BRANDON — What goes on in the mind of a 13-year-old farm kid who buys his own combine — with cash?
“I pretty well knew by the time I was nine or 10 (years old) that I wanted my own 8820,” said Billy Prince, now 17, of Deloraine, Man.
“When I was six or seven, I started working for a neighbour on his 6601 pull type. We worked on it for a couple weeks before I got to run it. When we were fixing, that’s when I started learning how combines are supposed to work.”
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Although he was just the helper on the 6601 project, Prince said the neighbour took time to explain, and he listened.
“Next year I worked on his brother’s farm. They ran 8820s and they had me drive for a couple years. That’s when I decided I wanted my own 8820.”
It took three years of looking and saving, but at age 13 Prince finally found the combine he wanted at an auction in the United States. He raised his hand, plunked down his cash and hauled his well-used 8820 back to Deloraine.
Where does a 13-year-old get the cash to buy a combine? Simple: working and saving.
While other kids were spending, Prince was stashing his earnings from the 6601 and the 8820s.
He also owned an Arctic Cat Kitty Cat snowmobile. At age six, when most boys are begging for these tiny snowmobiles, Prince decided those toys are for kids. He sold his Cat and used the money to buy two bred cows.
Since then, he has been selling the steers each year and keeping the breeders. He borrows a quality bull from a neighbour he worked for cutting silage.
He started out keeping all the breeding information in his head, but now that the herd is up to 30 cows, he uses a formal system.
Asked if he learned breeding management and record keeping at 4-H, he replied, “Nah, I just sort’a figured it all out on my own.
“For the first few years I never wrote anything down. I always knew each family line and how to trace each cow and how they performed. But now I have to write it down.”
In addition to the herd, Prince seems to have a passion for custom combining. In 2008, he did 2,000 acres before deciding to modify the 8820. In 2009, he harvested 3,500 acres.
Last year he ran the 8820 until the last two weeks of harvest, logging 2,000 acres. For the final two weeks, he combined with the Cat 480 he had just purchased. While the 8820 was a straight cash deal, Prince says he had to finance the 480.
Prince is not yet sure which combine he will run this fall.
“We were just sitting around debating that about an hour ago and we’re still not quite sure,” said Prince.
“We always sit down and figure out the best way to do things before we do anything or buy anything — me, Dad and my brother Frank. Mom pretends she’s interested, but she’s pretty bored by it all.”
Prince’s entrepreneurial spirit is evident, but when asked where it comes from, he said, “I don’t know quite how to word that. Dad always works hard. He runs the farm and runs a truck in the oil patch.
“It’s pretty hard for me to say what I got from him, but I know we’re all pretty independent here. Things like we’re all moving snow at the oil fields in the winter.”
The entrepreneurial attitude does seem to run in the family. His father, David, bought his first semi at age 21 while living in England.
By the time he sold the growing trucking firm to buy a farm in Canada, he had 35 semi trucks hauling freight across Europe.
Entrepreneurship has eliminated any time left over for school.
Prince’s mother, Kim, explained that the slow pace in school frustrated her son.
“So we worked out a deal with the school that he would keep up with
LEFT: At age six, Billy was driving tractors and combines for neighbours. Money earned went toward the purchase of his own combine at age 13. |DAVID PRINCE
the course work, but do it all at home,” she said. “He would pick up his assignments for a two week period and have them all finished in a weekend.”
He’s still enrolled in school, but taking correspondence courses via the internet.
“I haven’t taken everything yet, but I’ll eventually get my diploma. This gives me more time when I need to be productive,” said Prince.
Prince does not think his fixation on productivity has robbed him of anything.
“I just bought another snowmobile with the money I made custom combining with the 8820, so that’s fine with me.”
Prince himself is shy to talk about it, but Mike Ellingson thinks he has something special.
“It’s uncanny the way Billy understands machinery,” said Ellingson, inventor, machinist and owner at Precision Farm Parts in Sherwood, N.D. Precision supplied many of the parts for the 8820 modification.
“I know farmers who’ve been running all kinds of combines for 30 or 40 or 50 years and they still don’t comprehend how a combine works.
“But here’s this young teenager. He just instinctively understands how all those parts work together and how to adjust them. I’ve never seen anything like it in my life.”
