The iron buffalo

In my previous post I showed some pics of me rice farming using one of the common Thai little tractors. Over here its called an "Egong" (I have no idea how to spell it) and they're a very important part of Thai farmers life. Its other name in English is the iron buffalo seeing as they have replaced the water buffalo's job of pulling a plough. I believe they are about 12-20hp engine so inexpensive to run and only need very little maintenance. They come with various addon's but for the engine and 1 addon they go at about £1,000 for  a brand new current model. Almost every family own one and use it regularly for numerous tasks.

You buy the engine which is pretty much what you see me pushing around and it has a long steering column which end in handle bars similar to a bike. Now the one the family I stay with have is very old and only cost about £400 when they bought it and is very simplistic compared to the more modern ones were you get a gear stick (I know what you're thinking "wow"). Well I quite like this simplistic one it just seems more hardcore to me as when you need to change gears you have to take off the rubber belt and move it onto a different gear while the motor is still running and everything is moving. From what I have seen for reverse they put the belt on in a figure of 8 across the gears like the below pic.

This tractor has many uses like from what we saw churning the soil and water when preparing for rice by simply attaching the plough  and instead of wheels they fit rotary puddlers (you can see this in the pictures in rice farming). The most common use of it is turning it into a cheap running allbeit slow truck by pulling a long trailer for transport and hauling large heavy loads. A final use for this tractor is to turn it into a pump to pump water from a nearby river/lake onto the rice fields.