Collection reflects farming history

By Audrey Posten, Times-Register, Times-Register

Rowland Jones is a collector. Signs, farm tools, coffee mugs, pens and pencils by the thousands, key chains, pins, playing cards.

“You name it, I got it,” he quipped.

The lower level of Rowland’s rural Monona farmhouse has model cars, including one of his second vehicle, a 1956 Chevy. He’s been unable to find a model of his first, a 1955 Ford.

“I like these cars from the 50s, 60s and early 70s, when each brand and each year looked different. Now, they all look the same,” Rowland said.

The retired bus driver even has an assortment of school buses symbolizing his over-50-year career.

But all of that pales in comparison to Rowland’s largest collection: model tractors, farm machinery and other agricultural toys.

The top floor of Rowland’s home—four rooms—is filled nearly floor to ceiling with shelves full of pieces, some two boxes deep. Additional items sit in the attic, awaiting display space.

His collection is the largest in the area.

“Everybody wants to know how many I have,” Rowland said. “I do not know. I’ve never counted them.”

“As I buy more, I put them wherever I can find room to squeeze another one in,” he added. “It’s a heck of a job to dust all this.”

Rowland officially started acquiring pieces in 1978. You could say he’s been collecting since childhood, though.

He still has several toy barns—along with fencing and cows—from the 1950s, one a Christmas gift from his uncles, another bought from his uncles and two purchased later at the National Farm Toy Show in Dyersville.

“I haven’t had anyone here who’s ever seen one,” Rowland said.

Nearby sits an over-century-old wooden barn that belonged to his father. Another wooden toy, fashioned from a Snoboy apple box, served as an animal pen.

“When I was a kid, I had one side for my pigs and the other for my sheep because we had a building on the farm that way—half pigs and half sheep. I don’t know if my dad made it, if one of my grandpas made it for me, or if it was made to sell. I’ve had that since I was six or seven,” Rowland shared.

Also in Rowland’s collection are his original farm machinery toys, made in Lansing over 70 years ago. He has his first toy tractor from 1950 as well.

“I got it when I was six years old. My birthday is two days after Christmas, and I got that one toy and it said ‘Merry Christmas and Happy Birthday,’” he recalled. 

However, his favorite toy came a few years later, when he rescued a John Deere tractor the neighbor boys discarded in the ditch near his home. 

“One front wheel and the steering wheel came off, so they threw it in the garbage barrel. I saw this go in the ditch, and I had very few toys, so I went back down at night and dug around until I found it. I played with it until I got too old for toys. By that time, the other front wheel came off, so I threw it in the ditch again,” Rowland said. 

Forty years later, he attempted to find it—with success. 

“This is what it looked like after laying in the ditch for 40 years,” he said, holding a photograph of a brown, rusted body with no front tires. 

Luckily, a friend was able to restore the tractor, adding wheels and a fresh coat of John Deere green paint.

“That tractor had so much special meaning, I didn’t care what it cost,” Rowland said.

Other pieces hold sentimental value too. In the 45 years he’s been collecting, Rowland has tried to find models of the farm equipment that operated on the Jones family farm, first under his father and later himself.

“Over there is some of the original horse machinery my dad would have had.  He started farming in 1937,” Rowland shared. “This would have been his first disc that he would have pulled with two horses. He started farming with horses, then, he got his first tractor in 1940. That shelf is the tractors that have been on this farm. My dad had the John Deere and the Ford. The rest is what I’ve had since. Right now, I’m down to one. I have one with a cab and loader.”

Through these pieces and many others, Rowland hopes to tell the history of tractors and farm machinery.

“I want to try and keep the history going,” he reflected.

Corn pickers, for example, showcase farming prior to the combines most people know today.

“This would have been made in the 40s,” he said, pointing to one piece. “You probably got 40 to 60 bushels of corn per acre. Now, they get 150 to 250 an acre and you couldn’t possibly pick corn with something like that.”

“Down on the bottom, over here, are a couple of steam engines that go back way before the tractor,” Rowland continued. “When they used the big steam engines, this was one of the first plows. They would have up to six men ride on that plow to pull it in and out of gear.”

One area features mixer mills. Every farmer once had a mill to grind feed.

“I started buying these mills to show how they made feed years ago. Kids don’t have any idea—even people in their 20s and 30s,” he said. “Now, they grind it in town and bring it out to the farm.”

Another row contains model power units. This machinery was helpful from the 1920s into the 1940s, when most farmers didn’t have electricity, said Rowland. 

“Anybody with a little money had a power unit, and they used it for grinding feed or running the cream separator or pumping water if the wind didn’t blow. These are all hand made, and very few collectors in the U.S. would have a collection that big,” he noted.

A table in one of Rowland’s upstairs rooms is another ode to history. It proudly displays a photo of the unloading of his dad’s first tractor in February 1940. Scrapbooks contain operator’s manuals for every tractor that’s ever been on the farm, and there’s also sales literature for just about every piece of machinery that’s ever been on the farm.

“Over here, I’ve got something most people don’t have either. Starting in the 1800s, John Deere gave out a pocket ledger at Christmas time to the farmers. Every man had suspender overalls, and he put this book in the pocket and wrote down his expenses through the year,” Rowland explained. “Some books are perfectly clean, and some have a lot of writing. If you go through the back part, it shows all the machinery available that year.” 

“This table has a lot of meaning,” he said.

While many of the newer tractor models are now made in China, Rowland favors earlier toys, a lot of which were handmade. He has pieces manufactured locally in places like Lansing and Dyersville, but some equipment has come from as far away as Canada, South Africa and Germany.

He’s not loyal to one brand. The collection spans from John Deere and Farmall to Oliver and Massey Ferguson. Rowland even has two different versions of the Froelich Tractor.

Rowland said some of the items were purchased at implements and through the mail, but the majority came from the National Farm Toy Show in Dyersville, which is now in its 45th year. He was among the first attendees and plans to continue going.

“I’ve been to all of them,” he said. “There are very few of us left who’ve been to all the shows.” 

Rowland admitted some people don’t understand his collection.

“People laugh because they think I’m an overgrown kid,” he said. “But it is a big hobby in the United States.”