The Gleaner

The Gleaner combine is celebrating its 90th year of serving agriculture at its most crucial time, harvesting.  This is a very well done video for Gleaner enthusiasts and anyone interested in how harvesting has progressed in the past ninety years.  Take an hour when you have it and see how far harvesting has come in 90 years.

My first combine was a Gleaner E model I got in the 70's.  A local farmer was selling his Gleaner EIII, its improved version, and I quickly moved to that machine.  I always liked the K2 corn and soybean special that my friend Donald Berwanger used on his farm.

I needed a larger machine and was able to move to the model F Gleaner.  The F2 came out later with many improvements and that machine followed me to Martinsville in 2004.  I sold it just a few years ago when the R-75 took over harvesting duties.  When I farmed more ground, an R-62 was leased to help speed up the harvest.  It still took 3 days to cut 600 ac of wheat and barley.

The black combine in the video was a hit at Farm Science Review and everywhere it went this summer.  I told Matt it looked like a combine a NASCAR team would build and he laughed.  What I always liked about the Gleaner was I could keep it going without being a mechanic.  They will literally go until the part falls off the combine.

As a soil enthusiast, I admired the weight versus size most.  A Gleaner never tracks up a field like other combines.  They've always had the lightest and strongest machine on the market.  No they are not the number one selling machine though I think they should be.  Mother Deere has always excelled in sales.

No matter the color, they are all getting used to the max right now as farmers harvest one of the bigger crops on record.  The Gleaner pays a healthy role in that task.

Happy harvesting and safety first.

Ed Winkle