Saskatchewan farmer John Enns has always had a soft spot in his heart for the John Deere 25.
It was the first combine he remembers operating as a teenage boy nearly 60 years ago. It was also the combine that replaced the threshing machine on his father’s farm back in the mid-1950s.
So when Enns located an old 25, rusted but still intact, on a farm at Grandview, Man., it seemed like the perfect winter project.
“It was the first combine I ever harvested with,” said Enns, from Osler, Sask.
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“My dad bought a combine just like it back in 1955 or 1956 and I drove it when I was just a kid. I found one last fall in Manitoba, so we picked it up in the third week of October last year and brought it home.,” he said.
“Then on Nov. 10, I brought it into the shop and started stripping it down.”
For Enns, who rebuilds vintage farm machinery as a hobby, the John Deere 25 posed an interesting challenge.
For starters, the block on its four-cylinder engine had been frozen and was badly cracked.
In addition, the unloading auger was seriously damaged, the elevators were rusted out and the belts and many other parts had been chewed by rodents.
Enns told his sons that the complete restoration would take two years.
But less than 12 months later, the machine was entirely refurbished, complete with John Deere 25 decals, new rubber and new canvasses.
Last month, it was put to the test at a threshing demonstration in Hague, Sask.
“She worked like a charm, “ said Enns, who harvested about an acre and a half with the machine this fall.
“After a few adjustments the sample looked as good as any new machine could do nowadays. It never missed a beat.”
Enns pulled the combine with a vintage John Deere 60 tractor that he restored a year earlier.
The John Deere 25 was one of the first combines manufactured by John Deere.
It was produced for a few years beginning in 1953 and was meant to replace the smaller but more common John Deere 12A model, which hit the market in 1947.
The self-propelled 25 was a left-hand model, meaning the operator would look over his left shoulder to see the pick-up or cutterbar.
It had a 25-bushel hopper, a seven-foot table and was capable of harvesting hundreds of bushels of wheat per day.
Enns estimated that the machine, with a single operator, could do as much work as a 12-man threshing crew.
“When my dad bought the combine, we were still using a threshing machine up until then,” Enns said.
“But after we bought the combine, the threshing machine was passé.”
Enns said the two-cylinder 12A, the 25’s predecessor, was a more popular machine, so parts for it are relatively easy to come by.
Parts for the four-cylinder 25, however, are harder to find.
For a while, Enns was unsure if he would be able to locate another four-cylinder block to replace the one on his machine. He found several two-cylinder blocks from 12As, but four-cylinder engines for the 25 were few and far between.
Eventually, with the help of the Western Producer’s classified section, he got a call from a farmer who had a four-cylinder engine less than 50 kilometres away on a farm north of Aberdeen, Sask.
“I pulled into his yard and he had a battery on it and everything,” Enns said. “He hit the starter and away it went.”
The combine’s front end was another challenge.
Enns wasn’t thrilled with the thought of using a pickup and wanted to replace it with a knife and reel for straight cutting.
Eventually, he made contact with a farmer near Carrot River, Sask., who had an old 12A, complete with a knife and reel.
Enns picked the machine up in July and remodeled the 12A’s six-foot reel to fit the 25’s seven-foot table.
The machine was field ready a few weeks later.
All told, Enns estimated he spent around 750 hours restoring the combine.
“The machine had probably been sitting out in the bush for the better part of 35 or 40 years so it was in pretty rough shape,” he said.
“It had a few dents and bumps and bruises but eventually I got it back into shape.
“I didn’t put in killer days because at my age you work when you feel like it, but I probably spent an average of six to eight hours a day on it and made a lot of trips into the city (for parts).”
“Other than that, it just took a little bit of elbow grease. I enjoyed every minute of it.”
Enns said his next project will likely be a old horse-drawn Co-op milk wagon that has been in storage forseveral years.
