Wisconsin Couple Creates Farm Machinery on a Small Scale

By Larry Scheckel
Published on December 9, 2022
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by Larry Scheckel
Loren’s model of a 1915 J.I. Case 65hp steam engine. The glass tube (originally used in a hospital setting) at center allows the operator to monitor the boiler’s water level.

What do a farm couple do when they retire from farm life and move to the city? They make farm machinery – but on a small scale. That’s what Loren and Sharon Olson began doing when they retired in 2000.

Loren received the best possible education in America by att`ending the Bloomingdale two-room country school located a tad east of Westby in Vernon County in southwestern Wisconsin. Loren’s mechanical ability goes back to age 15, when he built a model steam engine on the family farm outside of the farming community of Westby, Wisconsin. His older brother, Ralph, constructed model airplanes.

Loren attended Westby High School and served in the U.S. Army (where he worked on the Nike missile system) from 1957-’60. While in the Army, Loren learned electronics. After leaving the service, he worked for National Cash Register. Then it was back to the farm for Loren and Sharon.

Tackling a threshing machine

In retirement, after selling the farm and moving to Westby, Loren’s first project was a 1/8-scale model of a 1940s John Deere threshing machine complete with seven belts. It is a masterpiece, built in exquisite detail, and all parts move just as they do on the full-size threshing machine. “The hardest part was getting that half-bushel bucket to dump properly,” he says.

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