Cottonwood Connection

Bird City Tri-State Antique Engine and Thresher Museum

Season 5 Episode 5 | 24m 52sVideo has Closed Captions

Join us as we take a look at Kansas’ history of steam tractors and other machinery.

Aired 10/20/2024

Cottonwood Connection

Bird City Tri-State Antique Engine and Thresher Museum

Season 5 Episode 5 | 24m 52sVideo has Closed Captions

Join us as we take a look at Kansas’ history of steam tractors and other machinery.

This unique and thorough exhibit of Great Plains agricultural history, holds multiple annual festivals to celebrate the history of draft animals, steam tractors and the legacy of life on the farm.

Aired 10/20/2024

Problems with Closed Captions? Closed Captioning Feedback

Cottonwood Connection is a local public television program presented by Smoky Hills PBS

Cottonwood Connection

Bird City Tri-State Antique Engine and Thresher Museum

Season 5 Episode 5 | 24m 52sVideo has Closed Captions

This unique and thorough exhibit of Great Plains agricultural history, holds multiple annual festivals to celebrate the history of draft animals, steam tractors and the legacy of life on the farm.

Aired 10/20/2024

Problems with Closed Captions? Closed Captioning Feedback

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[music] Tractors and mechanized farming equipment are central to the Great Plains agricultural history and their development and heritage are celebrated through the work of a special place in Bird City, Kansas. [music] With the Great Plains, with the vast fields of wheat at the time, wheat harvest used to take months. You would have your header, which would go through and cut the wheat, and you wanted tall wheat, so you still had enough for bundles.

And those bundles you would shock, so you cut the stem with the head on it. And then you put them in shocks or kind of a little conical or teepee-shaped form, and then you came back because the wheat was cut fairly green, it would cure in those shocks, and then you came back and had to pick up those shocks with a pitchfork and throw them into a wagon or what they might call a header barge, take it to the threshing machine and unload that and run it through the thresher, and that would separate the straw from the grain.

Mechanization changed farming in the Great Plains and Western Kansas and all over the world, incredibly so. There's an annual event at Bird City, Kansas, and at that they have the annual threshing machine show.

And so they do demonstrations with the old threshing machines and the process, and they have them working, and it's a lot of smoke, a lot of steam, and a lot of noise, and it's well worth going to to see the activity and to learn about those old machines. So my name is Rodney Klepper.

We're the second oldest show in the nation and by far the largest in the Midwest. But we're unusual in the fact that we're not on a fairgrounds. This is our own dedicated showgrounds of 40 acres. The history's a pretty simple history, it's a gentleman with a Case dealership coming home from a Case convention, decided that he'd put on a show on his farm, found a steam engine in Norcader, Kansas, outbid the junk man, and he started on his farm, held the show on his farm for several years. I'm Ken Bougher.

I've been a member since 1955.

Well, it was Kite Farm out here. Roy Kite bought the steam engines and he started on his used machinery lot on the south side of Bird City on the 7th Street and Penn, and then the Brubakers, they got interested in it, Seward and Fred Brubaker got interested in steam engines.

And so they got a Nicholson and Russell steam engine.

They got to get together and Ed Nelson used to run a thrashing bee when he was younger too.

So then we organized, they organized, I was just a kid, and Roy Kite donated the land on his farm for the show. So that's where it got started, two miles east and two miles north.

I think as of 54-55, they decided to have meals out there.

The Methodist ladies agreed to provide the food.

They worked under all kinds of unusual circumstances.

Then we, and then another thing we used to do is to go out in a wheat field and gather up shocks.

We'd make two haystacks and then we'd put the steam engine and the thrashing machine up in there and then people would get up and pitch off of them.

You know, when they had big crowds, the parking lot was clear full, then they'd line up along the road on both sides and on the east end, the cars would be parked along there.

We had people coming from all over.

Eventually moved to town.

He moved to town.

He put a show on the lot there.

And once he outgrew that, then they bought the 40 acres here on the showgrounds.

Well, in 1975, they built the first building number one.

It was decided that they would build it and the extra space they would run it out to the farmers to put combines in it during the winter.

When the show was over with, because everything is displayed at the show, it was stored for free.

If it's displayed at the show, it's stored for free.

