ESTEVAN — A local man gave his father's 1975 John Deere combine a second life and had the old girl out working in the fields during this year's harvest.
The combine came into Brian Wenzel's family slightly used. His father purchased the 6600 John Deere in 1980 as an addition to his older and smaller combine.
"It was five years old when we bought it and had 660 hours then. And now it has 2,350 hours. Not a lot of hours yet," Wenzel shared.
The combine was sold in 1998 to an Alameda farmer, who used it for another six to eight years before he quit farming and sold it for scrap iron, as it became too small for most of the farmers in the area.
"My dad farmed four quarters of land. Well, that isn't enough to make a living on anymore. Farmers have large acres now, and they have big combines," Wenzel explained.
The combine sat in a junk pile for some time and was supposed to be cut up, but Wenzel was able to change its destiny.
"I went out to that scrapyard north of Alameda just to get some parts for a truck that I was working on, and I saw it out there. I thought, 'Oh, that's my dad's combine.' That was a couple of years ago. I looked at it, and then last year, I was thinking, 'I don't want to see that combine cut up. I want to buy that combine back. I want that thing. It's cool. It's still in decent shape, and it's usable. So I'm going to ask him if I can buy it back,'" Wenzel recalled.
With scrap metal prices going up this year, he said if he wouldn't make a move last year, the combine would be gone this year for sure. But he wanted to preserve his family history.
"He was going to cut it up, and I said, 'No, it's too good of a combine to cut up. And it used to be my dad's.' And he said, 'What are you going to do with it?' And I said, 'Just preserve it. And I might use it a little bit.' And he said, 'Well, go see if you can get it going.' So I put a battery in it and started it up and put it in motion, and everything worked on it. So I purchased it from him and drove it home," Wenzel shared.
He had to replace the tires on the old girl, fix the air conditioning, extend the auger to allow for unloading in grain carts or semi trailers that are much higher than the older grain trucks used back in the day, and do some painting over the summer, but other than that, the combine was in a good condition for an older piece of equipment.
"It runs excellent," Wenzel said. "It's working really well for the age of it. It's a good working combine yet and I'm glad I salvaged it out of the scrap yard. I didn't want to see it get cut up and destroyed."
Wenzel also wanted to get a corn header that would work on his combine. He found a fitting four-row corn header in southern Illinois last year and brought it home this spring. He finally got to try it out this October, helping Chad Ross combine his corn fields.
"I've always wanted to cut corn, and that was pretty neat," Wenzel shared.
He also found a straight-cut header and trailer for it at another scrapyard, which he got to try out while combining durum at Robert Adams’ field earlier this fall. That brought his old combine to a full operation capacity, able to harvest pretty much any crop that's grown in southeast Saskatchewan.
Wenzel used to run this 6600 combine when he was 17 years old and, 40-some years later, the machine still would do its job. At the time of initial purchase, this combine was just a joy for him.
"Dad had another combine that didn't have a cab with air conditioning. And I couldn't run that because I was bothered with the grain dust. So I was happy when he bought this combine that I could run. I just love combining," Wenzel recalled. "I probably ran it more than my dad actually."
He said for him the resurrection of his father's combine was a continuation of his hobby and passion for combining.
"I just love combines. Ever since I was a kid, I always enjoyed combining. And someday, I'd like to have one of them 780s, that will be my next one," Wenzel said with a laugh.
He plans to do a bit more paint work with his 6600 combine and hopes to put it to more work next year.
