Photo by Deb Gau Arlan Gustafson and Vernon Ellingson have been part of the Pioneer Power Threshing Club since the 1970s. Members say the two men never miss club activities, and they’re also help organize the annual Threshing Show in Hanley Falls.

HANLEY FALLS — It all started with a group of people with a love for old tractors and farm equipment. Now, the Pioneer Power Threshing Show has been going strong for 50 years – and Arlan Gustafson and Vernon Ellingson have stayed an active part of both the event and the Pioneer Power Threshing Club.

“They never miss an activity,” said Pioneer Power member Mark Antony.

Ellingson and Gustafson said there aren’t many of the original members of the Pioneer Power club left. But over time, the club has grown even beyond the Hanley Falls community.

“It spread out,” Ellingson said. “People started coming as (threshing show) exhibitors and thought, ‘I’ll join.'”

“You get a chance to meet a lot of new people,” Gustafson said.

The Pioneer Power Threshing Show will be celebrating its 50th anniversary this summer, on Aug. 2-3, on the grounds of Minnesota’s Machinery Museum in Hanley Falls.

Gustafson and Ellington said the Pioneer Power group formed in the 1977, after Hanley Falls held celebrations for the U.S. bicentennial. “We thought maybe we should try and organize,” Gustafson said.

“Our first meetings were all held in the fire hall,” Ellingson said.

The first president of Pioneer Power was Lowell Gustafson, they said. Together with his brother and a couple of other people, Lowell started a threshing bee which would later develop into the Pioneer Power Threshing Show, they said.

Gustafson and Ellingson talked about some of the Pioneer Power group’s early projects, like restoring a 1927 Rumely Oil Pull tractor that is still housed at Minnesota’s Machinery Museum in Hanley Falls. The Rumely Oil Pull was a line of tractors developed by the Advance-Rumely Company of LaPorte, Indiana.

“We purchased it our second year. We decided to get something together to get unity going” among club members, Ellingson said. A total of 20 club members each put in about $100 for the Oil Pull tractor, they said.

“We started using it for a parade tractor for a couple of years,” Ellingson said.

“Believe it or not, it starts pretty well,” Gustafson said.

Ellingson said Pioneer Power held events at individual farms up through 1979. “Then, in 1980 we moved into town,” he said. That was the same year Minnesota’s Machinery Museum was founded in Hanley Falls. The museum grounds have become the location for the threshing show each summer.

Over the past 50 years, the show has gone from a local threshing demonstration to an event with antique tractor parades, vendors and a wide variety of farm machinery and engines on display.

“It takes a lot of cooperation,” Ellingson said of organizing the show. But it’s also fun for club members to get to meet show visitors and people who brought antique machinery.

“A big part of the show is not only showing, but talking to people,” Ellingson said.

“People look for the tractors they grew up on,” Gustafson said. Many people who get interested in restoring or collecting farm machinery start with tractors or equipment that belonged to family members.

Events like the threshing show open a window to the past. That can be important, Ellingson said. “You need to know where you came from to know where you’re going in the future,” he said.

“There’s been a good camaraderie,” Gustafson said of being part of Pioneer Power.