Tractors pull huge crowd to Northfield auction

Nearly 70 years ago, when tractor dealers were taking horses as trade-ins, young Palmer Fossum and his dad hauled to their Rice County farm one of the first Ford tractors in Minnesota.

Twelve-year-old Palmer quickly took to plowing with that 1939 model. A Ford dealer who saw the boy plowing decided to sponsor him in contests throughout Rice County to demonstrate the new horsepower. The dealer delivered to young Palmer a new tractor, a 1951 pickup truck, a plow and a trailer.

On the shiny gray 9N tractor, the boy won plowing bees, wowing crowds and kindling his devotion to Fords. He became a collector decades later, slowly but surely replacing the dairy cows in his barn with tractors.

Palmer Fossum died two years ago at age 80. Today, what's billed as one of the world's biggest collections of Ford and Fordson tractors and equipment goes on the auction block near Northfield, Minn.

Hundreds of tractor lovers from throughout the United States and at least 13 other countries were on their way Friday to see the tractors and implements displayed on 5 acres of the Fossum farm. Of the 178 tractors Fossum's family still owns, 78 are being sold.

Among the visitors was Bob Pripps, a Wisconsin author who featured Fossum in a half-dozen books, who came to see what his friend had collected.

"He was known the world over as a Ford tractor authority," Pripps said.

Fossum traveled the Midwest and as far away as Texas to find vintage tractors -- weathered gems on the prairies, or in the windbreaks, or buried in weeds. One by one, he would haul them home.

In his heyday, Fossum owned about 200 Ford tractors and their predecessors, the Fordsons, dating to 1924.

"This man had stuff that other people dreamed about finding," said Steve Parker, secretary-treasurer of the Ford/Fordson Collectors Association, an international group that Fossum helped found.

The tractors were just an excuse, Parker said, for Fossum to talk with his "Ford family of friends."

He was a charismatic, gabby man who would arrive at tractor shows and soon have a gaggle tailing him, yelling his name, eager to ask questions.

Fossum was known for never turning away anyone asking for help. Take the girl, for example, who spent a summer with her dad on the Fossum farm, scavenging parts to restore a tractor for her 4-H project.

The Ertl toy company of Dyersville, Iowa, even sent engineers to study the 1939 tractor that Fossum drove as a boy in order to design a toy replica, which featured Ford's first three-point hitch. On the fenders of the limited-edition collectibles, the toymaker die cast "Fossum Ford."

And each fall, when it was time to go to the meeting of the collector's association, Fossum would pull out his red-and-gray Ford jacket.

"When he put that on, it was like he was going to a presidential ball," said son Layton. "He'd forget his shoes and his underwear, but that jacket came with."

'Enjoying life to no end'

In 1984, Fossum bought a rare tractor, a Funk Flathead V8 built in 1949, part of the 8N Ford series. With that, his passion to collect took off.

"We wanted him to slow down, and he'd say, 'Oh, no, I'm just enjoying life to no end,'" son Lowell said.

Twins Lowell and Layton and their older brother, Loren, would journey with their dad to find the classics.

Loren recalls the day they rode for hours in a Jeep across a North Dakota prairie to find a steel-wheeled 1924 Fordson near the ruins of an old sod house.

On another trip, they recovered a 1920 Ford Model A mail truck. The mailman could replace front wheels with snow skis, mount extra tires in the middle and fasten tracks on the rear. Palmer got it running.

They parked it outside St. Peter's Lutheran Church, their dad's Ford jacket hanging upon it as hundreds of mourners passed by.

At the head of the funeral procession, Loren drove the tractor to Oaklawn Cemetery.

That tractor, symbol of Fossum's heritage and love for people, is not for sale at the auction. But it's once again on display for those who come from far and wide.