These stories can also be heard on Sunday mornings around 10 am on WILD 102’s “Look Back in Time” program. Each week’s radio story will be posted here on our website.
Weekly radio stories are researched, compiled, and read by Sheila Winstead, RCHS Board Member.
October 26, 2025
I’ll continue Willie McFarlane’s story today. Last week, I read about his change of working from
the Badger Seed House to Northrup King out of Minneapolis, and his time working in Iowa and
around the area while he waited to see how the management at Badger Seed House evolved.
Here’s his next segment.
Things went along pretty good. Spring came and I booked a lot of seed … that was corn country
… corn and soybeans. In that territory there was close to 10 semi loads of seed corn that was
scattered out among the dealers. I even had a couple of old guys on the farms that took 4 or 5
hundred bags and sell it to the neighbors. I took Rocky and Nathan along on a Saturday, gave
them each a few bucks, to help unload this. It ended up they got double paid because the farmer
always slipped them some money, too, because those old guys just aren’t that good at handling
bags.
So this went on until about May … they were through with the spring season down there anyhow.
One night the phone rings. It was John Sjoberg. He’s sitting over at the Badger bank with Nathan
Gustafson because they had 2 phones in there and they both started telling me what a nice guy I
was and that I should come back because they had made a deal and bought out Peter. Nathan
Gustafson got a few shares and I was supposed to get a few shares if I went back. This came
out of the blue, you know, so I didn’t tell them yes or no … I wanted to think about it. They
couldn’t understand why I’d want to think about it. I said any deal that you guys think is good is
worth thinking about … so I told them I just want to think about it. I started telling this all to
Louise. She didn’t get wild either way, but the kids must have overheard us … they about tipped
the damn house over … Going back to Badger … they wanted to go back to Badger. I waited two
or three days, and finally, I think they called again from the bank with them both on phones. Then
I agreed that I would go back.
So when the end of June came, I had vacation time coming so we packed up and went back to
Badger. So we got settled back in. This time we moved into the house across the street from the
schoolhouse. Little Bill Yates had built the house new … it was a nice little house … two
bedrooms upstairs and one bedroom in the basement. We got settled into there … it had a single
attached garage to it. But it wasn’t too long as time went on … I would guess maybe 6 months …
I began to really wonder if I had made the right choice. John Sjoberg was old enough to retire …
he’d go south in the wintertime … no indication that he ever was going to retire … and I would
stay and keep the mill going. Cleaning seed … shipping seed … whatever. About once a week
he’d call home and it seemed like he was enjoying life. At the time he was just as healthy as I
was so I didn’t think he’d ever quit.
But this went on another 3-4 years. I was still the guy that repaired all the equipment in the plant
… done a lot of things that I’d done 15 years before that. Finally I got to the point where I thought
there had to be something more to life than this. So I typed up a letter that I wanted to be done
the 1 st of July and left it lying on John’s desk. Boy, he just couldn’t understand what the heck I
had in mind. Actually, I didn’t have anything in mind except that it was time … I had to get out of
there. It was getting to me. And Louise, of course, I never knew exactly what she was thinking
but she didn’t seem a bit upset about it or nothing. You gotta do what you gotta do. And she
knew that for the last 10 years that I always wanted to have my own seed house. I’d done about
everything there was to do in one, so she wasn’t too concerned whether we’d make it or not.
A few years before that she’d worked at the turkey plant in Greenbush where they processed
turkeys. And this plant had gone broke and the building was sitting there in Greenbush, a good
building, with a bad roof. I finally got done with those two weeks and got out of the seed house. I
didn’t do anything for about a week. I was out to John Penas and helped him a little bit.
I started getting a few phone calls and finally one evening here comes Ing Folland and Kermit
Trangsrud, the two bankers from Greenbush. They had evidently heard about it … news travels
awful fast in the seed world. I’d already had one call from a guy in Mankato that owned several
seed companies and he wanted me to go to Iowa City, Iowa and run a plant. I also had a call
from Marvin’s in Warroad. They wanted me to come to Warroad. Well, after listening to these two
bankers, of course they always told you the good stuff, they never told you exactly what interest
on some of this stuff was going to be. So a couple of days later I drove down to Greenbush …
looked over the plant … it was much bigger than it looked from the outside. So the bank went to
work real hard and helped me get a SBA loan. Kermit went with me to Minneapolis … a lot of
paper work … Ing’s son was at the bank in Karlstad and he was a pro at getting SBA loans. So
finally this loan went through. A lot of people were afraid to work at the turkey plant because
when it went broke they got paid off 10 cents on the dollar. I had to have electricians in there to
rewire things and boy, they were dragging their feet wondering if they were going to get paid this
time. Finally I got them straightened out that they would get paid … they just had to do the work.
So we worked most of the winter getting that thing lined up.
I’ll read more of Mr. McFarlane’s time in the seed business later.
Thank you to 
for letting us share our county’s history with your listeners by donating air time, studio time, and production staff every week.