At this point in Larry Dacca’s life, running a tractor is second nature.
His family has a history of farming in the Puyallup Valley that stretches back 100 years. After operating his own row crop vegetable farm in the Puyallup area for years on end, Dacca, 73, moved to the Boistfort area in 2005 and quickly began settling into a life of quasi-leisure. The thing is, he can’t leave the tractors behind.
These days, Dacca owns and operates a for-hire tractor service known as Dacca Farms that harkens back to his days in Puyallup. Dacca offers mowing, plowing, tilling, dozer work and brush hogging services, and is eager to load his implements and machines on a trailer and bring them to a job site near you.
As an intensive vegetable production farmer, Dacca learned all about the intricacies of turning crops over and making the most of small bits of land.
“Farmers are always kind of optimistic,” said Dacca, who formerly grew about 12 different vegetable crops on 75 acres of patchwork land that he rotationally planted and harvested at least twice a year. “We always tried to squeeze out as much as we could.”
Nowadays, Dacca’s dirt projects are considerably smaller, usually about an acre or so, but that doesn’t take any of the fun out of it.
“I can't get out of the dirt. I call it tractor therapy,” explained Dacca as he showed off his extensive assortment of equipment.
A real dirtworks enthusiast, Dacca takes pride in each service that he provides. He doesn’t merely hack mow a field. He uses his grooming mower to lay it down nice and orderly. Likewise, with his rotovator tiller he is able to chop and smooth the soil until, in Dacca’s words, “it is seedbed ready.”
Dacca has been hiring himself out for tractor work since 1992 when he was looking for a little extra income to keep his farm afloat. Now it’s just about all he does. Taking a note out of his father’s handbook, Dacca currently owns five tractors that each serve a particular purpose.
“My father liked to have one tractor for every implement. That way you weren’t standing out in the field wasting a whole bunch of time hooking up and changing things around all the time,” said Dacca, who learned to operate a tractor back in his fledgling days on the family farm.
Soon, Dacca will be getting back his father’s old 1959 International 460. The thought of bringing the trusty old red tractor back into the fold brings an authentic smile to Dacca’s dusty lips.
He even uses a 1952 Ferguson T030 to pull his manicure mower, which is the same model that he learned to drive tractor on when he was a child.
“I started doing neighborhood tractor work on my neighbors gardens and whatnot, and then it just got bigger and bigger,” explained Dacca, who typically offers job inspections and estimates for free so long as he doesn’t have to travel all day to get there.
Although he doesn’t have set parameters, Dacca says he’s taken his tractor-for-hire services from Toledo to Auburn and Pe Ell to Morton.
If Dacca has to bust out his 1956 John Deere dozer to get the job done, he charges $75 per hour of work. Otherwise, jobs that require a wheeled tractor, like mowing or tilling, Dacca charges $85 per hour. In either case, he’ll be smiling in the driver’s seat as he putters along.
Dacca said that the soggy spring has slowed the roll of his business so far this year but intermittent spurts of sunshine have signaled the beginning of his prolonged tractor time.
“All this rain has made things tough,” said Dacca, “We’re just starting up now.”
