Me & My Car: ‘Parade-worthy tractors’ on display at Forest Home Farms in San Ramon

Usually, I write about old cars or trucks, but today I’m writing about tractors, particularly about John Deere tractors and the man that started the company, plus an East Bay location where you can view this piece of machinery.

John Deere, born in 1804, was a pretty clever blacksmith working in Vermont. But the New England economy crumbled in 1836, so he moved to Illinois and started a blacksmith shop in Grand Detour.

There he learned that the farmers generally used cast-iron plows and the soil would stick to the equipment...