By CINDY LADAGE
Illinois Correspondent

GLENARM, Ill. — Donny Nowak of Glenarm works in agriculture, at the Auburn Farm Safety Co., and loves farm toys. Growing up on a farm, he remembers what it was like to see the old corncrib filled; during the winter of 2009, he worked in his shop recreating a 1940s corn crib.

“It took me a year and a half to build it,” Nowak said of the beautiful wooden model that is about a 3/4-scale rendition based on a 40-foot corncrib – kind of like the one their neighbor had when he was a kid on the farm.

The base of the crib is plywood on aluminum angle iron. The corncrib is of good size and looking inside at the slatted boards, one would swear they were seeing inside the real thing. When Fred Jessup received a picture of the corncrib that looked like the one that his father, Louis, had used over the years, he remarked, “If I didn’t see Don beside it, I would have thought it was a picture of that old crib.”

Nowak’s model was a combination design: “I based the design on a couple of neighbors’ old corncribs that were in the neighborhood. The roof is made out of flat aluminum. I made myself a jig and I hand-pressed all of them.”
He said his shop is his “man cave” and besides what he fashions, he also keeps his toys on display on built-in shelves.

A visit to his shop found Nowak in the middle of constructing a toy auger to place next to the corncrib.

The shop is also where his beautiful John Deere 730 is housed.
The 730 is the tractor he always wanted because, as he explained, “When I was a kid I had a John Deere 730 toy and when I was 47, I finally got one.
It came from Connersville, Indiana.

I went and looked at it; it was 50 miles on the other side of Indianapolis.”
Nowak also has a JD 720 that belonged to his father. His wife owns a Farmall Cub, as well.

He has been collecting farm toys since 1976.
He said he started when he went to a farm sale and saw a toy on a wagon rack.