COLLECTION RECALLS FAMILY'S FARM HERITAGE

Birk salvaged this horse-drawn cornstalk cutter after it had sat in the woods for 40 to 50 years. It belonged to his grandfather.

This antique sheep shear, is hand-powered and made flexible by an ingenious collection of shafts and universal joints.

Glen Birk's introduction to antique machinery came a long time ago -- when the machinery was not a remnant of a bygone era but a state-of-the-art piece of machinery used in the day to day operation of most farms.

A lifelong Cape Girardeau County farmer, the rural Jackson man now owns a number of pieces of antique farm-related machinery. Some of Birk's equipment is from the time period when he himself was getting his start in farming. Others are pieces from the 19th century. Many still work perfectly and a few belonged to members of his family, which has been farming in the area for generations.

Now the equipment -- ranging from yokes for draft animals to hand operated sheep shears to antique tractors -- is housed under the thick wooden beams of a barn constructed on Birk's farm about 150 years ago.

While Birk admits that he has had a lifelong affinity for studying the early days of farming and farm equipment, his start in collecting antique equipment came in 1975 when he purchased his first piece, a 1952 John Deere "B" tractor in an auction put on by his father.

"I bought the tractor for farm use with no thought of it becoming an antique," explained Birk.

He did not purchase any other antique machinery until 1986, when his father-in-law held an auction.

"There being no one there to buy antique farm machinery, I bought it for almost nothing with no plans whatsoever as to what I would do with it," he explained. "We just kept it in storage for several years."

When the remainder of his own father's equipment was auctioned in 1992, he bought still more antique equipment, some of which was machinery he had operated on the farm as a child and young adult, including a John Deere "A" tractor which his father had purchased new in 1952.

"I really wanted this tractor because it was special to me," said Birk. "I was in high school at the time and was very impressed by the size and quality of this new tractor. I drove it a lot during its first five years of life and it was the largest and best tractor my dad had at the time."

With the purchase of this second tractor, Birk got his first taste of restoring a piece of antique machinery. This "A" model tractor was placed in Birk's farm shop and was not used until he and his sons had the tractor running and looking as it did the day it was delivered in 1952.

"We've added numerous other items from various sources, but our primary emphasis has been on items that were used by our parents or grandparents and a secondary emphasis on items built by John Deere," Birk said.

An antique item fitting into this category, and a favored piece in the Birk collection, is one which originally belonged to Birk's grandfather.

"One of our most prized pieces is a John Deere horse-drawn cornstalk cutter that was at one time owned and used by my grandfather William Best," said Birk. "When Grandpa Best retired from farming my dad bought it and used it until it became obsolete.

"When I bought it in 1992, after being parked in the woods for an estimated 40 to 50 years, there was a tree grown around one wheel," he added. "We had to cut the tree above and below the wheel and when we got the wheel home, we removed it by using a chisel and saw to cut and split it into small pieces."

The piece had been in the elements so long that Birk and his sons had to confirm that it was, in fact, a John Deere implement.

"In order to make positive identification of this implement, I consulted with a relative who said he used this stalk cutter when he was 12 years old and worked for Grandpa Best," said Birk. "He has some interesting stories to tell about it."

In addition to the cornstalk cutter, Birk and his sons acquired a number of other pieces of equipment including a hand-operated drill made especially for use in constructing wood beam structures like Birk's barn. The piece was strapped down to an individual beam and used to drill holes to hold the fastening pegs employed in mortise-and-tenon construction.

Another interesting piece found by one of Birk's sons is a hand-operated sheep sheer with a flexible power shaft. The sheer is ingeniously constructed and can be moved in any position and still receive power through a system of shafts and universal joints.

"In the spring of 1993, we became faced with the decision of what to do with all the antiques," said Birk. "We wanted to preserve them, but we had no place to do so. At the same time, we were trying to decide what to do with our log barn that is estimated to be at least 150 years old.

"As for the barn," Birk continued, "I felt like we had three choices -- to destroy the barn and replace it with a new one; to continue to use the barn, letting it deteriorate until it was unusable and had to be demolished or continue to use the barn but preserve it as an example of how barns were built in that era."

Birk and his sons opted for the third choice, feeling that a log farm building would be the most appropriate place to house their collection of antique farm machinery.

"With the question of where to keep the antiques and the question of what to do with the log barn on my mind at the same time, it finally hit me to put the two together," said Birk, explaining that the original log portion of the barn was added to over the years and is now part of a much larger barn. The log portion, however, is used to house the Birk collection.

The barn's restoration began with the placement of a metal covering.

"Although we bought some new metal for the barn, much of it had been salvaged from an old dwelling that we demolished a few years earlier," explained Birk. "Rolling doors and some other material had been salvaged when we remodeled a building on our farm near the city of Delta. So in this old log barn, preserved with reminders of the old house and of the Delta farm, we dedicated an area 30-by-30 feet to be used for our mini museum.

"There is a hay loft above the museum area that we are now using for storage, but we might eventually develop it for display area also," he added.

Birk said he sometimes wonders how prudent it is to buy so much machinery but said that the advantages far outweigh the disadvantages of his hobby.

"Frankly, I wonder sometimes if it's smart to even have all this stuff but it's satisfying to be able to have it and restore it for future generations to see what kind of equipment was used," he said. "I find now that when I describe things to my sons about the horse-drawn days they sometimes don't know what I'm talking about and it's getting to be so that fewer and fewer people know about that time.

"Farming has been good to us," he said, "and we enjoy preserving the heritage of it."