After the record is broken, the combines have been emptied, the trucks filled, and the music long faded into the evening… everyone is left to wonder… where will the wheat go?

The wheat seed for our Harvest for Kids 2010 event was supplied by Delmar Commodities and a really big thank you goes out to them for that. They have also agreed to market the wheat for us and the proceeds will go towards our main goal at Children’s Camps International, and that is to send children in developing countries to camp.

This is just one of many examples of someone helping us out by doing a job that would otherwise be quite difficult for us to do here at CCI. Without the help of people, businesses and organizations, an event like this wouldn’t be possible; the support of our community is greatly needed.

We are so thankful to live in such a generous community and are thrilled when we can bring everyone together with an event like Harvest for Kids 2010. Not only will many children have the opportunity to attend a camp, but everyone who took part in the event will have the chance to join and say, “We did it together,” and that won’t be something soon forgotten.

As always, we’d love to hear your feedback on our Facebook page, or by email.

I hope everyone had a great long weekend and you were all able to stay high and dry. Today I’ve decided to write about a controversial topic… Who invented the combine harvester?

When I first searched for, “Who invented the combine harvester?” I came up with the answer, Hiram Moore in 1838. I continued to look into it a little more and realized that it maybe wasn’t as simple as that. Names such as John Ridley, John Wrathall Bull, Victor McKay, James Morrow, and others came up in searches that I did, all of them inventing, modifying, or perfecting some type of combined harvesting machine at various times in history. One website was even created to make it clear that Victor McKay did not invent it and that James Morrow did invent it. Regardless of who invented it, the first machines made it possible for fewer men to harvest a crop, but many more horses were needed to pull the machines, some needing up to 40 horses to be pulled. So let’s see… with 210 combines… 40 horses each… we’re going to need 8400 horses for August 7th… help!

From all the reading I’ve done I can’t really say I’ve figured out who was the first one to invent it, or what that combine harvester looked like, or what it could all do, but whether it was invented in 1838 or 1884, it is quite obvious that it was an important part of the history of farming practice. One example of this being the amount of grain grown in Australia expanding from 1000 acres in 1840 to 168,000 acres in 1856, a much needed remedy for a grain shortage at that time. The expansion has continued since then, in 1999-2000, the area of wheat planted in Australia was 30,150,000 acres, and that doesn’t include the increase of other grains, an impossible number if it weren’t for the advancement of harvesting technologies.

I will provide a few links for anyone who wishes to read more about the history of the combine harvester. Please feel free to share your knowledge of the combine harvester on our Facebook page.
- Invented in 1838?
- Who really invented the combine?
- The Revival of the Gallic Harvester