(lively music) - [Narrator] On this episode of Postcards.

- The real equipment is made to take apart when you have a breakdown.

So I make all of my stuff to make it look like it can be taken apart.

- Originally, I started doing all of this just to like process my own emotions and stuff.

And just, just because I enjoyed it.

- That still to this day, is the biggest performance I've ever done.

Even still looking back at that video I just, look at all those people and I'm like, "Wow, I can't believe I did that."

(suspenseful music) (upbeat music) - [Narrator] Postcards is made possible by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund and the citizens of Minnesota.

Additional support provided by: Margaret A. Cargill Philanthropies, Mark and Margaret Mark Yackel-Juleen, on behalf of Shalom Hill Farms.

A retreat and conference center in a prairie setting near Windom, Minnesota.

On the web at shalomhillfarm.org.

Alexandria, Minnesota, a year round destination with hundreds of lakes, trails and attractions for memorable vacations and events.

More information at explorealex.com.

The Lake Region Arts Council's Arts Calendar.

An arts and cultural heritage funded digital calendar showcasing upcoming art events and opportunities for artists in West Central, Minnesota.

On the web at lrac4calendar.org.

Playing today's new music plus your favorite hits, 967kram.

Online at 967kram.com.

(piano music playing) - I was born after the depression, shortly after.

For toys, as a kid, you just didn't have any.

I did have a cousin that back, I think in about 1929, his dad had bought him a cast iron thresher machine.

Along with that set came a tractor, a 1020, McCormick Deering.

He played with it until it was well abused, I guess.

Then he went on to another custom line.

He was done with it, then of course it was given to me.

I was third in line.

And then I played with it, pretty happy to have it because we didn't have toys.

There was no money to buy toys.

(gentle piano music) My wife and I, we are retired farmers from north of Montevideo.

We have been in town for 25 years.

(upbeat music) My dad passed away when it's in 1982.

Coming back from Minneapolis, St. Louis Park, where he was at, I came by a small town and there was a guy that had a whole bunch of real tractors lined up that he had restored.

And when I got about two miles down the road, I was thinking about these tractors.

So I turned around and I went back and I looked and I kind of thought, "You know, it would be fun to get into buying old tractors and restoring them."

But then I was thinking also, what will be wrong in start collecting the toys instead of the real thing.

(lively music playing) But that kind of got old, just going out and buying it.

So I decided, you know, we got to have the clutch pedal, the brake pedals, the shift levers, the throttle levers.

So when I buy a new toy, I would customize it to get all of those little final finishing touches on them to make them look more realistic.

I would look around, find old toys and I started tearing them apart, restoring them, painting them up.

It was fun.

I had done that for quite some time and neighbors and friends would bring toys over, "Can you do this for me?"

(lively music continues) As time went on Ertl Toy Company and other companies started building what they called a precision toy.

My hobby kind of became dormant so to say, because you could go to town and buy it off the shelf and a precision toy were made beautifully.

So then I took on another challenge, a challenge that I thought in my own mind was impossible, but it's worth a try.

I started building my own toys, completely from scratch.

(soft music) I only build farm toys that SpecCast, Ertl, and these companies have never made.

One of a kind.

It's called a TLW.

That tractor was never produced.

The loader was too heavy and too hefty, too much power in the loader for the tractor.

The tractor couldn't take it.

They made three of them in a proto, but they were never marketed.

But Danny and Patty crooks pine, East of Montevideo, they owned one, but I built this one off of that.

Just something I thought that was kind of fun.

So that's why this one and it's, you know kind of a unique unit.

(soft music continues playing) I make everything out of sheet metal.

I buy little bolts and nuts.

They come out of Lebanon, New Jersey.

When I order, I order 1000 at a time because the combine is maybe got three to 400 bolts in it.

You don't see all those bolt heads but I liked to have them bolted.

I don't want it soldered or welded or glued because the real equipment is made to take apart when you have a breakdown.

So I make all of my stuff to make it look like it can be taken apart and nobody else really sees that.

But I see it.

And I know it's supposed to be there.

Take this off and you see down there some straw walkers.

Oh, so your power sharing, hydraulic cylinders back there.

