You can buy generic pollen filters from Purolator as an example. The availability for the Contour is better than when I checked two years ago. And it is about half what a Ford dealer would charge you.
As far as doing it yourself, yes it's straight forward and you do not really need to take off the windshield wipers. Do be careful not to loose the couple of black plastic screw covers. They're a pain to find if you drop 'em somewhere!
