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Crowd of 1,500 Attends Auction
"You can take the boy out of the farm, but it's hard to get the farm out of the boy"
By Chris Grenz
They started by taking his wheels and parts. Then they took his toys and models. Finally, after working at it all day, a crowd of about 1,500 took away nearly everything Joe Joyce had built and collected over 17 years.
And he loved every minute of it.
Joyce put his collection of about 60 working tractors - and countless spare parts and toy models - on the auction block in Emmetsburg in northwest Iowa in July. Many of the tractors he had built from scratch.
"I had the fun of building and buying them, and I'm going to have the fun of selling them," he said.
The sale attracted bidders and spectators from as far away as Denmark and Sweden, and from almost every state.
Joyce, who was raised on a farm near Emmetsburg, owns five Joyce I.G.A. supermarkets. But he still loves farming, and especially tractors.
"As they say, you can take the boy out of the farm, but it's hard to get the farm out of the boy," he said. "I just loved being out in the field working with tractors."
But faced with health problems and the loss of some storage space, Joe decided to sell all but two tractors.
His wife, Darlene, had mixed emotions about selling what has been so important to her husband. She said just because he is ending one hobby doesn't mean he will be idle.