And then in here then you see my controls.

I got all the controls and stuff are all in there.

You don't want to drop 'em.

It takes a lot of time.

And when you're retired, time don't mean much.

The more time you spend, the faster the day goes.

I can come down here to my little toy shop and I can be working and my wife will give me a little holler and say it's time to eat.

You're maybe thinking it's 10 o'clock in the morning and there all of a sudden it's noon.

(soft music playing) And this is my dad in 1939, he was picking corn.

And he had what you call the, it's a 1-P international corn picker with the homemade wagon, homemade box and an H Farmall on it.

And my mother took this picture of him.

Back a few years ago, I found that picture.

So I decided that it would be fun to have a replica of my dad picking corn.

I bought H Farmall, that's company made but then I built the corn picker, built the wagon and built the box for it.

And of course, it's got little ears of corn here.

They're pretty small.

I've always said it as a joke thing that the reason the ears are that small, they came out of South Dakota.

(lively music) Years ago, I was at a toy show in Alexandria, Minnesota and they had a pedal tractor.

And the guy wanted to sell it to me, which I had no interest in pedal tractors.

This one here was beat.

And I said, "How much do you want for it?"

Well, it ended up, I walked out of there with it for $40 which was very reasonable.

But at that time they weren't worth anymore.

And I restored that.

And all of a sudden I got interested in pedal tractors.

So that's gotten the start to get carried away too.

(lively music playing) So now, I got to go to what we call our storage room.

And I do have some pedals tractors here.

And this is, everybody's got to have a junk room and this is kind of our junk room.

But I do have an assortment of pedal tractors in here.

(lively music continues playing) I look for the old ones.

The old ones is history.

And I have quite a few now that I have restored of the old ones.

In fact, I brought down the 60 John Deere yesterday.

The large model, the 38 inch and a 400 international.

One was made in 1954 and one in 1955.

(soft guitar music) I've been doing this all for, I think 38 years.

Time's gone fast.

It's been great.

And I guess one of the big things says, when I'm gone, I've told the kids and the grandkids, the great grandkids.

You do whatever you want to the toys.

But of all the handmade toys that I have built, I want them divided between the kids.

So everybody gets something to remember old grandpa by.

I have an aunt who, well she passed away now at the nursing home.

She was interested in what I was doing.

And I would bring her a picture of something that I had just made.

And she looked at me one day and she said "Wes you have a God given talent."

I never knew that.

And I guess I didn't appreciate that our good Lord had given me something that I was able to do that I can be proud of and my family can be proud of.

And not that I'm that important.

I'm not that.

Most people, I do feel have a God-given talent but they don't realize it's out there till they try and take, so to speak the bull by the horns and see what you could do with that talent.

Life can be a lonely thing, if you wait for, to go to bed or you wait to get up.

You will, I've always said you've got to have a reason to get up in the morning and I've been given a good reason.

(lively music) (upbeat music) - I first started creating art when I was on third grade.

I did a lot of drawings and stuff of like TV shows that I liked.

A lot of it was like kind of animated stuff.

And so, I would always draw that in class and not be paying attention to what we're supposed to be doing.

I grew up here in Granite Falls, Minnesota.

Originally born in Key West, Florida.

Spent most of my teenage years here.

And then after high school, I joined the air force.

And then after the air force came back to Granite, and then from Granite moved to St.

Cloud.

And then after St.

Cloud back to California.

In and out of California for a little while and then back to Granite.

So kind of hopped all over the place but I really enjoy being in Granite.

It's my hometown.

And it feels like home.

So that's kind of why I'm still here.

(upbeat music continues) So I first started doing this style of painting just because I felt like it was kind of the, I dunno, quickest way to create some kind of art without having to put too much planning into it.

(lively music) I wanted to start creating more art that was more inspired by like emotions and stuff versus just kind of planning something out in my head.

So that's what a lot of my abstract art kind of tends to be, is something that's like fueled by emotions and just kind of, you know, just like the vibes that I'm going through with at the moment.

And then I just kind of transform that into a piece of art.

(upbeat music playing) My page is called Ty the octopus art.

(upbeat music) I have this fascination with octopus and I think they're really cool.

