Dostert's 2010

Introducing the Dostert's. A brave brave family for standing out in the cold with me! :) 

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas from my family to yours.

A piece of the past

My computer is currently sick and at the doctors getting fixed! In the 3 years that I have had it, I have never had an issue with it except for a Windows problem which just involved a system patch and then I had more Ram installed to run my photoshop and movie programs. Then WHAM! all of a sudden this past weekend I got a virus called ThinkPoint on it! Nasty stuff-don't ever get it! I tried running my antivirus and malware programs to no avial only resulting in partial quarantine. So off to the Geeks2You shop in Kato it went! They promise to have it back today! Cross your fingers! I have to re-install my Microsoft Office/Student bundle and my Adobe programs so bare with me in the next few weeks as I get everything back up and running! The virus even affected my ability to blog-apparently it does a relocation link to just about anything Google! So this is coming via MNSU's campus computers!

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I did want to share with you a few of the photos I took while at the Bussert Auction!
Mark and I purchased a D case on the auction. An extremely rare tractor that rolled off Case's assembly lines in the 1940's. The D case we had on our farm orginally operated our Red River Special Threshing machine-which we still have. In the long run, Mark and I have the goal to get both back into shape (the threshing machine works, the tractor doesn't) and run them at the Rice County Steam & Gas Engine show and Pioneer Power. It was truely a sight to see all these tractors lined up out in the fields. Mark and I even took a walk around the Bussert Junkyard property and there were still tractors, trucks, combines, lawn mowers, etc. laying all around with trees growing through them or so delapitated you could barely recognize the brand on the side.

At one point, I even started tearing up just imagining that at one point, all these tractors were someone's livelihood. Someone's grandpa or great-grandpa, just like mine, worked the fields in all of these tractors that are now skeletons being auctioned off for just a few hundred bucks. One gentleman bought the back acres where they didn't drag tractors out for $80,000. Mark and I walked back in there and estimated he will probably make 300 to 500,000 just from scraping, restoring and reselling everything he ended up with.

There were 2 d's on this auction-something unheard of, if you are lucky enough to even find one, and as I watched the people who got the other one start to scrap theirs for cash right at the sight, I wanted to bawl. I wanted to yell at them and ask them if they knew what kind of memories they were destroying or what kind of Americana would be lost from their actions. I wondered to myself, who sat on each of these tractors? How did they purchase it? What kind of work did it do on the farm? How many times did it break down and get fixed? I'm one of those people who get emotional knowing that pretty soon, we will lose a whole generation of people, stories and memories and then what happens? We forget. I don't want to forget. That is why once my dad died, it was my mission to find a D Case on an auction and restore it. It was his dream and it has now become mine. Someday maybe in about 2-3 years, I will be driving this tractor down the middle of the road in that small town 4th of July Parade and inspire another little girl (or boy) to restore a piece of Americana.

Minneapolis-Moline tractors are a rare find because of their tie to Minneapolis, Minnesota. There were plenty on this auction, but almost all of them went for $1000 or above.

It was a graveyard of lost and forgotten tractors. This was on the 2nd day of pick-up and still many were waiting to be brought home to their new owners or to be scrapped. Some piles were marked "must be picked up by November 31,2010"

You can barely make out the CASE logo on the side of my tractor do to all the rust and lichens from sitting outside for 60+ years. Luckilly, Case makes reproduction manuels, logos, emblems and parts for restoration. We were lucky enough to find some of the original manuels on e-bay and lucky enough to have a friend who restores Case tractors on the look-out for original parts.

For any of you that remember Bussert's-its a hop skip and jump away from my house so we often went there for parts. Mark and I had gone there last spring/summer just to look (as a mechanic how could he resist?) and we were utterly AMAZED at how cleared out it was. But even here you can see the piles-they were spray painted and sold off in lots. Which in one pile we saw an old amazing ornate cook stove and unfortunately the auction company spray painted it in hot pink-what a sad day.

 

And this right here is my BABY. My pride and joy of the auction. She doesn't look like much now, but fully restored in all her glory is a beauty. Feel free to look up a D Case  (1943-1949 are the best years) in Google images. She truely is a beauty. My brothers were probably as excited as I was about the find. We all consider it our labor of love.