| Steam and Gas show: Horsepower of all kinds |
By: PAULINE SCHREIBER, Special to the News
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Posted: Friday, September 4, 2009 10:50 pm
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Don Weed of Dundas pulls the whistle Friday on the 1921 Advance Rumely 50-horse power steam engine at this weekend Rice County Steam & Gas Engine show.
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DUNDAS — The Rice County Steam and Gas Engines club show is for horses, too, and several draft teams made passes with plows down a field on the show’s grounds Friday.
The show continues Saturday and Sunday on a site in rural Dundas, off Minnesota Highway 3 between Faribault and Dundas.
Owner of one of the teams giving a horse-drawn plow demonstration was Tom Johnston of rural Faribault. He hitched five of his Belgian draft horses to a 1920s-era John Deere gain plow with two 14-inch bottoms. Then, he drove the horses down the field for the pleasure of spectators, turning over the soil the way has father and grandfathers did with horse power.
“When I was growing up, tractors were more popular on farms, and my dad had one,” Johnston said. “But he still used a team to spread manure. He loved his horses.”
And, Johnston said of his draft horses, “they are my love. I had saddle horses and rode, but my heart went into my draft horses.”
He grew up in Blue Earth County. Johnston came to Faribault in 1969 to run a delivery truck for Tasty Bread, which he did for 33 years before retiring.
About 25 years ago, he guesses, he bought his first set of Belgians.
“This is what keeps me occupied,” Johnston said of the draft horses. “I’ll keep working with them as long as I can.”
George Ford of Shoreview used his video camera to record Johnston’s plowing with the five-horse team.
“This is my fifth year coming here,” Ford said. “It’s a good show. Both my grandfathers had horses. They farmed in Wisconsin. In winter they logged with their horses. So watching this is really enjoyable.”
Not far from the field where Johnston plowed, John Elling of West St. Paul helped keep a recently restored 1921 Advance Remely steam engine stoked.
“I’m just helping,” Elling said. “I’m working on my boiler’s license, though.”
Don Weed of Dundas, who has a boiler’s license, was nearby. Restoration of the steam engine was a Rice County Steam and Gas Engines club project, Weed said. It took more than a year to get a boiler, but once the boiler came, club members worked together to get it ready for this year’s show.
The owners of the steam engine are Vic and Bernice Wenzel of Rosemount, Weed said. They will keep it in a heated building in winter, but come Labor Day weekend, when the club show is, it will be on the grounds by Dundas “steaming” away.
“The sawmill (on the show’s ground) is run with it,” Elling said of the newly restored steam engine.
Sawmill demonstrations with the engine, threshing demonstrations using old gas-engine tractors, blacksmithing, sorghum harvesting and processing, horse-drawn wagon rides and more plowing demonstrations will be held Saturday and Sunday on the grounds. A parade of tractors and other farm equipment is at noon on both days.
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