BY JOEL STOTTRUP at the Mille Lacs County Times
Rural Princeton seed salesman Wayne Dalchow is ready to clear his property of most of his approximately 65 old tractors (many antique and collectible) and an estimated 6,000 collectible seed, flour and feed sacks.
For some years now both the tractors and feed sacks have been building up at his 11-acre place on the northern edge of Princeton Township. A large number of the empty cloth sacks hang on the walls of his large shed, while others are piled elsewhere. His old tractors meanwhile have taken up spots in his main shed, in adjoining sheds, and outside and some can be seen partially camouflaged by trees. Some of the latter may have seen their last farm work because of their disrepair.
Dalchow put in a big day last Saturday with the help of four others trying to start as many of the tractors as possible for Dalchow’s big event. That is the Oct. 1 and 2 auction sale that local auctioneers Wayne and John Pike are going to conduct there.
Dalchow, a native of the township, was a farmer for a large part of his life (he milked cows for 35 years), phased into being a crop seed salesman and giving up farming. He has sold seed for 26 years, becoming a top salesman in his territory.
During the time he was selling he also became a buyer of sacks by the thousands, sacks that once held feed, seed or flour. He also took a fancy to old tractors with a variety of names and vintages that give clues into the history of the ag implement manufacturing industry and its many changes.
He also has ancient farm harvesting equipment stretched out for hundreds of yards in one line, much of it the horse-drawn type.
Now at 76 with two hip replacements and slowing down, Dalchow has had to confront his own changes and decided it’s time to liquidate much of what he has collected. For Dalchow, it is time to call in the auctioneers. Dalchow last week said he is anticipating a big crowd at his auction and that a neighbor has offered temporary use of his property for the cars that won’t fit on Dalchow’s place.
Dalchow had already done quite a bit of work preparing for the auction, as of last Thursday, saying: “I’ve been working on this for two months and I’m tired of it already. I’m finding stuff I didn’t know I had. There are a lot more sacks than I thought I had.”
Dalchow has a setup for his business and home that is practical rather than fancy, with his business space taking up most of the main shed and his living quarters holding down a part of the north end.
Once stepping inside the business side of that shed, the eye immediately catches sight of the walls mostly covered with sacks – 440 of them in fact. Most are cloth, with a small number made of plastic.
It turns out the sacks on his shed walls are only a small fraction of his sack collection. Most of the fronts of the sacks on display have colorful advertising designs with names of feed and seed companies from not only various Minnesota cities, including Princeton, but also from other states.
Among the sack labels are Mille Lacs patent flour, Princeton Flour Mill, Princeton Mill, Dalbo Feed Mill, and Farmers Co-op Creamery (in Foreston).
Dalchow likes the sacks with Minnesota names the best. “I just do, I guess, because I’m from Minnesota,” he explains. He also reveals how he obtained many of his sacks. “I had a friend who grew up in Litchfield and he went to auction sales,” Dalchow said. “I’d buy from him. And I bought about 1,000 from a guy in Willmar, for $9 each and sold some.” Dalchow belongs to a club that collects feed sacks and he said he expects some of the members to be at his auction.
The old tractors
Getting to Dalchow’s old tractors which have been sitting scattered about his property – a handful in his main shed, many more tucked tightly together in a long stretch of stitched together metal sheds, more in another shed in back, and some inside some woods.
Dalchow’s tractors are definitely the mechanical horses in the early days of agriculture, and vary in their mechanical condition. He said on Monday this week that he hadn’t yet gotten all of them started and didn’t plan to sell those he couldn’t start. The carburetors on some hard starters need cleaning and some of the modern gas doesn’t keep well over winter, he noted.
Together, his tractors are a smorgasbord of makes and models. Among the brand names are John Deere, International Harvester, Farmall, Allis Chalmers, Case, Moline, Oliver, Silver King, McCormick, and McCormick-Deering, Massy Harris, Ford, Co-op, Cockshutt, plus an Earthmaster garden cultivator tractor from California.
His favorite tractor make, he says, is Allis because that is what he drove while growing up.
Dalchow bought many of his tractors at auctions and others from people who called him to offer a sale.
Asked why he has collected all those old sacks, tractors and other farm implements, Dalchow wasn’t sure: “I don’t know,” he said. “I go to auctions and buy stuff. It gets in your blood so I kept on doing it.”
Dalchow plans to keep five of his old tractors and they are a D-19 Ford, two D-14 Allis Chalmers, a D 145 Allis and one B Allis.
He answered questions about some of his tractors. When asked about his Cockshutt model 30, he noted that it was made in Canada, and said Cockshutt was ahead of its time in the 1950s with its hydraulics. A label boasting live power take-off was on a fender of his Cockshutt 30.
“I have to sell it before I die,” he said about his decision to sell most of his collections in an auction now. “I kind of know what’s here, otherwise they throw it together [to sell and do not know its worth].”
Dalchow once had a farm with 131 acres but then 16 years ago sold all but the 11 acres he is living on now.
Dalchow, of German descent, talked about how he got into selling seeds. By his account, he had to do some convincing to be taken on as a seed salesman.
He had actually wanted to begin selling crop seed 10 years before he was allowed, however, some people with the Funk Bros. Seed Co. “told me I wasn’t a salesman,” Dalchow said. He defied that, he said, explaining that in five years he “went to the top.” He had top sales in a company that was a part of the Funks Bros. Seed Co., he explained.
Besides all his old sacks, tractors and harvesting machinery, Dalchow also has about 200 seed company signs. Plus, he has a lot of odds and ends of things that would have been used on farms many years ago. He has one or more hay scythes and a very old General Electric refrigerator with a curious metal ball on top and there is a push-pull switch for running it.
But all those collectibles take up a lot of room and the owner also has to worry about the security and maintenance of the inventory. Even his answer to the question of what he likes to collect better, old sacks or old tractors, reveals that collecting does involve work.
Sacks, is what he has preferred collecting. And his reason? “They are easier to handle,” he explains.
Now it has come to the point that Dalchow doesn’t want to handle those much any more.
