This year was the 40th annual Pioneer Power “Original Swap Meet” in Le Sueur, Minn. The event took place April 28-30, featuring a variety of items available for sale – and with around 700 vendors each year, visitors are bound to find something they can’t live without.

 

Doug and Deb Schubert are vendors from Jackson, Minn.

“This is the eighth year we have been setting up,” Debbie said. “We sell a little bit of everything; we have advertising, cast iron and vintage toys. We have been doing this for 20 years.”

While setting up is fun, part of the perks of coming to Le Sueur, she joked, is “that I don’t have to cook. They have an awesome pancake breakfast.”

Another vendor, Rick Koch from Spring Valley, Minn., specializes in farm primitives. Rick has been involved with the show since 2000. “I have been coming here since 2011. My favorite part about the show is that there are good shoppers,” he noted. “The show is well organized. For the first time, we are going to be able to reserve a spot, and that will eliminate the mad dash.”

Vendors set up on Thursday and the show starts Friday and runs through Sunday. On the first day of this year’s show cars were backed up with shoppers waiting to park.

Like many other vendors Rick collects, as well as sells: “I collect Red Wing and I enjoy displaying items between shows, too.”

Walking around the grounds was like a huge preview of the popular HGTV show “Flea Market Flip.” There were lots of items just waiting to be fixed up and taken home. There were snowmobiles, tractor parts, wheels, tools, farm literature and memorabilia; and there were collectibles, toys, dishes and everything in between.

That “in between” included a golf club Christmas tree and even a James Bondlike watercraft that could drag divers out to a reef, or pull someone on a float. It is a small spaceship-looking craft that is evidently quite rare.

The swap was big on lawn and garden equipment. If someone was handy, they could have picked up a lawn tractor, tinkered with it and had it up and running pretty quickly. These small tractors were also used by entrepreneurial young people as savvy carts to haul items to the cars for visitors at the swap.

One young man who helped a central Illinois farmer with his unwieldy purchase said the trip for the farmer was his 80th so far – and this was around noon. For $5 a trip, the cash added up and was to come in handy for this high school senior with plans to go into robotics.

There were also some full-size tractors and a neat 1970 Snow Cat with a Ford V4 gas engine. The Snow Cat had hydro drive and was on wheels, but tracks were also available for the buyer to add. It makes sense that a Snow Cat would be found at a swap meet in a far-north state – this is an enclosed cab truck-sized vehicle designed to move snow.

Le Sueur also offers a summer meet on August 25-27. While the spring meet has been going on for 40 years, the summer show predates this by four; this year organizers will celebrate their 44th Pioneer Power Show. Log on to http://pioneerpowershow.com for more information.

Readers with questions or comments for Cindy Ladage may write to her in care of this publication. Learn more of Cindy’s finds and travel in her blog, “Traveling Adventures of a Farm Girl,” at http://travelingadventuresofafarmgirl.com