FORT KENT, Maine — I have a new hero, and her name is Manon Ossevoort.
Never heard of her? Neither had I until a couple of weeks ago, when I came across her story while pursuing odd news tidbits on the Internet.
But first some Rusty Metal Farm background to explain why I’m ready to put up a poster of Ossevoort in the workshop.
Now singer Meghan Trainor may be all about that bass, but here at RMF, it’s all about the tractors.
Never in a million years did I ever think I’d end up a tractor aficionado. In fact, for a number of years I was more of a one-woman tractor pit crew flunkie.
My job was to run and fetch tools and parts my late husband Patrick needed as he worked on any one of the multiple tractors in his collection.
Often his requests exceeded my limited tool knowledge, so, after pawing through drawers and bins of shiny wrenches, sockets and thingamajigs, I’d simply grab and return with a huge handful and hope for the best.
While Patrick was alive, there were large tractors, small tractors and really, really small tractors here on the farm — some for actual work and others just for show.
Somewhere along the way, Patrick thought it was a good idea to teach me how to drive a tractor, and he plunked me on the metal seat of the flagship of the tractor fleet — an International Harvester Farmall 656.
I was a surprisingly quick study when it came to the ins and outs of tractor operations. Under Patrick’s tutelage, I learned how to start and shift the cantankerous machine and how to manipulate the myriad levers and buttons to bend the attached bucket, forklift, mower or plows to my will.
From time to time, I was even allowed to drive the beast from one end of the farm to the other. But it was usually done at a snail’s pace in first or second gear, because speed, tractors and me behind the wheel just seemed like a bad combination all around.
After Patrick’s death, many of his tractors found new homes. Even the flagship International Harvester went to tractor assisted living with my friend Kris, who possesses the mechanical skills to keep it running.
Now a newer, smaller, shinier Mahindra tractor takes up space in the garage. And, if I may be allowed to blow my own air horn for a moment, I have gotten fairly adept at operating it.
But all my limited skills combined are no match for Ossevoort — or Manon “Tractor Girl” Ossevoort, as she has become known.
As I write this, Ossevoort is living the tractor dream. On Sunday, she and a small team of mechanics, guides and support crew started on a 2,900-mile tractor ride across Antarctica.
According to various media accounts, when Ossevoort was asked whether people think she’s crazy, she replied “Only if they haven’t met me.”
What I’d give to actually have that opportunity.
This is by no means Tractor Girl’s first long-distance journey by tractor.
In 2005, the 38-year-old actress from Holland drove her tractor the length of Africa.
As she heads to the South Pole on her polar-modified Massey Ferguson 5600 Series tractor, dubbed “Antarctica 2,” Ossevoort has said she hopes to arrive at the South Pole on or around Dec. 7.
Along the way, she will encounter extreme winter weather conditions, crevasses, shifting snow and ice and frigid temperatures.
“Ten kilometres an hour would be good,” she has said. “Fifteen would be nice, 20 lovely.”
Ossevoort will hand the wheel over to a support driver occasionally because the tractor must keep moving 24 hours a day to keep it from freezing up.
Last winter, in the middle of a northern Maine cold snap, my own tractor got the chills when the diesel fuel got so cold it gelled up.
It took myself, a friend and a rag-tag set up of a kerosene heater, electric blanket and several old sleeping bags to warm things up enough to get it moving again.
So, it would seem Ossevoort’s plan to simply keep moving is a good one.
Once at the pole, she expects to build a snowman-shaped time capsule and place inside it a collection of hundreds of scraps of paper she’s collected, on which are written the dreams of people she has met during her tractor adventures.
They have been converted into digital form and will be placed in the belly of the big snowman she plans to build at the Pole, with the expectation that it will be opened in 80 years.
“I want to turn them into a beautiful time capsule of the dreams of the world, so that in the future, children and people can read something about our dreams and not only about politics or war,” she told the Daily Mail. “The tractor, for me, symbolizes this very down to Earth fact that if you want to do something, maybe you will not be so fast, but if you keep going and keep your sense of humor, you will get there.”
I’d never really looked at my tractor as such a philosophical light, despite the hours spent mowing fields, hauling firewood and moving snow.
But Ossevoort has certainly gotten me thinking.
Once she’s back from the South Pole, I wonder how she would feel about meeting up at the American’s First Mile monument in Fort Kent, pointing our respective tractors south on U.S. Route 1 and hitting the road for Key West.
In the meantime, I’ll be glued to Ossevoort’s website at antarcticatwo.com and tracking her progress.
Julia Bayly of Fort Kent is an award winning writer and photographer, who writes part time for Bangor Daily News. Her column appears here every other Friday. She can be reached by email at jbayly@bangordailynews.com.
