Growing up in the 1940s, Ron Kelsey was a farm kid who eagerly awaited one special trip each year—the Minnesota State Fair. His father showed corn there for more than five decades, racking up over 30 champion titles. For Ron, those trips planted a lifelong fascination with corn and the vivid bags that once carried seed.
“My dad showed corn at the state fair for 54 years,” Kelsey recalls. “He had championed like 30-some times, and I would go with him.”Those early visits sparked his interest not only in corn, but in the artwork that adorned seed sacks of the era. Long before plain paper bags became the standard, seed companies packaged corn in brightly colored cloth sacks boasting ornate logos, scenes and town names—each one a walking advertisement for both the seed and the farmer who grew it.
“The sacks had not only the name of the grain on them, but they often had the name of the town you’re from and your name,” he says.
A Lifetime of Teaching and Collecting
Kelsey went on to become a high school agriculture teacher and FFA advisor in Lamberton, Minnesota. In his spare time, he began collecting these vintage cloth sacks, eventually amassing an astonishing 1,400 of them.
He takes roughly 400 sacks to the Minnesota State Fair each year, offering visitors a glimpse into farming’s visual past.
“I have fourteen hundred of ’em, so I can’t take ’em all,” he laughs. “I take about four hundred of ’em there.”
More Than Fabric: The Art and Science Behind the Sacks
Many of the old sacks survived only because they were reused around the home. But unlike the floral-patterned flour sacks often turned into clothing, grain sacks were printed with dyes that weren’t intended to last.
“The grain sack is what I call a temporary dye,” Kelsey explains. “You can take the color out overnight with boiling water. My mother made her underwear out of them also. It was a little bit scratchy, but we got by.”Because the dyes fade with light exposure, Kelsey can’t keep them on permanent display. Still, he makes special efforts to show visitors—and this collection—what corn meant to rural America.
Some sacks feature college mascots, regional icons or whimsical illustrations.
“These are colleges—the Big Ten,” he says, pointing to one display. “Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska… Husker sacks, rabbit ears made of corn—just all kinds of designs.”
Corn in the Blood
Corn has been woven into nearly every chapter of Kelsey’s life. His children even gifted him a corn-themed item for his 75th birthday—something he accepted with humor and pride.
“I was a corn person and I carry it with me,” he says. “My kids gave me this for my seventy-fifth birthday, and I thought if I get it when I’m 75 years old and I don’t like it, I’m not gonna live that long.”Though corn may be a commodity, the cloth sacks from the 1930s and ’40s are anything but ordinary. They’re bright, bold snapshots of farm life and the communities that grew around it. And through collectors like Kelsey, they continue telling those stories today.
Traveling the countryside, in Lamberton, Minnesota — I’m Andrew McCrea.
