Local high school students will have the opportunity to get some hands-on education this summer at Ranken Technical College.
Brien Dover, an educator at the school, has acquired a 1937 John Deere Model A from the Eckenfel family farm in Ste. Genevieve. According to Dover, Bob Eckenfel bought it as a project about 15 years ago but was not able to finish it before he passed away. He will be teaching eight high schoolers how to get the tractor running again as part of the “Rust to run” summer camp. The students will have one week to fully restore the tractor.
“We’re gonna start them off in the classroom doing shop safety, tool usage, basic engine operation, how a tractor operates, the hydraulics. And then we’re going to go out here and we are going to do a complete service to it,” Dover said. “The tractor does not run right now. They’re going to be changing the engine oil, the spark plugs, the transmission oil, adjusting the brakes, the plugs. We will teach them about the setup with the electrics, I’m going to let them wash and wax it, make it look really pretty. We are going to paint the wheels, and hopefully get this thing running by the time in a week.”
Dover said after the camp ends and the tractor is restored, it will be used for public events for the school and for the community such as parades in Perryville, open houses at the school, and tractor shows around town. He said he will be having a main street sign made dedicating the tractor to Bob Eckenfel. He said if this camp is successful he plans on doing more in the future with other tractors and other machines. He said he wants to keep the camps going because it is important to teach young people about restoration and upkeep of machinery, and how machines of all eras work.
“A lot of people take it for granted that you just start the key and they don’t know what’s going on inside the engine,they don’t know what’s going on with the hydraulics. They don’t know what is going on with the brakes or anything. This does not have an electric start. It’s not a push-button start. It does not have a key. You’ve got to spin the flywheel by hand and get it running,” Dover said. “So I want them to be able to go home and remember what we did. And some of these kids are gonna go back to their farms and talk to their grandpas and they’re gonna be like ‘oh wow, you learned a lot in that summer camp.’ So that’s the goal.”
He said he believes starting the first camp with a tractor will be beneficial to students because of the amount of agriculture in the area, hoping it might spark an interest in diesel mechanics and agriculture in the youth of the region. He hopes the school will eventually offer a full agriculture program.