So I don't know, I just figured I just need some kind of brand name.

So that's, that's just what I came up with.

Typically what I'll do is kind of start layering out some paints, the ones I'm going to work with.

This one I think I'm gonna try and go with like I don't know, it's more brighter colors.

(upbeat music continues) So this is how you... (Ty laughs) This is how you get all of that.

And I try to spread it out a little bit.

Usually I do this a lot when either of the paint gloms up too much.

(upbeat music continues playing) Yeah.

Ultimately I try to get almost everything to somewhat bleed together.

But like for this one, that's it man.

I resonate with this.

I like the way it looks.

I like the way it came out.

That's pretty much it.

(upbeat music) Originally I started doing all of this just to like process my own emotions and stuff.

And just, just because I enjoyed it.

Seeing all the people that admire it, it's kind of developed its own small community around it.

And I think that's been really enjoyable.

Every time that I posted a piece online, I have a lot of the same people kind of commenting letting me know what they can see in the paintings.

And I always find that a little bit fun to do.

I ask people like what they see in the paintings because most of the time, I'm not really trying to create anything too specific or I may create something specific in my head but being that it's abstract, people can develop their own impressions on it.

And so I really enjoy hearing what people have to say about that.

I guess that's a part that I have kind of enjoyed along this journey is hearing everyone else's different interpretations of it.

(lively music) (piano music playing) ♪ We fought all the time ♪ ♪ New beginning for you ♪ ♪ And daine for me ♪ ♪ I know you have this problem ♪ ♪ Of not appreciating ♪ ♪ What you have until its gone ♪ - I got started in music when I was in kindergarten.

My mom signed me up for piano lessons and I took piano lessons my whole life.

I'm still taking them today.

I started guitar lessons when I was nine years old.

When my guitar teacher forced me to sing a song and I did not want to.

I wouldn't even sing in front of my parents.

She finally convinced me and I sang my first song called mean by Taylor Swift.

I went to two of her concerts before I took guitar lessons.

And just seeing her up on that stage, it was just so cool to me.

My first ever performance was at the middle school talent show in front of 500 of my peers.

That performance really opened up to all the other opportunities that I could do with performances.

♪ You can but me diamond earrings ♪ ♪ And deny-ny-ny, ny-ny-ny, deny-ny ♪ ♪ But I smell her on your collar ♪ ♪ So goodbye-bye-bye ♪ Eventually I started to sing at restaurants and bars and wineries.

So I kind of went from preparing like one or two really good songs to two hours of songs.

♪ You think you broke my heart ♪ ♪ Oh girl, for goodness sake ♪ ♪ You think I'm crying on my own, well I ain't ♪ ♪ Well you're always gonna fly away ♪ ♪ Just because you know you can ♪ ♪ Never gonna learn there's no such place ♪ ♪ As Neverland ♪ ♪ My lighthouse ♪ ♪ I will trust the promise ♪ ♪ You will carry me safe to shore ♪ (guitar playing) ♪ First its fall, then its winter ♪ ♪ Next its spring, and its summer ♪ The first song I ever wrote was Summer in Minnesota.

And that's one that my guitar teacher told me to write.

After I started singing she said, "Well, you should write a song."

And I thought it was crazy, but I tried.

And then sure enough, I wrote Summer in Minnesota.

♪ Big old trees ♪ ♪ I don't know where else I'd rather be ♪ ♪ It's like the gardening ♪ ♪ And the grass is green ♪ ♪ 80 degrees and swaying trees ♪ ♪ Fishing in the lake ♪ ♪ With a nice cold breeze ♪ ♪ Everything that I can think of ♪ ♪ Is summer in Minnesota ♪ When I was 12 years old I tried out for the Cannon High County Talent Contest and I got first placed there.

So I got to move on to two extra rounds at the State Fair, just on smaller stages.

And those weren't huge performances but then I eventually qualified for the grand stand.

And that's where I sang in front of 8,000 people.

- And in Minnesota, ladies and gentlemen please welcome Ava Hanson!

