It’s a tradition you can count on — come the second Sunday in June, tractors will roll through Callicoon, and hundreds of onlookers will ooh and ahh. 

Some of those tractors will come right off of a local farm, a farm where the tractor is being used for plowing, for planting, for harvesting, or perhaps it’s used for feeding cows.

Many of those tractors will be driven to Callicoon by the farmers and their families, up over hills and around curves, a trip that can take hours in the morning before the parade — the average tractor can only go about 15 miles per hour on the roadway, some top out closer to 7 or 8 miles per hour. 

Don’t forget this trip will have to be done again in reverse, after the parade, after the onlookers have gobbled up their pancakes at the fire department’s breakfast and their chicken at the Delaware Youth Center’s barbecue. These farmers will again spend hours on that return trip over those same hills and around those same curves. 

Each way, many will face the day’s weather — some tractors have a roof, some have a full cab, but many more do not and even fewer have any sort of air conditioning. They’ll bounce over the potholes without the shock protection of a car or truck. 

Each way, they’ll have their lives endangered by the drivers of those cars and trucks, impatient drivers eager to get to the parade in the morning and even more eager to get home afterward, drivers who will pull risky maneuvers to spare themselves the inconvenience of being caught behind a tractor. 

This isn’t an assumption. 

Every year I see it happen. 

Cars dart out, crossing a double yellow line, speeding past the tractors so they can get to the parade before the guests of honor. 

This past Sunday, I watched with my heart in my stomach as a Tesla that was caught in a line of cars behind a series of tractors crossed the double yellow line directly before a near 90-degree blind curve. The driver sped past several cars to take up the space that a driver further ahead was leaving purposely because they know that stopping distance matters. 

And what did this Tesla driver gain for putting everyone at risk? For driving in the wrong direction on a blind curve? Perhaps a minute? They were still behind the tractors, tractors I can attest pulled over approximately 4 minutes later to let cars pass them by once they’d reached a safe straightaway section with a passing lane. I know. I was the driver of one of the cars that waited patiently, passing when they pulled over and waved me by, and I honked and waved my thanks. 

As one farmer told me this weekend, “The last two years we have had someone pass us and almost have a head-on collision because cars were coming in the other direction in blind areas on double yellow.

“Or they start to pass, then dip in between tractors,” the farmer continued, “which makes me nervous because the cars are riding the tractor’s @-- and not expecting a possible mechanical failure on an antique tractor or other tractor that is making a 10-15 mile journey ... or realizing there is a 50+-year-old manure spreader full of people.”

It’s those very antique tractors and 50+-year-old manure spreaders that make the tractor parade so popular with onlookers, their age offering something special for enthusiasts and their uniqueness for those who are simply there to have a good time. 

It’s the tractors driven right off of the farms by the farmers that offer us all something special — at the parade and after. 

As another farmer put it simply, “We the farmers feed everyone. We have one day a year to celebrate us.”

Attending the tractor parade is a wonderful way to celebrate our farmers. 

But you can’t just support the farmer during the parade itself. You can’t support the tractor parade and also refuse to be inconvenienced by a tractor on its way to or from the parade. 

Celebrating our farmers means being patient on the roadway, sharing the road with our tractor drivers and embodying what it means to be part of a right to farm community.