It is generally agreed that our herd of genuine, rare breed, long horned Afrikaners at Sandstone Estates are one of our more significant highlights.

This massive tractor, designed in the early 20^th century, is always a crowd puller at Sandstone. The tractor was originally designed for road use in the USA but saw most of its work on the prairie wheat fields of the USA and Canada.

The pride that we have in our Oxen at Sandstone is well known and we have drawn together a gallery of some of our “Elder Statesman”. As you can see, many are 9 years old with the eldest, Staline, at 10 years old.

All our readers know our passion at Sandstone for our Oxen and we have been breeding more of these Afrikaner cattle over the last months. In spanning them for haulage duties is not always that easy and  recently we had to bring together the six head that have proved very troublesome and disobedient when in spanned.

The Waterloo Boy was the first model tractor that John Deere released to the farming community.

Sandstone has owned one for over 20-years. It was however in need of a total overhaul and cosmetic upgrade, which has now been completed. It was last overhauled in 2005 when we acquired it and this link also gives a short history of the Waterloo Boy..

Chris, Garth and Basil finished up on Friday 22^nd March after a very successful week of work. Just as they were leaving some new acquisitions arrived from Rouxville.

Our videos for Part 3 show: The Allis WD starting up, the Massey Harris 745 running and the Case 800 running and heading for a test drive.

The Tractor Volunteers group at Sandstone in early March 2024. Three volunteer vintage tractor stalwarts, Garth, Chris and Basil have been doing maintenance and light repairs at Sandstone this week. They have also been doing assessments on some unusual tractors that have never run there before with a view to getting them up and running.

The Ford 5000 tractor was a general purpose unit built at the Ford Tractor plant at Highland Park, Michigan, USA from 1965 to 1976. Many of these units were sold in South Africa.

Stepping away from fossil fuels!

Visitors to our 2022 Easter Steam event will remember the Donkey Cart that provided so many great pictures alongside the railway line to Grootdraai. We have now introduced a new Donkey Cart of more modern design that can be used as executive transport, much cheaper than a diesel bakkie!, and will also offer rides at the forthcoming Cherry Steam Festival event on November 18^th and 19^th 2022.

Our picture, by Leon Hugo, shows the Donkey Cart at Easter just before the heavy rains came and our video, a recent staff test drive for the new cart!
Click the image below to watch the video :

A short history - Click here

Sandstone Estates has a well-known and comprehensive collection of classic and vintage tractors.  We first came to the attention of the vintage tractor world in 1999 with the inauguration of The Great 100 Working Event which set in motion a number of events around the world where different countries attempted and in most cases succeeded in breaking the world record for the maximum number of pre-1966 tractors working in one field at one time.  Massey Harris is a pre-eminent brand in the world amongst tractor collectors and we are fortunate in having quite a number of these models.  We decided to concentrate on bringing two of them back into full working order, a 744 and 745. Both have been restored by Chris Wilson. 

The reason for this is that these tractors are often deployed on the farm as required to carry out various tasks.  In fact this is a programme that is gaining momentum.

The two Massey-Harris  tractors, a 744 and 745 restored by Chris Wilson.

Click here for more information on the Massey-Harris 744 and 745.

Chris Wilson reports. - Click here to read PDF