(crowd cheering) ♪ It's like the great morning (inaudible) ♪ ♪ Ice cream tracks and root beer falls ♪ ♪ Everything that I can think of ♪ ♪ Is summer in Minnesota ♪ - That's still to this day is the biggest performance I've ever done.

Even still looking back at that video.

I just look at all those people and I'm like, wow I can't believe I did that.

♪ It's like the gardening and the grass is green ♪ ♪ 80 degrees and swaying trees ♪ ♪ Fishing in the lake with a nice cool breeze ♪ ♪ Everything that you can dream of ♪ ♪ Is summer in Minnesota ♪ (guitar playing) (crowd cheering) Well, this was our Christmas card one year.

And my mom had me draw the back of it to commemorate my State Fair experience.

So it's not just music that I enjoy, It's also doing art.

We have a long history of artists in the family.

I like to paint, I like to draw mixed media projects.

Pretty much anything that I can do that's like painting natural landscapes.

I love anything in the outdoors.

So that's mainly what I try to incorporate art with.

(guitar playing) I'm a senior at New London-Spicer High School.

And I really enjoy doing anything that I can outdoors.

Like horseback riding, water skiing, water sports.

I grew up on the lake.

So that's a big part of my life.

Two sports I'm in are tennis and golf.

I actually don't know where I want to go with music but I still have a lot to figure out about college and wherever life takes me I will always carry music with me no matter what.

I just don't know what it will look like yet.

(guitar playing) I like to write my songs on pretty much anything.

Sometimes they're experiences that I've gone through.

Sometimes it's the complete opposite, where I have not gone through an experience but it just kinda...

The lyrics just kind of come to me and I put it on the paper and it just makes sense.

So I pretty much write about whatever I'm feeling like that day.

(guitar playing) ♪ Darling, you had all your cards ♪ ♪ But I couldn't lay mine fast enough ♪ ♪ It was all too complicated in my head ♪ ♪ When I knew what you have found ♪ ♪ I took my time and I picked my line so carefully ♪ ♪ Oh, so carefully ♪ ♪ Did I think too much ♪ ♪ Did I let myself ♪ ♪ Get in the way of... ♪ Growing up, I was always really shy and afraid to put myself out there.

But music has really, really helped me grow and just being able to put myself out there.

And not caring what everyone thinks of me all the time because when you're on stage so much like I am, it's easy to only think about what others are thinking of you but performing so much has really made me realize that it's okay to put yourself out there.

And I am a different person than I was when I started guitar lessons when I was nine.

I've really evolved in a way that has helped me get through high school and all my performances.

So I think music has really, really helped me grow in a good way.

♪ Second chance and I'll take it ♪ ♪ I wouldn't waste it ♪ ♪ Thinking about what we could be ♪ ♪ What we should be ♪ ♪ I know I broke my own heart ♪ ♪ And I'm sorry ♪ ♪ For the times when I would ♪ ♪ Think too much and I let myself ♪ ♪ Get in the way of what we had ♪ ♪ In the first place ♪ ♪ I didn't mean to make you think ♪ ♪ That I was scared ♪ ♪ Because I know love can fade ♪ ♪ Just like the soul, the sky can turn gray ♪ ♪ And I'm sorry that I led you the wrong way ♪ ♪ I think too much and I pushed you away ♪ ♪ Knowing that, it kills me everyday ♪ ♪ The fire we once had has turned to gray ♪ ♪ I think too much and I pushed you away ♪ (lively music begins) - [Narrator] Postcards is made possible by the Minnesota's Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund and the citizens of Minnesota.

Additional support provided by: Margaret A. Cargill philanthropies, Mark and Margaret Yackel-Juleen on behalf of Shalom Hill Farms.

A retreat and conference center in a prairie setting near Windom, Minnesota.

On the web at shalomhillfarm.org.

Alexandria, Minnesota.

A year round destination with hundreds of lakes, trails and attractions for memorable vacations and events.

More information at explorealex.com.

The Lake Region Arts Council's Arts Calendar and arts and cultural heritage funded digital calendars showcasing upcoming art events and opportunities for artists in West Central, Minnesota.

On the web at lrac4calendar.org.

Playing today's new music plus your favorite hits 967kram.

Online at 967kram.com (upbeat music)