-Farm News photo by Karen Schwaller
Bob Neppl backs his 1968 John Deere 3020 out of the machine shed to use. He uses this tractor primarily for shredding tree stumps.

SPENCER — Farm family ties can run as deep as a plow’s furrow.

That notion became evident in the physical sense in the Bob and Linda Neppl family, when Bob Neppl purchased his father’s tractor at a bitter-cold 1970 farm auction.

“It’s a 1968 John Deere 3020 diesel,” said Neppl. “My dad bought it (brand new) in the fall of 1967 from JD Webb Implement in Estherville. My dad bought the majority of his stuff there.”

Melvin Neppl’s 3020 was still fairly new at the time of the sale (near Estherville), and it went to a family friend, also near Estherville — Melvin Hermson. Hermson farmed with it and used it mostly for feeding until he died.

“I told Melvin if he ever had a sale, I’d like to have a chance to buy it,” said Bob Neppl. “After he died, Melvin’s wife called my mother to tell me she was going to have a sale, and that tractor was going to be on it.”

-Farm News photo by Karen Schwaller
Bob Neppl installs a throttle rod on a 1960 John Deere 530 he’s restoring in his shop. Neppl has restored dozens of tractors over his lifetime.

Neppl went to see the tractor next.

“It was the first time I’d seen the tractor since it left the farm,” he said. “Melvin put a Linden (sliding door) cab on it — Dad didn’t have any cab; and he put a wide front end on it. When Dad had it, it had a narrow front end.”

Neppl said when sale day came, the high temperature was 32 degrees below zero. He said the diesel fuel wouldn’t come out of the barrel, but that the tractors on the sale all started and kept running via Knipco heaters that were running underneath them throughout the sale.

“It was a terrible day,” he said. “Dad sold his dairy cattle the same day, and (the weather) hurt some, but everything still sold pretty good.”

Neppl said he had a good friend on one side of him and his mother on the other side as the bidding began for his father’s 3020.

“I ended up paying twice as much as that tractor was worth,” he said, adding that someone approached him during the bidding to say he had “the same” 3020 he would sell to Neppl for much less money. “I told him I didn’t want his tractor. But the neatest thing about it was when I went to pay for it, they handed me the owner’s manual, and it had my dad’s name at the top, and my mother said that was my handwriting. That was quite a thing to have — I would have been in my 20’s then.”

Neppl would purchase the tractor 44 years after his father first bought it. He has the sale bill with his father’s name and that tractor on it — hanging in his machine shed.

Neppl said he went to JD Webb Implement after he bought the tractor to see its service history, and was happy to find that the tractor had been well cared for over its lifetime.

Neppl said he took the tractor home with the new rock box and cab, and removed them both. Three years later he began to repaint it, even though he said the tractor still looked good. He put new tires on the back, and had a JD Webb Implement sticker made to put on the tractor for a finishing touch.

Neppl began using it to take on tractor rides, which are many since he is the president of the Northwest Iowa Classic Tractors group in Spencer.

He put a canopy on the tractor just for those rides, to be shielded from the hot summer sun. One of their annual rides is in Wisconsin. He said he and the others enjoy that ride because they “see more than corn and soybeans.”

He said riding through Amish country there is relaxing and interesting.

Neppl said his heart is in the two-cylinder era — tractors he used when he was growing up. He said he has collected tractors like his father owned.

“My satisfaction with antique tractors is tearing them down, fixing what needs to be fixed and putting that paint on,” said Neppl, adding that he “can’t even count” the number of tractors he has painted and restored for himself and others.

His restoration work was self-taught. Today one of his grandsons does it, too.

Neppl said his father’s 3020 has not done farm work since he himself (Bob Neppl) has owned it. Neppl began using it to grind dozens of tree stumps when they started in on a massive tree removal project around their current home west of Spencer.

Neppl said when his father bought the tractor, the 3020 diesel was a common machine. Melvin Neppl used it to farm a half-section and feed 30 cows. He had two 3020s plus a John Deere 520 to get the job done.

“I don’t know where the other 3020 went. But this 3020 will go to one of my grandsons when I’m gone,” said Neppl.

One of his grandsons has just finished restoring a John Deere G that he bought, and that grandson also owns a John Deere A.