Welcome to the Zane Museum

Winter 2025 California Bountiful magazine

Couple’s collection becomes an exhibition of farming history

Story by Linda DuBois
Photos by Frank Rebelo

The outbuilding next to Steve and Peggy Zane’s home in Tehama County’s Paynes Creek started as a tractor garage. Now, it’s a museum.

They didn’t really plan it that way, but it slowly evolved as their collection of antique farm equipment grew and they needed a place to store it all. Now, vintage tractors, machines, tools and memorabilia related to agriculture and rural living have taken over the structure’s floor and walls—and the collection is still expanding.

When the Zanes aren’t spending time on this hobby or with their four grown children, they’re busy running Zane Ranch. The Black Angus cow-calf operation includes 50 to 60 cows on about 1,000 acres of irrigated rangeland, where they also grow some of their animals’ feed and hay.

They both have been interested in agriculture since childhood. Steve’s dad was a farmer in Yolo County and Peggy’s parents owned a Marin County trucking company that hauled agricultural products.

But their specific fascination with old farm equipment was sparked in about 2002 when Steve was watching a television show that featured a 1949 Case VAO orchard tractor—the exact model and year of a tractor he owned that his father had bought new in 1950.

“I learned that it was pretty rare,” he says. “I had driven it while growing up in Davis since I was old enough to drive a tractor, raking hay with it and whatnot. We still had all the orchard sheet metal that came with it, and that’s the rare part. It’s hard to find.”

Collection ‘snowballed’

So, he decided to restore it. This process inspired an interest in other vintage farm equipment, and “then it just kind of snowballed from there,” he says.

The Zanes find collectibles through ads, word of mouth and their involvement in the Nor-Cal Antique Tractor & Engine Club, in which both Steve and Peggy have held top leadership positions.

“And then when people find out we’re collectors, they start giving us stuff. They want to get rid of it,” Steve says with a laugh. “Sometimes we just see the tractors parked alongside the road—you name it.”

They keep some of their 30 tractors in barns or outside but display the four restored ones in the 30-by-42-foot building they have dubbed the Zane Museum.

“It’s not a huge building, but it never was expected to get this full of stuff either,” Steve says.

That “stuff” includes buckets and pails, tin oil cans, hubcaps, carts, saws, small engines, children’s toy tractors and numerous tools. On the ceiling is an old hay track with a six-tine Jackson fork (used for transporting loose hay into barns for storage). There are also a few relics from rural service stations: a Union 76 paper towel dispenser with a brush holder, a gas pump given to Steve’s dad by a friend who owned a fuel and oil distributorship, and a Standard sign the Zanes found buried under a mass of blackberry bushes on their ranch.

Some of the items the Zanes particularly treasure. This includes the scythe, pitchfork and other tools Steve’s great-grandfather handcrafted and used on his Sonoma County ranch in the late 1800s and items Peggy’s grandparents used on their Marin County dairy in the 1920s. They also have a wooden two-hole belt-driven corn sheller built in the late 1800s.

“My son and I built a 13-by-8-foot vignette—a small museum inside the museum with barnwood on the outside and a rusty tin roof and a wood floor,” Steve says. Inside it, the Zanes are adding tools and other items a farmer from yesteryear might have put inside a shed, such as a cream separator, a platform scale, saws and a horse-drawn corn planter.

“We still have a lot to add to it. We have great plans for it,” he adds. “Plus, it’s created more wall space to hang stuff.”

Almost lost it all

This year, they have one more reason to cherish their beloved collection. Last summer, they came close to losing it all in the devastating Park Fire that charred almost 430,000 acres and destroyed more than 700 structures in Butte and Tehama counties.

The fire roared through the Paynes Creek area, destroying several outlying homes and other buildings, but left the core of the town unscathed thanks in large part to the preparation efforts of residents and firefighters. Between them, they cleared defensible space of flammables, created fire lines with bulldozers and controlled burns, and dropped fire retardant from air tankers, according to news reports. (See the commentary written by their granddaughter.)

The Zanes did lose all 1,000 acres of their winter feed that was growing on their rangeland as well as the surrounding fencing, but their cattle, home and museum collection were spared—narrowly.

“The fire probably got within 200 yards of our house,” Steve says.

“We did a lot of preparation because we knew the fire was going to get here. We just didn’t know how hard it was going to hit—and it hit us hard. We were right at the absolute head of the fire when it came through, and it’s amazing that our little town is still standing.”

As a 34-year volunteer firefighter, Steve is an expert at battling blazes but was fighting the fire elsewhere when it came close to his own house.

“I was out all night helping other people,” he says. “I wasn’t very far away but further than I wanted to be.” However, Peggy, their children and sons-in-law were at the house. “So, I knew it was in good hands and they could do everything that I could do,” Steve says.

There also was a Cal Fire firefighter onsite who created a fire line with a bulldozer surrounding their property about an hour before the fire got there. “He stayed on the ranch most of the night just putting out hot spots wherever he could to keep the fire from getting to our buildings. He did a great job. We were well protected,” Steve says.

In the aftermath, the Zanes focused on recovery tasks, such as cleaning up their property, rebuilding the fencing and reestablishing an internet connection and home phone service (their cellphones never got reception at their home).

Sharing with others

Meanwhile, as there’s time, the Zanes are still enjoying adding to their collection and showing it to others.

While they don’t advertise their home museum, they welcome visitors who express an interest in seeing it, and they also show off items at a half-dozen community events each year.

“Our tractor club takes our engines and other things to the (Farm Bureau) Farm Days in Glenn and Tehama counties, and the kids love to see this stuff,” says Steve, who with Peggy is a longtime Farm Bureau member. “The tractors don’t intrigue them as much because they’re fourth graders, but they have a blast with the hands-on stuff. Last year, we had 600 kids come through and they got to shell the corn in the hand-cranked corn sheller. They just had a ball with it.” 

Linda DuBois