Two Cylinder Magazine

The Last Cash Crop

by Dave Mello

The paved road that ran south and west out of Ottumwa, Iowa, turned to clean-washed gravel after just four miles. As I drove onto the gravel, made squishy by more than five inches of rain, I reached down and snicked the New Venture 242 transfer case in my Jeep Cherokee into four-wheel-drive “open.” Sitting on the console of my Jeep, right next to the transfer case lever, was a farm sale ad with instructions on how to get to an auction site near Drakesville. As I read, yet again, the tricky set of directions, it became clear to me that if the auction company had not been so generous about posting their advertising signs and arrows, I would already have taken one wrong turn.

The advertisement for the farm auction that I was headed for attracted my attention because it promised to be something unique. Here was an auction that, more than any that I have seen advertised in the last couple of years, would be the perfect example of Ma and Pa’s Last Cash Crop. Paul and Carolyn Hopkins’ farm auction will definitely be the ultimate example of what forty years of farming with all John Deere equipment might look like when everything is brought together in one spot and arranged in a “long green line.” This sale event will be a rare opportunity to see the cumulative result of forty years of undying loyalty to the John Deere line of farm equipment. Forty years of farming, forty years of raising kids and grandkids, forty years of teaching little hands how to snap those big hand clutches out, and forty years of listening to the sound of Johnny Poppers echoing across the little valley north of Drakesville — known historically as Ash Grove — where this treasure trove of classic John Deere farm equipment is located.

Paul Hopkins, with one of his beloved “620s”. Next to it is a “720” with an aftermarket wide-front end.

Paul and Carolyn Hopkins have definitely had a historic fondness for all things John Deere; a fondness that has been carefully passed down to their kids and to their grandkids. John Deere Tractors peek out of sheds and from around farm buildings on their son’s farm just twelve miles away, and their grandsons already know their way around a two-cylinder John Deere as well or better than a John Deere man twice their age. Not only did Paul farm with two-cylinder John Deeres, but from time to time a “terrific buy” would find its way onto his tractor-trailer at, yes, a farm auction. Some of those “strays” that followed Paul home from auction sales were put to work if they were a functional tractor, some were used as “seed material and parts” for restorations, and some ended their days as fixtures in remote “bone piles” with trees growing through them.

It would be difficult for any Ma-and-Pa farming team to keep mental track of just how much money may have been invested in farm machinery in forty years of farming. Add to that the unpredictable and somewhat illogical nature of farm auctions, and the reality is that until the auction is finally over, Ma and Pa have no clue as to how much money their “iron” might bring. So many times, that feed wagon that they thought would definitely be a hot item doesn’t attract many bids, and the kids’ old pedal tractor sells for seventeen hundred dollars.

This 640 Ground-Driven Rake is from the 1960s. One nice thing about the New Generation is that there are still some great implement-collecting opportunities.

For Paul and Carolyn, the farm auction was definitely going to be a “cash crop,” a harvest of sorts, and a payback for some of the cash that they have spent at the John Deere dealer over the last forty years. Harvesting their iron was a way for Paul and Carolyn to downsize and to begin moving toward retirement. After the auctioneers and the buyers are long gone, Paul will still have some “iron mining” to do in a few of the bonepiles that dot the farmscape before the farm can be handed over to the new owners. The high price of scrap iron, however, will make even that pesky process into somewhat of a payback proposition; a “secondary harvest,” so to speak.

The twin goals of an auction are to: (1) turn “stuff” into cash, and (2) not have the stuff by the end of the day. You can clean up if you can get some high bids on your stuff, and at the same time you can “clean up” your place. If you can get even fifty cents for a box of sweepings off the shop workbench, it certainly beats making a trip to the dump. I have no doubt that after farm auctions are over, and the last old rusty milk can is in the hands of its new owner, Ma-and-Pa farming teams from across the Midwest are often shocked by how much cash they realized from what seemed like a lot of old iron and junk. It’s the Last Cash Crop, and it can definitely be a money maker.

This 400 Grinder-Mixer, restored, would be a prime candidate for an Expo.

I timed my trip to Paul and Carolyn’s auction so that I would arrive plenty early, and I got there just as the snack trailer was being wrestled into place. When I saw that the entrance to the pasture that was being used for the equipment display and extra parking was uphill, and still very muddy from recent heavy rains, I reached down and shifted that superb NV242 into four-wheel-drive “lock” in order to yoke up the axles. Mud holes can be a lot of fun with a good four-by-four, but my goal for this trip was not to show off. To see how little mud I could take home and drop on my garage floor, I drove gently through the mud hole and up the slope to the high ground where I could finally see not one, but two, long green lines of farm equipment. As I stepped out of the Jeep, I was greeted by the bark of a two-cylinder John Deere off in the distance as it pulled a piece of farm equipment up the long slope from the farmstead to the auction site. As I stood there listening to the sound of that “620”, I knew that this was going to be an enjoyable day.