And we had that building full, Melvin's building's full, Ernie Brecher's building's full, and we've run out of space.

So we built 100-foot buildings for seven years straight. And that's what, so it's been expanded ever since. But what happened is over the years, a lot of families, as they grew up and moved out of western Kansas, they had tractors, farm implements, other things that they didn't know what to do with, but they didn't want to lose them. And so what happened years ago, they started a program where you could loan. And that would mean you would put your implement or your tractor here on the showgrounds, and then we would maintain it for you.

One of the things that was really nice to do, we built the shop down there so we could rebuild different things.

I think just in the short time I've been here, they've probably added a good 12 buildings.

And we've got, we just finished one here next door, and we're adding another one that ought to be showing up here next week. So what we're running into now is nice farm families.

The children and grandchildren live in the city.

They have certain tractors, implements that they fell in love with at their grandparents spend in the summers and this type of thing.

They would like to keep it, but they don't have a place for it.

So it went from a really a one person, one steam engine show to neighboring farmers digging out their old tractors and other steam engines.

And now we grow to what we have and with a number of steam engines and tractors.

So I like to think that we're basically a teaching venue, if you will, teaching kids.

And as a matter of fact, even grownups have passed through and they all learn about all the different ways that the wheat comes up and what all happens to get it to your loaf of bread in town.

How it's come about from horse powered to our tractors.

So I think if you were to say what our basic mission is, is to preserve the history of Northwest Kansas and farming on the high plains.

Now that not only includes the farmer themselves, the land itself, but also the family.

My name is Kaden McArthur. I'm from Champion, Nebraska, and I have a tractor here at the Bird City, Kansas Thresher Show. It's a 1940 FarmAll A.

It's been in the family for many generations, I think five now.

I got it a couple years ago from my grandpa and it's been, I've had it working ever since.

I have a plow and a disc I pull behind it.

It's everyday working now.

I just like that there's no problems with them that much, no electronics.

This one is all hand cranked.

There's no starter on it, no battery, no nothing.

It's all hand start.

I just love that about them. I'm Marcy Neff.

I grew up in Western Kansas in Colby and then now we live in Eastern Kansas around the Emporia area.

I've been coming to this show since 1982.

Initially it was my older brother. He started as a little kid helping out on the steam engine row.

My dad got sucked into it because of my older brother and started helping out on the engines too.

His brother, John, had been helping on the engine since he was a young kid too.

My Uncle John was killed in a farm accident and it was his dream to have an engine one day. So my dad, Mike, and their other brother, LJ, found this engine in Southern Kansas and bought it and had to make some repairs to it to get it operational.

In 2005 my dad passed away from cancer and we've kind of just kept the family legacy going of running this engine and the grandkids are growing up around it and love it. So here we have our 20-70 Nichols and Shepherd.

So I'll go through our main controls for controlling the actual engine.

So this is our reversing lever.

This is what makes the engine run forward or backwards.

This is our throttle and this is our clutch.

So this is what disengages the drive. So here I have the clutch forward, disengaged.

I can put the reversing lever forward. We'll just get it a little bit of throttle. And you can't hear anything other than the water purling around.

But they're dead silent all the time pretty much.

At least this one is.

There is no combustion.

All it is is just steam passing through a bunch of valves and passages to get to the other side of the piston and just push it back and forth.

So we have our injector here.

We have our steam in and water in and so to get this to work you turn your steam on and as you open your water it will suck it out of the bunkers and it'll make a cool sound telling you that it is injected.

So with whistles there's a whistle code and so there's a bunch of different shorts and longs you can do to signal other people or whatever.

But the main three is when you're going you two to twice if you're going backwards three times and if you're stopping you toot it once.

So. And this doesn't have power steering so you got to really turn a lot to go anywhere. Okay so generally speaking as far as the steam tractors go there's primarily two big distinctions are a single cylinder versus a twin cylinder.

This particular one the nickel it has stub axles so they're not really designed for pulling it puts a lot of stiff here to pull with it puts a lot of stress on the boiler.

Generally for your pulling tractors they'll have a solid axle through axle and it's just built more for that.

So we we like to belt up stuff.

Belt up to this that's where it shines.

