- In the Southern Minnesota town of Lamberton, I met Ron Kelsey who introduced me to his collecting passion seed sacks.

- The reason these seed sacks are so collectible is because they are hard to take care of.

First of all, they were used for so many purchases during the depression, but they were always in out buildings and many times rodents, mice and so on destroyed them.

And if they were out where the light was, then the light would take the color out of 'em.

When President Roosevelt decided the size of the sacks, he decided there's two sizes of sacks.

One that would hold a hundred pounds, one of 'em that would hold 56 pounds.

So there was a dimension for that size of sack for each of the two weights.

- The company wanted you to wash them and use the fabric?

Yes.

For practical things.

Yes.

You, on the other hand, are glad that some people didn't wash them.

Yes.

And this is what is a result of not washing.

- There were three companies that made all of these sacks and actually you, you sent your idea to them and then they had graphic designers and they made the sacks.

And the three companies were beamus, chase and Fuller.

You can see in the, the picture with the, the beamus that on the bottom of the, there was a, there's a picture of a cat and they had a cat in their factory so that it would kill all the mice so it wouldn't make holes in the sax that the, they were trying to work with them.

- The other companies should have followed suit.

- Right.

They weren't up with it.

- There - Were really three companies that, or I mean there were three kinds of sacks.

One for feed, one for flour, and one for the grains.

We have here some flour sacks and on those flour sacks they had pictures of dolls.

So what you did is you could make a doll out of a flower sack and you'd cut that, that apart and then the rest of the sack you used for the stuffing inside of the doll.

- That was a toy.

- Yes.

It beca it was a toy and they, and they made him on some flower sack.

- I love that idea.

Yeah.

Probably in the depression.

- Yes, I would think so.

Over here we have a sack that, a feed sack that would been used for making dresses or aprons or something like that and you just take the advertising off 'cause it was on cloth.

You just take it off so you don't hurt the sack and you've got the whole sack that you can use for your clothing.

- Much more colorful than some of your other ones.

- Yes, much, much more so.

And that's because they would like to have become, when women were making dresses out of these, it would take about two sacks to make one dress.

And we had, in our family there were seven girls, so my mother made these for them, but you had to get two sacks alike.

And I told her, why don't you just get two matching sacks?

Why don't you just get two that you know the top one color, the other?

She said, oh, I know the neighbors would talk.

- Ron, when I walk along here and look at all the corn sacks, it's like a walkthrough Minnesota, all the towns represented Houston, Tracy Owatonna, new Ulm, St. Peter Mountain Lake New pre, it just goes on and on.

- Yes.

Because on the here these are men hybrid sacks, the University of Minnesota's sack so to speak, they develop the hybrid but you could sell it in your name.

And so that's from all these towns all over in the 1940s there were 200 and some different towns or 200 and some different farmers that were selling that.

This min hybrid seed corn on the board.

We have various colleges represented on seed sacks and I am assuming that the company was near the college and they were allowed to use the college's name.

And we start down there in the end with the Big 10 and then we go to the gophers and then the Wolverines and Spartans and we keep it on going here down, we've got the Hawkeyes and from Iowa, we've got the Badgers from Wisconsin.

And pretty clever the corn Huskers fits right in.

- I love, it's a really neat collection of your college sacks.

- Right.

Thank you - Ron.

Every collector of anything always has a favorite.

Do you have a - Favorite?

Oh yes.

I have two favorites.

One of 'em is the Ennis Fitz Hybrid Seed corn that was from Sacred Heart.

They're still in business and my parents did business with them and they would visit our farm from time to time.

Sure.

We raised corn for them and had to pollinate that corn so that they could have it for seed corn.

And so that's one of 'em.

And this, the other one is my Land O'Lakes one and the Land O'Lakes one I like because it's an open pollinated corn.

It's, it was before hybrid corn.

All of these other sacks that I have are all hybrid corn.

- What is the age of that?

The Land - O'Lakes?

I would say it was probably back in the thirties.

- It's in great shape.

Look at the - Color.

It's, it's in great shape because it was kept in a, a trunk up by the Canadian border and a trunk in an attic and there was actually more than one.

I bought two of 'em at the time and that's why it's in such good shape.

It was probably never used.

They probably ordered so many sacks and didn't use all of them.

- What you have collected, Ron is a showcase of towns companies that are no longer in existence.

You have saved history with your collection.

- Thank you.

Well, you know it's interesting that even one of the CECs I have, the town is not even in there anymore.

Yeah.

- So thank you for doing that.

Yeah.

And they're beautiful pieces of history.

Yeah.

- Thank you.