And the winner is...

Heated debates between my husband and my father are not uncommon. When two people spend as much time together as those two, conflict is bound to happen. From big things (who gets to operate the planter this year) to the small things (Funderburks or Powhaten for lunch), there is almost always something that Justin and Dad are debating.

This winter, however, arose a debate of such monumental proportions, that each side had started recruiting members and a community was left divided.

What, you ask, could cause such a rift?

What could strike a cord that runs so deeply within a man?

The age old question...

Gleaner or International.

Up until now, the project has utilized hand labor for harvesting (as you saw in a previous post about the Mpanga site). This is partly because we have been growing corn for seed which requires more gentle processing than a combine can offer. This season we planted our first crop of soybeans. That along with the prospect of farming some additional land encouraged us to look into purchasing and shipping combines.

So, the search began and with it, the much debated question. Which combine to go with.

There are a lot of factors to keep in mind when researching equipment bound for Africa.
Here are a few:

Narrow roads. While the field size is steadily increasing as farmers begin to work more cooperatively, which would allow for larger equipment, the roads continue to be a problem. For this reason, we begain looking at smaller sized combines.

Another size restriction is the container they will be shipped in. Justin took me along on a combine scouting mission earlier this year and while holding my end of the tape measure I remember thinking, either my math is way off (which is not all that hard to imagine) or we are literally looking at inches to spare if we go with this machine.

Parts replacement is a huge one. It's important to figure out which kind of machine is going to break the least, break the most consistently (for example, if we know this is always the part that breaks, we can include extras in the container), and the liklihood of being able to find replacement parts somewhere in Africa versus the price of having them shipped.

As you may have quessed, among the farmers polled, the older genenation pulled for Team Berry and the F2 Gleaner. Besides the nostalgia surrounding these beasts of a machine, I think there is something very durable about them and farmers talked about their simplicity. Easy to work on, easy to get running again...if you can find the parts. And, consequently, based on nothing other than this picture of me when I was 5, Gleaner had my vote as well.

Team Justin and the 1420 International crew spoke of familiarity with the machines (as a lot of folks in our area run much larger updated versions of this classic) and ease of finding parts. Also taken into consideration is the vast number of people who are able to work on Internationals who might be able to talk Justin through fixing one over the phone.

These along with a thousand other factores (like which model can we get in a 1/64th scale version so we can create a model African farm in our basement...boys will be boys) were carefully debated and scrutinized and a winner was finally decided.

Red wins again. (Dad is inevitably muttering something under his breath about young kids thinking they know everything and we'll just see who has to come show them how to fix it when it breaks down)

And, like nearly all machinery decisions, it really came down to price and location. We were able to get a total of three combines (two 1420's and one 1440) for the right price and all in Illinois...Carlyle, Greenville and Auburn to be exact.

So, the two 1420's along with two bean heads and one corn head are being loaded onto a container as we speak and should reach the shores of Africa in time to harvest the crop Justin and Dad just finished planting. Barring any unforseen problems and, of course, pirates.

And it should be noted that we are already the proud owners of a 1/64th scale 1420.