The farm auction was generally divided into two levels; the main farmyard where the hayrack items and miscellaneous would be sold, and the upper pasture where all of the tractors and machinery could be lined up for the usual tire kicking and inspection. The machinery area was further divided into three rows; one for miscellaneous items like spare tires, feed troughs, and livestock panels; and then two rows of almost exclusively John Deere farm equipment parked hub to hub. As I walked uphill past the first row of equipment, I could begin to see a perfect picture of what the term “brand loyalty” really means. I grew up with John Deere Tractors, but our farm equipment was more crossbred than purebred. By comparison, the equipment lineup at Paul and Carolyn’s farm sale was about as purebred green as you could get. The name “green acres” would definitely fit their farm.


Stretched 2010, with buzz-saw “B” in the background	Closer view of the 2010.

My first circuit up and back past all of the John Deere equipment on display at Paul and Carolyn’s farm auction can only be described as a “walk of discovery.” Oh, I knew all about John Deeres, and except for a New Generation 2010 with a transplanted JD 55 Combine engine in it, I was able to recognize every tractor. However, when it came to items like the Model 445 Side-Delivery Flail Spreader, I was completely lost. My West Coast upbringing had prevented me from ever seeing anything like it; and I had no idea John Deere had ever made such an implement. Likewise, I had to stare for several minutes before the complexities of the John Deere 524 Dozer Blade attachment finally unraveled. Was there anything that John Deere didn’t make?

The 60H Forage Blower is another worthwhile item for New Generation Era collectors. The 524 Bulldozer could be mounted on most any wide-front New Generation from the 2520 through the 4020.

As I looked at the various pieces of John Deere farm equipment in the lineup at the auction sale, I didn’t see them as silent remnants of yesterday’s harvest. I didn’t see a No. 214 Forage Wagon ravaged by weather, waiting for restoration, or maybe a trip to an overseas melting pot. When I looked at the wagon I visualized it loaded with chopped corn, hooked to one of Paul and Carolyn’s “620” John Deeres, and with the spinning PTO shaft driving the beaters and the conveyors. I visualized the forage pouring out the end of the cross conveyor and into their John Deere No. 60H Forage Blower with, yes, another “620” on the blower shaft. I could only imagine what it must have been like to hear the thunder of those twin “620s” as they leaned into the load. What a sound that would be! What a symphony!

I cannot look at farm equipment without visualizing it in use, and I cannot imagine using farm equipment without visualizing myself spending a certain amount of time on bar stools. Yes, sitting on bar stools can be as much a part of farming as driving a tractor. You know which stools I mean; the ones that are in front of the parts counter at the John Deere dealership. It didn’t matter if you broke down because you made a mistake, or if one of the kids hit something because their eleven-year-old hands couldn’t get the clutch snapped out quite fast enough, or if the part was just too worn out to go any farther; someone had to go to the dealership and trade that folding green in their wallet for some shiny green with which to fix the breakdown.

Everyone who has ever farmed knows that it is an understood rule that the farm wife is the one who has to go to town for repair parts. No matter what she is doing at the moment, it has to wait if there is a parts emergency. Over the last forty years, Carolyn Hopkins has hauled a small mountain of green parts home from John Deere dealerships in Centerville, Albia, and Bloomfield, Iowa. Rebuilt magnetos in the early days, then hydraulic hoses, then corn combine parts. The equipment and the numbers changed, yes, but not the color; it was always green, green, and more green. Even though Carolyn has nurtured a lifelong passion for books, and would gladly leave her farm kitchen at any time for a trip to town to spend a few hours in the public library, those trips to town were most often a sort of “parts express” that left little time to spend browsing the non-fiction shelves. Desperate pleas such as: “We need these parts right away!” and “This machine has got to get going!” meant that Carolyn would have to pass up the library; those green parts took top priority. Each time Carolyn stepped out the back door of the farmhouse, she would listen for the sound of a John Deere running somewhere on the farm. If she could not hear a tractor, there was a good chance that she would soon be taking a trip to town for parts!

Bidders trying to look disinterested.
It’s all part of the strategy at auctions.

The auction sale rapidly took shape in the hour just prior to the advertised starting time of ten o’clock. Because the most valuable equipment had been kept under cover until the very last minute in case of rain, two “620s” made trip after trip up the hill as they ferried equipment from inside the cavernous machine sheds to the lineup in the pasture. As I watched one of the “620s” pull the hill and negotiate the mud hole, I could see that a youngster was at the controls. The “620” circled wide, pulling a John Deere 410 Baler; and, as the tractor and baler approached the equipment lineup, the young driver deftly snapped the clutch out and eased the baler into perfect alignment. The tractor driver didn’t pull back on the clutch lever and grimace hopelessly as an amateur might do when the lever would not budge; this kid knew to first push the lever forward and then snap it back! I didn’t know it at the time, but I had just been witness to the superb John Deere Tractor skills of grandson Skyler Hopkins; age twelve.

