the sharp pop, pop, pop sound from the exhaust of his family’s 1951 John Deere MT, a noise that carried across five kilometres of countryside. That tractor retains its original exhaust today and anchors a collection of 25 vintage two-cylinder John Deere tractors, crawlers, and legacy agricultural machinery housed in a new 540-square-metre shed in Motupiko, Tasman, Top South Now reported.

The Tech TL;DR:
• Kevin and Andrew Fry assembled a collection of 25 two-cylinder John Deere tractors dating back to the 1920s alongside legacy crawlers and machinery in Motupiko, Tasman.
• Andrew transitioned from driving a newer cab-equipped John Deere at age 12 to operating modern John Deere equipment for the family’s seasonal agricultural contracting business.
• The collection is housed in a purpose-built 540-square-metre shed spanning a paddock near their contracting operations.

From Early Fascination to Modern Fleets

As a young man, Kevin Fry doubted he could ever afford a brand-new John Deere tractor. His son Andrew caught the mechanical interest at age 12 when a neighbour invited him to drive a late-model John Deere equipped with a modern cab and all the bits and pieces.

Decades after that neighborhood test drive, Andrew runs the latest generation of John Deere machinery through demanding seasonal workloads for the family’s agricultural contracting enterprise based in Motupiko. Alongside those modern working assets, the father-and-son duo spent years tracking down older machines from sheds and paddocks across the country.

John Deere Collection Fills New Storage Building

The collection grew to encompass two-cylinder John Deere tractors manufactured as far back as the 1920s, accompanied by specialized crawlers and period-accurate farm implements. Gathered across rural properties nationwide, the machinery creates what Top South Now described as a sea of green spanning the newly constructed 540-square-metre storage building.