Jost florishes flora along East 8th Road

Drivers heading down East 8th Road along Highway 14 south of Aurora are treated to a sight of a truck with the entire flatbed decorated with flowers.
The flora display had become one of many crafts brought together by former Aurora farmer Dean Jost, 87, after he retired in 2022.
“The neighbor’s kid that used to work for me, he blew a tire out by my driveway and hit the south side of the pickup as well,” Dean explained. 
Loretta, Dean’s wife, shared that while the truck sustained damage from the hit, they were thankful that the driver was not injured in the accident.
“(Dean’s) thought was, ‘Well, let’s just pull it off,” Loretta commented. “I said, “Well, no, it’s just an old pickup. It looks even better now because of the wheel hanging out.”
Dean had begun adding flowers to the flatbed last year to add more character to the out-of-work truck.
“I had all these seed corn boxes for my old planter and I thought, ‘Well, why don’t I just take my old planters that I had up in the attic that I didn’t use no more,’” he recalled. “I took those down to Wild Roots (Greenhouse & Market) in Central City. (They) helped plant them for me and then I put them into the pickup this year.”
Dean commented that his passion for making things stemmed back to his childhood in Kansas.
“I wake up at thinking about how I’m going to do things and what God tries to put in my mind and my dad realized that as we grew up,” he shared.
Despite his father being a former athlete and state champion while he was in school, Dean spoke of his father being nothing but supportive to him and his siblings in all that they pursued.
“My dad, he never pushed us to do sports. He had no problem against sports, but he says, ‘I see your creativity and that’s what you’re good at,” he recounted. “‘You need that for what your gifts are.’ He just really worked with us, encouraged us and gave us those gifts.”
Regarding the use of flowers within his crafts, Dean credits to his mother and her green thumb.
“My mother was an amazing flowerer,” he stated. “She had huge flower gardens and as a kid I helped mother, worked with her. As I grew up there were five boys and one girl and I was the youngest of six children, so I was around mother longer than most of them, but mother had a lot of flowers.”
Dean had become just as passionate in his work as a farmer from when he and Loretta moved to Aurora with their family in 1965, up until he and his wife began experiencing health complications two years ago.
“I’ve had both knees put in and that was a piece of cake, but the hip really hurt and my surgeon said, ‘Dean, I don’t think you’re going to get on the combine this fall,’” Dean said. “Then during that week while I was in recovery, Loretta gets congestive heart failure. During one morning, I woke up at 4 o’clock in the morning, I just sit up and Loretta says, ‘I think it’s time you quit and I felt the same.”
One day while visiting their son Rod and his family in Sheridan, Wyo., he was encouraged by his daughters to make something out of the remaining parts he had on his farm. 
“We went up for his wife’s 60th birthday,” Dean explained. “Her whole family was there and (our) girls’ families were there. One evening after suppertime, the girls came and sat with me when we were done and said, ‘Dad, will you make us something out of your own machinery, something to remember?”
Having leftover parts from machinery he didn’t sell, Dean gathered four spider wheels, polishing and powder-coating each. The wheels contained 10 spokes featuring a picture of Rod, Rita Bartel, Stacy Latimer and Shannon Janzen at the center.
“They’re like what you put on a tombstone and they’ll last forever,” Dean commented. “So they put that on there and then I got 10 characteristics that God gave them spiritually to cultivate (His field). Then (on the back of the wheel), it’s their name and what their name means.”
Along with the spider wheels, he constructed functional flower wheelbarrows for his daughters and Loretta.
“He had those yellow seed boxes and then he made wheelbarrows for the girls and for me for the flowers,” Loretta said.
She expressed that her favorite craft from her husband was a metal ring with propped seed boxes stacked together in their backyard. 
“We had a tree right here and it was just to have that big tree there,” Loretta said. “We had to take it down because it was dying and it was a hazard.”
Leaving the trunk behind, he put on a rim around the stump with a pot on top of it. 
“It was sort of giving new life to a dead tree by putting the flowers on top and he has metal rings around it that he made into planters,” she commented. “So we sort of have like a wedding cake.”
Matching the display in front of their house, Dean had created a Ferriswheel made of seed boxes to carry flowers as it spins behind the sign for D&L Sales and Circle Hybrid Seeds outside of the Jost’s home.
“The boxes dip through a pail of water and automatically water themselves from the bottom of the containers, so it works pretty good,” Dean stated.
According to Loretta, each project that Dean started has brought joy not only to the people in his life, but also himself.
“I saw him have so much joy in the farming and the family all helped,” she said. “The kids grew up helping and were very attached to the farm, our grandkids and even our great grandkids they call us the grandma and grandpa on the farm. They love coming back here and so for me, it’s just the joy to see him find something to kind of replace that.”
Along with their four children, the Josts have 11 grandchildren and 11 great-grandchildren.
As of writing, Dean’s latest craft involves restoring a 1954 three wheeler for his grandchildren and great-grandchildren to ride around the family home.
“God has a purpose every day for my life and it’s been amazing,” Dean said. “He created us to be that way and that’s part of our life and God is just amazing. I just enjoy life as much as I ever have. He gave me an amazing family, an amazing woman, she is just amazing.”
Like his previous works, Dean plans to use his faith to create for others.
“God gives your creative mind,” he said. “He gives those gifts and we really recognize that probably the biggest thing for both of us in our family is that when God created us in our mother’s womb, He created us for a purpose.”