Early 1960s “BW” Tandem Disk, and Model “40” T Tractor with cultivator in the background.

The great thing about an auction is that for every person who closes the book by selling an item, there is another person to whom that item represents the first page in a new book. One buyer I spoke with came to the sale to buy the 16-foot Model “BW” Tandem Disk so he could use part of it to fix his own “BW”. Another buyer, Paul Cantrell from nearby Drakesville, owns a 1941 “B” that needs a lot of parts before his restoration can go forward. His successful auction bid got him a 1943 “B” with the optional extended hood and electric start. It may be some time before Paul’s 1941 “B” is ready to drive, but he was nonetheless very excited to have found the ideal parts tractor.

Not all of the auction attendees knew the John Deere Tractor Series well enough to identify all of the tractors and parts of tractors that made up the non-running group. The Model “B” with the scary buzz saw attachment was easy to identify; as was the extended-dash “B” that Paul Cantrell eventually took home; but person after person asked me what model “the tractor with the hub caps” might be (it was a Model “M”); and the non-running 2010 with the combine engine in it threw almost everyone for a loop. If you looked closely you could see that about eight inches had been added to the hood and to the frame of the 2010 to accommodate the six-cylinder engine, but that little detail went almost unnoticed. Adding to the confusion was the fact that the gear selector legend plate was missing from the tractor. As if Syncro-Range Transmissions weren’t confusing enough, imagine one with no markings on the shift quadrant!

Paul Cantrell was the successful bidder
on this electric-start wartime “B”.

Twelve-year-old Skyler brought the last of the equipment up from the machine sheds, parked the “620” in the “running tractors” group, and headed for the snack trailer. I bought him a well-deserved cold drink, and we began to talk tractors. Skyler has a total grasp of almost all thing John Deere, and easily described every machine in the long list of family tractors as though he was one of those ancient village storytellers. When he finished describing the list of “Lettered” and “Numbered” Series Tractors, he asked me if I would like to see something really special? Of course, I said I would, and checked my camera to be sure it had plenty of film. I followed Skyler to a large machine shed where I was greeted by the sight of a John Deere 105 Corn Special Combine. The 105 looked like it was in great shape, and I was just about to take a photo when Skyler told me to look farther back. There, in the corner of the machine shed, was a Model “620” wearing a 237 Corn Picker. Both tractor and picker were in excellent condition! I didn’t do anything but stare at that picker for the longest time. This was my first-ever look at the famous 237 Picker (see Two-Cylinder magazine September–October issue), and I felt as though I had just been introduced to some sort of John Deere royalty.

Skyler Hopkins at the controls of their shedded “620” with 237 Corn Picker.

Paul and Carolyn still own 180 acres of their original farm, and the family still has sheds full of two-cylinder John Deeres. For Paul, retiring from full-time farming will be easy; getting completely out of farming might be another story. Every now and then he gets a phone call from someone who wants to buy the 237 Picker, but on some level I think he wants to experience the swirl of corn dust and see those leaves fly a few more times before he lets go of that superb machine. Besides his understandable attachment to the 237 Picker, if Paul is anything like I am, every time he looks at that 105 Corn Special Combine sitting there, he cannot help but remember back to the sixties when the fabulous new John Deere 105 nearly put the rest of the combine builders out of business.

Paul and Carolyn have sold the farmstead and the woodsy portion of their farm to a group who will be using it primarily as a hunting reserve. I’m sure that when the hunter group bought the acreage they were hoping to find a few more twelve-point bucks to harvest, like the one that was taken from the farm not long ago. What they might find instead as they walk the farm roads to and from those thick woods is an occasional John Deere part… Maybe the decayed remnants of a grass board from a No. 8 John Deere Power Mower, or perhaps a piece of cast iron from a 214 Forage Wagon; forty years from the foundry at Moline, but with the familiar “Y”-prefix part number still visible.

The Hopkins family farmhouse stands empty now, waiting to be converted to a hunting lodge or waiting for the bulldozer; nobody is quite sure. In just a matter of weeks, the last piece of John Deere equipment will leave the little valley near Ash Grove, and with it will go the unique sound of its two-cylinder engine; that familiar sound that so often greeted Carolyn when she stepped outside the farm house; the sound that let her know that all was well on the farm, and that the green machinery was getting the work done. Paul and Carolyn have finally harvested their Last Cash Crop.