When life was simple: Life on the farm was busy with work and fun times

(Photo contributed) Leonard Molzen stands beside a Thieman tractor with his son, Larry. Leonard's first tractor was a Thieman, purchased in 1942 for $60. He sold that tractor, but Larry later found this one to add to Leonard's collection. He sold his 60-plus tractor collection in 2008. [Click to enlarge]

Editor's Note: This story is another in a weekly series looking back at life decades ago and remembering a time when people's lifestyle was very different than today.

Life on the farm has many memories for Leonard Molzen.

"I've lived on the farm all my life in the same township, Johnson Township," Molzen said. He moved to Good Samaritan Society-Le Mars in 2005.

(Sentinel photo by Beverly Van Buskirk) Leonard Molzen keeps his love of old tractors alive by construcing models from memory, using plastic bottles, cardboard and other materials. [Click to enlarge]

Molzen grew up with a younger brother, and remembers the fun they had.

"When we were real young, we had a billy goat with a cart. We round around in that with the goat pullng it," Molzen said.

Later, the two had a Shetland pony.

"He probably had a name, too, but I don't remember," he said.

As with most children living on the farm, Molzen had chores to do.

"When I was a little bigger, I helped in the field," he said.

By the time he was 13, he was working with the machinery, guiding a team of horses pulling a single row cultivator through the field.

"Dad farmed 160 acres. That was about the top for the size of a farm then," Molzen said.

Many had 80-acre farms.

"We planted corn and oats. No soybeans at that time," he added. "We picked corn by hand for a while, too."

That was until 1937, when his father purchased a single row corn picker.

"We got the first one around. People thought that would never work, it would ruin the feed for the cattle," Molzen said with a laugh. "It's changed a lot now, with combines taking all those rows of corn and beans."

It was a single-row, pull-type International picker.

He explained they pulled the picker with a tractor, and had a team of horses pull the wagon alongside for the ears of corn.

"We had to use the horses because sometimes it woud be too much of a load for a tractor to pull," Molzen explained. "Tractors weren't that big then."

Molzen learned his tractor skills on a Fordson tractor with steel wheels.

"That was the first tractor I ever drove when I was home," he said.

The Fordson was built by Henry Ford who named the tractor for his son, hence Fordson.

Leonard started farming on his own in 1942, after he and Ella Ludwigs were married Jan. 2, 1942. The couple first lived on a farm near St. Paul Lutheran Church in Johnson Township, rural Merrill, renting the farm place and 80 acres of land. They then settled on a farm on K-22 in Johnson Township. Ella died in May 2007. His family includes his son and his wife, Larry and Sherry Molzen of Hinton; two grandsons, Tim and his wife Monti Molzen of Merrill and Michael Molzen of Iowa City; and a great-grandson, Willy T.

The first tractor Molzen owned was a Thieman.

"They made them high up so you could put a horse cultivator underneath it and cultivate with the tractor instead of horses. It was quite a deal," he said.

Theiman tractors were made with Modal A car parts. Molzen's wife, he added, also cultivated with the Thieman tractor.

Molzen enjoyed farming with horses, especially planting corn.

Planting corn involved having a wire across the field for each row planted, with the wire going through the planter wheel. Each click of the wire allowed seed to drop.

"I liked planting corn with horses. It was so quiet, just the click," he said.

He smiled as he remembered planting. Checked planting allowed farmers to cultivate the field of corn in two directions, keeping the rows straight.

"If you wouldn't get a good check, people would kid you about it," he remembers.

Molzen's favorite part of farming was threshing oats in the summer.

"Yeah it was a lot of work. you had to cut the grain and shock it first, six bundles or so to a shock. It had to stand and cure before you would thresh it," he said.

Threshing was done in the hot days of August.

"We threshed with steam engines running the threshing machines," Molzen said.

A "threshing ring" would involve six to eight neighbors working together on the threshing work.

"It was helping each other, hauling bundles and such," Molzen said. "Yeah, it was a hot job."

Electricity came to the Molzen farm in 1948.

Keeping things cool meant putting the milk, butter and things like that in the cave. Caves were dug into the ground, sometimes lined with brick and shelves to keep items cool and in the dark.

Later the family had an ice box, which held blocks of ice delivered to the farm.

"We got the first refigerator around our way that I know it. It was a Zenith, with just a small freezing compartment," Molzen said.

That refrigerator still runs today and is stored in the basement on the family farm.

"That was quite something to have a refrigerator," Molzen recalled.

One of the first things Leonard and Ella purchased when they got married was a brooder house, which they filled with 500 baby chicks each spring.

Molzen also raised hogs, and stock cows, and kept a few milk cows to provide milk for the family.

In addition to farming, Molzen was the "village blacksmith," doing welding for area farmers. He also sold seed corn for 50 years.

Keeping the old farming traditions alive led Molzen to host a threshing demonstration for several years in the 1990s. He restored four threshing machines, which he used.

He also enjoyed restoring antique tractors, and had 60 restored when he had a sale in 2008.

Early on in farming, he sold his first Thieman tractor.

"That first tractor, a used one, cost me $60, believe it or not," Molzen said.

His son, Larry, eventually found a Thieman tractor which Molzen added to his collection.

"I always liked International tractors," Molzen said of machinery, but he collected all kinds in later years.

These days, Molzen keeps his love of tractors and farm machinery alive on a smaller scale. He makes models from memory, using plastic bottles, cardboard and other collected materials to re-create some of the machinery he once used.

"That's been pretty much my life. I like tractors. I lived restoring them through the years," he said as he gazed at the shelves which hold his handmade models. Some even have ribbons he's won the at the Plymouth County Fair.

He often looks at pictures of his tractor collection and the threshing demonstrations he held.

After all these years, would he like to go back and live like that again?

"Yep, I'd be ready to go," Molzen said "It was good and bad like everything, But I guess I liked it pretty much."

Was it simpler back then?

"I don't know, it's pretty hard to say. I kinda liked it the way it was, but it was different then," he said. "The neighbors helped out. It was just a different world then."