Most people are familiar with the names of  at least some tractor brands — John Deere, Case IH and New Holland, and foreign manufacturers like Kubota from Japan and Mahindra of India.

But an Avery?  To be exact, a B.F. Avery?

It was a brand used in the U.S. more than 50 years ago, and a fully restored 1951 Model V Avery will make the rounds of local shows and parades this summer thanks to Waterloo High School junior Avery Wheat.

With a lot of hard work, he has made his tractor, which rolled off the assembly line 45 years before he was born, look and sound brand new when the 12-horsepower, four-cylinder engine purrs quietly into action.

This is Avery’s second tractor restoration project.  The first was a Farmall Super M, which he said required little more than a new starter and a paint job. He uses it to compete in tractor pulls.

“That was a pretty simple rebuild,” Avery’s dad, Steve Wheat, said. “The Avery was a little more of a learning experience,” he noted.

When they purchased it in Centralia for $1,900, it started right up. But the next day, the starter burned out.

“We had to send that to Texas to be rebuilt — for $400.  That slowed the whole project,” Steve said.

Other items needed to be sent to Ohio for rebuilding.

“Nobody does this stuff around here,” Steve said. “We converted it to a 12-volt electrical system, he added.  “Six volt batteries are always dead when you need them.”

Avery, who credits grandfather Dave Wheat for igniting his enthusiasm for tractors and restoring them, told how his grandfather was sitting on the porch of his home adjacent to Wheat’s Auto Body on Ahne Road when they brought the Farmall home.

“He really got me excited about it, ”Avery said.

In fact, the family still has Dave Wheat’s 1953 Ford Jubilee tractor.

Avery’s Avery hails from the B.F. Avery factory in Louisville, Ky. The company began making farm implements before the Civil War, but in the 1950s sold out to the firm of Minneapolis-Moline, which continued to market tractors under the Avery name for a few more years. It is not related to another Avery farm machinery firm that went under in Peoria, at the start of World War II.

“They advertised them as being able to plow 10 acres a day,” Steve said. “That was a fourfold increase over a horse.”

“But that’s a small comparison to modern giants that can plow that much land in half an hour today,” Avery added.

The charm of Avery’s Avery is in how basic it is. There are no heat gauge or gas gauge.  There’s no radiator.  The engine is air cooled.

Determining how much gas is left requires unscrewing the cap and peering down into the tank.

There is an electric gauge to relay information that determines if the system is charging or discharging, and there’s an oil pressure gauge. No more.

The seat is made of hard metal, the same color as the tractor, and the three-speed standard transmission shift lever doesn’t have a knob on the end of the bent metal handle.

“There’s a hole at the end there. We don’t know what that’s for, but it’s not a knob,” Avery said.

Summarizing the machine as he sat on it, Avery, who was just selected as Waterloo High School FFA chapter president, described it as “ingenious.”

“It does exactly what is needed and has only what is necessary to do that. And it is all serviceable.”

Avery said he hopes to stay involved with agriculture, possibly as an ag machine mechanic.

“I don’t want to own a large farm,” he said, “but maybe a few acres.”

And as the smile that never left his face as he sat on his Avery shows – he’s into the agriculture world and its implements for sure.