JEROMESVILLE, Ohio — In Jay Calame’s kitchen, spotting a John Deere isn’t hard to find: a John Deere clock above the sink, a mug, plates and spoons, calendars, toy tractors, multiple hats and drawings from his grandkids.
In this house, the iconic green tractor is plentiful.
“He eats with John Deere. He tells time by John Deere. He even has these (John Deere) calendars that every so many decades the days fall the same. Like right now, October 1959 (is the same as this year),” said Renee Crabtree, Calame’s daughter.
This year is a special one for Calame. Soon, he will be turning 100 years old, and to celebrate, his neighbor bought him his favorite John Deere tractor: a 4020 that is sitting in his driveway.
Calame spent decades restoring John Deere equipment, and today, his birthday present is his favorite tractor.
“I’m a John Deere man. I’ve got green blood in me,” Calame said.
A dangerous upbringing
Born on Oct. 23, 1926, Calame grew up on a dairy farm in Sterling, Wayne County, Ohio. On the farm, life was dangerous, and he experienced several near-death experiences as a child.
Shortly after he was born, Calame survived a fall from a tractor.
One of his earliest memories was at the age of 6, when he was standing on straw hay bales and fell off onto the beaters of a manure spreader.
“For years I carried a scar here where one of them hit me,” he said.
In 1939, Calame’s family moved to another dairy farm in Wooster, but the hazards of everyday farming life continued.
When he was 13 years old, Calame was on a cultipacker — an iron roller fitted with wheels to break up soil — that was hooked up to horses.
“Then, the double trees that you hook a horse’s whip to went into the horse’s hind leg, and they took off. I, a little 13-year-old kid, ain’t gonna hold three horses,” he said.
The cultipacker, horses and Calame went soaring down the hill. Calame put his feet on the frame of the cultipacker and pulled back the reins of the horses, trying to stop them, but it was no use. They were going so fast that he was thrown in front of the iron roller.
“That cultivator weighed about a ton, started at my feet, and run up over me. I had some gashes in my head,” he said.
“That’s the way it goes,” Calame said about his near-death experiences. Beyond the hazards of everyday life, the farm is also where he fell in love with tractors.
The first time he rode a tractor was at the age of 10. Calame remembers driving the John Deere tractor over to his neighbors to thresh.
A farm of his own
At 26, Calame continued to work on his dad’s farm while he took a job at Smucker’s Jelly. He worked there for two years before getting an opportunity he couldn’t resist: a farm of his own.
He rented a 150-acre farm in Wooster in 1955 and bought 12 Holsteins and a John Deere tractor. He expanded his herd to 40 before renting a bigger farm in Sterling, Ohio, in 1959.
He farmed at that property until 1962, when Calame bought a nearby 100-acre farm, which he farmed until 1975. He strip-farmed row crops like hay and corn as a way to maximize space on the small farm.
“The best hired hand I ever had was my wife,” Calame said. Calame started “going with” her in 1947; they got married in November 1949.
“She couldn’t wait (to get married). She asked her dad, ‘You sign for us so we can get married.’ She was 17. She couldn’t wait till 18,” he said, followed by a chuckle.
“I’m the happiest man you ever saw with having a wife,” he said. Joyce Ann also grew up on a farm and would play an active role in farming later in life. “Anything that needed to be done, she was out there doing it,” said Crabtree.
She baled hay, worked the ground and drove the 4020 John Deere tractor — her favorite.
“She drove it all the time. I had to almost kick her off in order to move it. She just loved that tractor,” Calame said. He notes they were so close that it was like she could read his mind.
One day, when he was working on the tractor, the tractor tipped over. Fortunately, he was able to slide off before it fell on him. Earlier that day, Joyce Ann went to town and later visited her mother.
“She told her mother: ‘I got to go home, something’s wrong.’ How did she know that was something wrong when I upset that tractor? That’s how close we were,” said Calame.
In the 1960s, Calame was third in Wayne County for milk production.
Restoring John Deere equipment
Calame sold his farm, hoping to find a bigger one, but couldn’t find a farm “without spending a fortune.” A year later, in 1976, he was forced to sell his cows.
This misfortune would kick-start another journey: restoring John Deere equipment in 1978. Calame took a job working at a pallet factory. In his free time, he attended sales in Michigan and Indiana, buying John Deere equipment and going to junkyards to find missing parts.
“The first tractor I bought was in a basket,” Calame said. “It was all apart, and I was never a put-the-John Deere-together (guy) before, but I put it together, and it ran.”
Calame took the tractors down to the Wayne County Fair for decades. Together, with his grandfather, who took draft horses down to the fair, they spent 75 years going to the county fair.
Calame restored over 50 tractors, in addition to combines, plows and seeders. The last tractor he restored was in 2022 at the age of 96.
The best birthday present
For his 100th birthday, Calame wanted a John Deere 4020 tractor — his and his wife’s favorite tractor. Joyce Ann passed away in 2015.
His neighbor, Eugene High, heeded his wish. High and Calame met in 2009 when High moved in next door; Calame moved to his current property four years earlier. He bought the property because there is a big warehouse on it, which he used to restore John Deere equipment.
Every morning, High sits at his door and looks to see if Calame’s light is on above the window in front of the kitchen sink — that’s how he knows he’s OK.
“And at 7 o’clock the light goes on, and I know he went to sleep,” High said. Crabtree, Calame’s only daughter, lives 55 miles north in Akron. She’s grateful High is around to check on her dad.
“They’re very close. I said he might as well just adopt him. That way, I’d have a brother I could pick on because I’ll tell you he’s like the son he never had,” Crabtree said.
Earlier this year, High asked Calame what he wanted for his birthday, and he replied, “a 4020 John Deere.”
In March, High’s son found a 4020 John Deere online not far from them in Meadville, Pennsylvania. Two weeks later, Calame and High drove out to Pennsylvania to buy the tractor, which has been sitting in his driveway ever since. The 4020 is Calame’s newest restoration project.
“He’s a good neighbor. I couldn’t find any better,” Calame said. “And he’s better when he’s sleeping,” he added, which earned a chuckle from High.
Calame turns 100 years old on Oct. 23, 2026 — a century of love, laughs and a life well lived.
(Liz Partsch can be reached at epartsch@farmanddairy.com or 330-337-3419.)
