14 November 2018 Farm Collector
Almelund Owens tackled bigger jobs
Jim has enjoyed the unusual opportunity to work with
a second Owens thresher. “I was at the Almelund (Minn.)
Threshing Show when they ran theirs using an old-fashioned
hit-and-miss engine,” he says, “and another time with a trac-
tor, using soybeans for the demonstration.”
The Owens thresher at the Almelund Show is a larger ver-
sion of the machine he grew up with at Scandia. “Ours was
smaller, with an 18-inch-wide cylinder,” he says, “while the
one at Almelund is larger.”
Otherwise, there was little difference between the two. The
Almelund Owens operated the same as the smaller one on
the Sodergren farm. “There was nothing really different,” Jim
says. “It has to be fed by hand, so you just pick up the beans
and toss them in there.”
Scoring an auction bargain
The Almelund Owens was purchased at a gasoline engine
auction by Wayne Olson, now of Bowling Green, Kentucky,
and Charles Erickson, Lindstrom, Minnesota, when they were
president and secretary, respectively, of the Almelund show.
When the thresher came up on the auction, there was no
interest in it. “Chuck and I decided to buy it for the show, go-
ing half and half, and got it for $200,” he says. “That’s a hard
piece to sell unless you have something to run it with, which
is why we got it for a good price.”
Wayne liked the Owens’ fine original condition: Its decals
were clear, and it still had a lot of original paint. “We could
see that it had not been used a lot, because it had very little
wear,” he says. “Unfortunately, the man who had owned it
had passed away, so any history he might have known was
gone with him.”
Designed for a specialty crop
Given the age of the piece, the Almelund Owens’ pristine
patina is particularly impressive. “It was probably manufac-
tured in the 1890s,” Wayne says. “It’s not broken up or rust-
ed out, so I guarantee you that it sat in a barn its whole life.”
Wayne says the Owens is an unusual piece. “You don’t see
one of those every day,” he says. “I’ve done a lot of collect-
ing over the past years, at least 600 gasoline engines bought
and sold from Washington to Boston, and I’ve been all over
at a lot of shows, but I haven’t seen another Owens thresher
like this one. I would say that it is fairly rare.”
“I’ve seen smaller Owens bean and pea threshers, but
never another one that big,” he adds. “Beans and peas are a
specialty crop, not like wheat or grain, so there aren’t that
many farms that grow them. That’s one of the reasons that
this one didn’t get used that much, as you can tell by look-
ing at it.” FCFor more information:
Jim Sodergren, 21700 Parrish Rd. N,
Scandia, MN 55073; (651) 433-2269.Wayne Olson, 9071 Cemetery Rd., Bowling
Green, KY 42103; (270) 791-3186;
[email protected].Bill Vossler is a freelance writer and author
of several books on antique farm tractors and
toys. Contact him at Box 372, 400 Caroline Ln.,
Rockville, MN 56369; email: [email protected].Above: The chaff comes out of the back of the Owens, shown here operated by
Glen Sodergren. The Owens was run by a flat belt, Jim says, on relatively little
power. “We ran ours with a 3 hp Hercules gas engine,” he says. “It had plenty of
power for that.”
Above left: Before the Sodergrens bought their thresher, they sorted beans by
hand, as shown here.
Left: The Sodergren Owens thresher, shown here next to a Novo gas engine,
retains its original stenciling. Photos courtesy Jim Sodergren.✭✭
ScandiaMinnesota
Almelund