Finding and buying your grandpa's tractor...a very powerful and emotional thing.
So it was for Jake Holzem of Lindstrom, MN Thursday on a very rainy auction day in Rogers, MN where the 1981 John Deere 4440 his grandfather Charles Holzem bought brand new was up for sale on the farm retirement auction for Steve Weinand. Weinand bought the tractor on the retirement auction for Pat & Debbie Holzem (Jake's folks) on April 3, 2004. Here's picture of the sale bill from back in April 2004:
Jake Holzem found his grandpa's 1981 John Deere 4440 on a recent internet search. "I happened to be cruising around the internet checking couple of web sites and saw a picture of it," said Holzem. "Couple of the dents looked familiar. I took down the serial number and called mom up and had her check and sure enough they matched up."
Grandpa's tractor found, coming up for sale on June 22, 2017 farm retirement auction in Rogers, MN.
"I always wanted to go find it," said Holzem. "I can remember riding on the armrest of the tractor when I was too small to run it," said Holzem. "I spent countless hours in myself once I was a bit older. It was our haybine tractor. I even shattered the rear window one time with a rock from the manure spreader. I became really diligent about throttling down at the ends of the loads after that."
Memories.
So now, about buying it on Thursday's auction.
"I was all choked up and was trying to keep a cool head," said Holzem of the bidding process on the Steffes Group sale (http://www.steffesgroup.com). Keep a cool head he did, winning the bid for his grandpa's 1981 John Deere 4440 at $16,500. "Oh man, I was beyond excited," said Holzem. "It really didn't hit me until we were loading it."
Jake got a real good buy. The 1981 model 4440 with power shift had 7,991 hours. Amazingly the 2nd owner had put only 1,110 hours on it the past 13 years. "I thought if I ever found it it would need restoring," said Holzem. "But the owner only had 200 acres and had a John Deere 7930 tractor. The 4440 had just been sitting for years."
Thursday was an exciting day for the entire Holzem family, not just Jake. "Dad was pretty excited when I told him I got it," said Jake. Jake's wife Deah and young 1 1/2 year old son Bodhi braved the rain Thursday to be with Jake at the auction.
Finding and buying back grandpa's tractor...one of my favorite story angles, so cool. Congrats Jake. When the day comes be sure to teach Bodhi about your throttling down lesson.
Grandpa would be proud.