So most of your equipment back then was belt driven.

That was the means of connecting your your power unit to the equipment.

The 2070 on it is so it's 20 horsepower on the drawbar so it has 20 horsepower towing something and 70 on the flywheel when it's connected to something on the belt.

A lot of the other tractors will actually have a higher drawbar rating just because they're meant for towing but with this being a twin cylinder and it being meant for belt driving something it just it has quite a bit of horsepower on the flywheel.

Yeah this morning we were belted up to the the thresher.

We always love doing that out here putting it to use just something to give it some exercise out here. In 2014 the boiler did not pass inspection it became too thin to be safe to operate.

So we had to kind of put things on pause that year and have a little family powwow.

We decided to repair it and began taking apart the engine and it took about seven years between fabrication and tearing everything down restoring it painting it. Randall did a lot of the engine restoration and painting and the engine was able to return to this show in 2020 fully restored hopefully it will continue to be our family legacy.

I've been round engines ever since I was born.

I love them to the death. For anyone that is running one of these engines the actual operator in the state of Kansas should be and is supposed to be licensed. They do have a steam school they put on anyone learning the the operations of steam engines kind of go into an apprenticeship and they learn to operate it from another their licensed operator they have to have so many hours of operation and steam school and be able to pass a written test and a physical test.

I guess I can brag a little bit I was the first licensed female in the state of Kansas as a teenager here so it's kind of kind of fun to see my kids and my husband go through the same thing I did.

I'm Doyle Bohl from Phillipsburg, Kansas. This is my wife Kelly Bohl.

I went to steam school probably 15 years ago in Mount Pleasant, Iowa before Kansas got a steam school going so of course as you know you've got to have an operator's license to learn one of these. My wife Kelly she's in the process of getting her operator's license.

There is a organization called Ladies of Steam where all ladies run steam engines and so I kind of belonged to it and that and so we did just the project we can go do together.

We've owned this engine since 2019.

We purchased it from our our club called Sunflower Pioneer Power Association in Almina, Kansas.

At that time the boiler was shot and wouldn't put full pressure anymore so we had a new boiler fabricated for it and rebuilt.

This is only the second show it's been in.

Okay. Yeah we just fired it at Memorial weekend this last year and we actually called the grandson of the original owner and let him light first match and put it in there so that way the family, the old family of the original owners could share in it as well. So this is my dad Don.

I'm Dennis. My birthday's actually tomorrow so my history with the show is I always celebrate my birthday during the steam engine show. But uh my grandpa is actually one of the founding members of it so so we've been with the show since it started really as a family.

I've been running this engine since I was 12 years old. Okay.

They used to have the show out in the country.

We stored the engine where I lived. It's four miles over to the show. Top speed on them is about 2.5 miles per hour. So that's four miles took the town took a minute.

Yeah that was a two hour trip.

Right now we're building up the fire to build steam and we have a hose hooked up and we're going to boil the water to cook the corn with steam from the engine.

So this is our this is our cooking machine now.

You're making you're using the tractor to make dinner.

Yeah exactly.

When you put water under pressure or every pound of pressure that you printed under it raises its boiling temperature two degrees.

So if I had 100 pounds in there that'll steam at about 400 degrees.

Because it boils at 212 naturally and then you add another 100 pounds which be another 200 degrees.

So the steam's actually about 400 something degrees coming off the water. My top down.

This is my 1912 Advance and my dad and I restored it when I was young. Many moon ago.

Last year we had 19 operating steam engines on the show ground.

We plow with it. We run sawmills with it.

We thrash with it.

We do a lot of things.

Yeah we have a parade of all old tractors and newer tractors and cars and old trucks and it's quite a parade. For people who've never seen this type of thing. We also have a tractor pool here during our show and I'd like to tell a story that when I first moved here they said we're going to have a tractor pool and I'm from from the big city and those tractors were those monster tractors.

Come to find out it was all the regular tractors that we use out here and they pull a sled along and people go and climb on it to add weight as it moves along. Right before noon every day we have steam engine races and so when I ask them what they remember they'll say well the steam engine races.

So we did races a few hours ago and they have a fast race and a slow race.

