18 November 2018 Farm CollectorThe museum actively solicits donated mills from collec-
tors; purchased pieces must be correctly restored. A limit-
ed number of wood windmills are erected on the museum
lawn, and all of those are restored and rebuilt every three
years. Another 200 mills are in storage, awaiting restoration.
It all comes down to time and money. “I still want to raise
more endowment money,” Coy says. He’s proud of the mu-
seum’s $3 million endowment, a number many similar op-
erations would envy, but he readily admits that the museum
can’t operate off of admission revenues alone. Still, he runs
a tight ship. “We don’t borrow money,” he says, “and we
don’t owe money.”Where the past meets the present
Part of that careful management is related to the fact that
new technology supports preservation of old technology.
The largest wind machine at the museum is a 660 kilowatt
Vestas wind turbine. Placed in service in 2005, the turbine
has a 165-foot-diameter wheel and stands on a 165-foot tow-
er. It is large enough to power the entire museum complex.
“As long as the wind’s blowing,” Coy says, “that turbine
powers everything here and in maybe 100 nearby homes.”
Museum displays also reflect the evolution of wind pow-
er. From milling to pumping water to generating electricity
with Winchargers and, later, turbines (the first wind turbine
manufactured by General Electric in the late 1990s is an in-
triguing display), the museum’s collection is recognized as
the largest windmill museum in the world. Eventually, asCoy predicts, it will likely be the only place to see an old
water-pumping mill.
“You’ll never see windmills from the 1800s standing
again,” Coy says. “The vast majority of those went to the
scrap drives in the war years, and most windmill companies
declined precipitously after World War II.”Who collects antique windmills?
Garrett and Bailey Balsick
Among collectors of antique windmills, Garrett Balsick is
the outlier. At 23, he is by far the youngest member of the
International Windmiller’s Trade Fair group, which held its
30th annual gathering at American Windmill Museum in
Lubbock last June.
But he is far from green. Garrett grew up going to auctions
with his dad and granddad, both seasoned windmill collec-
tors. “I grew up helping work on windmills,” Garrett says.
He attended his first trade fair at age 2, and has missed just
one since. “The trade fair is like a family gathering for me,”
he says.
His granddad, the late Raymond Balsick, erected 35 wind-
mills at his home. Garrett and his dad, Adam, are beginning
the job of moving them all to family land at Calhan, Colo-
rado, a centennial ranch homesteaded in 1854.
There, all the wood mills and rare metal mills will go in-
side, probably set up on stands. Everything, Garrett says,
will have to be restored. It’s a tall job for him and his wife
and folks. “All four of us work full time and we also have1 3
2