So a fast race is just to give it wide open and pretty much whoever's governor is set the highest has been in one but slow race actually takes a lot of operator skill on knowing exactly when to give the throttle and how much to get to keep that engine spinning over. If you slip and stop then you're out but you have to keep moving.

Keep moving forward and this slowest person wins. Today we feature three shows.

The primary show is our farm show.

It's always held the last Thursday in July.

In the fall we have what's called a mule and draft horse show and so from Colorado, Kansas, Missouri we have people come in and they bring their draft horses and we have a two-day show.

A few years ago we have a lot of military equipment and so we decided to have a military show.

The response has been unbelievable.

It's not only the stuff we have on our show ground but people come from Colorado, Wyoming, Nebraska, Kansas.

This particular group we're the Colorado Military Historical Group and so we do events that like the Thrashers here, different shows like that.

Basically to talk about service, military service, we do battle reenactments and things but that kind of gives you an idea.

It also gives you an idea of weapons and material that was used of that period.

I'll tell you what we've worked with a lot of organizations. This is probably the best organization we've worked with. You're working with people with similar interests and they've done some really great things here in their future where he looks good too. And we've changed to be a museum now so it's open year-round with a phone number we can call and we'll come in and open up a building if you want to see certain items.

We have feature buildings and feature shows throughout the showgrounds.

The Clark Building contains toy tractors, whether it be the International, John Deer, Case, whatever it be, two large displays of them.

One of them was by a young man that was in ill health and he collected a lot of international harvester stuff and that covers a whole wall.

On the other side of the room was an elderly man, Norm Dorch, and he collected and the nice thing about Norm, whenever he bought a toy in a box from the local John Deere dealers or International dealers, he bought two.

His son John is a medical doctor and taught at the University of Kansas.

So we have a complete wall of all of his toys and then down the middle we have some very unique, very high-powered pulling tractors down through the middle of the thing.

They're all ready to run.

They all have brand new tires on them.

The engines are ready to go.

Another feature, a gentleman between Atwood and McDonald, Kansas, he was a barbar collector and he has probably the largest single collection of barbar in the state of Kansas owned by an individual.

In the Edgars Building we have a lot of antique stoves and furniture, a doctor's buggy, military uniforms.

Every year we have a Thresher Queen and they get a doll that resembles the queen.

I know this is kind of a lost art but we, if you like salt and pepper shakers, we have more than you really care to look at.

Over here in Building 5 we have an old jail that was in town here and we moved it in there, an old bank, a train depot, a barbershop, a photoshop. We have an old vehicle museum that people have donated us cars.

We have everything from the 20s up until probably the 60s in there.

We have probably 300 tractors on the showgrounds, some of them that are really antiques that nobody else has.

We've got some tractors that like for instance one guy wanted a four-wheel drive tractor but he didn't have the means to purchase one I guess and so he put two tractors together and made a four-wheel drive tractor. So a lot of our stuff goes way back and it's very unique stuff and it's really something that to accumulate an assortment as many as we have it would be nearly impossible and probably impossible today.

People ask me this, what's your number one thing on the showgrounds?

There's really no contest.

We have the Caterpillar Holt Combine.

It's a wooden combine 1923.

A professor from the University of California, I've been in contact with him several times.

He's done a lot of research on there.

He said it's probably the most preserved, probably the best one there is.

There's only about five of them still existing.

So that's our that's probably the feature item.

It's a must-see. Other than that we have so many things that are so unique so I really you know I don't even know where to tell you. When I first come here I thought it was you know just tractors but as I've learned through the years that it's more than tractors.

It's people that helped build the tractors, people that ran them, their families, how they came about owning these certain tractors.

You know been down here for three years now but the Thresher Show just gets better and better every year. More steam engines, more tractors, more everything.

I think we'll just continue to do what we're doing is as different things come in we'll take them and restore them and so other people can share share what was taking place years ago. So, the tractors aren't just hidden away for 360 days a year and come out for a week.

They really are trying to showcase you know people to come in any time of the year and look to the exhibits and the buildings and look at all the tractors and the history here.

I'm really proud of what we've been able to accomplish as an association. Our future would probably never look brighter. We have more and more people getting interested getting involved and that's what I believe.

Cottonwood Connection is a local public television program presented by Smoky Hills PBS