The harvest began at about 12pm and 5 minutes later a Guinness World Record^TM was set with 200 combines harvesting simultaneously on the same field. After the record was set, the combines continued to work and finished picking up their swaths about 6-7 minutes later, finishing off the field completely.

The setting was a 302 acre field south of Winkler, Manitoba, Canada. Approximately 50 acres were harvested ahead of time to make room for spectators and parking, leaving 250 acres to be harvested during the record attempt.

Estimated crowds of 15,000 people were in attendance to witness the record, in addition to that, an adjudicator from Guinness World Records^TM was also there to make the record official.

You can support the cause and receive a memory by ordering Harvest for Kids memorabilia. Print and mail in this form or call us at one of the numbers listed on our contacts page.

At Children’s Camps International (CCI) we are working to echo the ‘Sound of Hope’, seeking ways in which Harvest for Kids can continue to be an effective awareness builder for CCI and its ministry.

Harvest for Kids 2010 will not only be a record setting event, but also a day for everyone to come on out and see a variety of farm machinery on display and in action.

Exhibitors from Meridian Manufacturing, Centennial Supply, Wentworth Ag, Western Producer, Secan, Precision Land Solutions, PhiBer Manufacturing, Rosenort Credit Union and BASF will all be there to show you what they’re all about. In addition to that, Mandako Agri, Little Morden Service, A&I Products, Miller Farm Equipment, and Elmer’s Manufacturing will all be doing equipment demos following our record setting harvest.

The farm show will run all day with demos and our Harvest for Kids Meridian bin auction happening around 2pm. There will be no shortage of things to see on August 7th and you don’t want to miss it!

See you there!

Harvest for Kids is proud to announce that two musical acts, Jodi King and Jordan Janzen, have been confirmed for our event. While they aren’t the type of music you may think of when you think of farming, there is no denying their talent and their heart for reaching out to others (and perhaps with a little encouragement they’ll get a little bit countrified for our event).

Jodi King is a very talented acoustic/pop artist from Winnipeg, Manitoba with a heart for reaching out to those in need, impacting many with her music and meaningful lyrics. Along with touring across North America and recording her upcoming album, she has been involved with Lifewater, an organization focused on employing local people in Liberia, Nigeria, Zambia, Kenya and Haiti, to drill wells and build washrooms. She is helping to raise awareness for the organization so that many more people can have life changing, clean, fresh water.

Jordan Janzen is a rock/pop artist from Winkler, Manitoba and known by many in the area for his entertaining shows. He has toured across Canada with artist Amanda Falk, playing shows from Abbotsford, British Columbia to Leamington, Ontario.
Working as a youth pastor at Westside Community Church in Morden, he will be taking a team to Vancouver, working with Youthworks, to minister at homeless shelters as well as reaching out to the children and the elderly in the community.

We are really looking forward to having Jodi King and Jordan Janzen perform at our event and we hope to confirm another band or two in the coming weeks. So stay tuned as we work towards making it a full day of fun for all who are there!

Anyone living here in Manitoba knows all about an annoying little insect called the mosquito, seemingly existing for no other reason than to make scratching an annual summer hobby. The ladybug however, is well known as the good insect, in some countries it’s even thought to be a sign of good fortune. So let’s try and take our focus off the bad insects and turn our attention to our good friend the ladybug, and another aphid eater called the lacewing.

There are various types of both of these insects in Canada, the most common being the Convergent Ladybug species and the green and brown species of lacewings. Ladybugs and lacewings are both sold commercially for insect control but can also be attracted to your crop or garden by growing certain types of plants nearby. To find out how to attract specific insects to your garden check out this website and get started on your insectary.

These beneficial insects feed on many soft bodied insects such as aphids, as well as mites, corn borers and Colorado potato beetles; aphids being their most common food source in this area. Most lacewings tend to prey on aphids as they mature and then begin to eat nectar and pollen as adults, still eating the occasional aphid for old time sake. In their 6 week life span they will eat approximately 600 other insects. Unlike lacewings, ladybugs prey on insects in their larvae stage and into adulthood, potentially eating over 5000 aphids in their 3-4 month life. They are also able to hibernate through the winter by massing together in sheltered areas.

There is a lot more information out there about these insects, as well as many more types of insects that are beneficial to us, but I hope you enjoyed these few facts about our 6-legged friends.

So next time you’re outside slapping mosquitoes and complaining about bugs, don’t forget about our good friends working hard out there in the fields. Now if only we could train them to eat mosquitoes too…

So it appears that we have a surplus of 1 with the Harvest for Kids shirts we ordered for CCI staff members… what to do with a left over size medium shirt that would make a good gift… or prize?

After much inter-office debate (not really), it has been decided that the person who takes the most creative picture of themselves with the H4K bin, and sends it to info@harvestforkids.com, will win the last remaining shirt. One entry is allowed per person to be entered by July 5th at 8pm. After photos have been reviewed by the office staff a winner will be chosen and notified by email.

CCI staff and their families are ineligible for this contest but feel free to send in your pictures anyway.
Don’t worry though, if you don’t win there will be a lot more shirts at the Harvest event, perhaps more to be won as prizes, but this one is the last of it’s kind.

So get out there, stay safe, take a lot of pictures and have some fun with this!
I look forward to seeing the pictures that are sent in.

As the day gets closer and closer, Harvest for Kids is becoming so much more than just a world record event. An all day farm show for businesses to show off their stuff… A petting zoo, balloons and an illusionist to keep the kids entertained… A fund raising auction to buy the coolest Meridian bin ever made… Live music by very talented artists from our community… This promises to be an event you really don’t want to miss. In addition to all of that, Danny’s Whole Hog will be providing food for purchase and I know it’ll hit the spot, witnessing a Guinness World Record^TM can work up quite an appetite.

To make the Harvest experience even greater, those willing to donate $1000 or more to Children’s Camps International will be able to get right in on the action and watch from the buddy seat of one of the participating combines. Limited spots are available, so if you want to watch from up close and personal, you better not delay!

The petting zoo will be put on by Ricklyn Farm and will include pony rides for a small fee. They have a lot of different animals; ponies, goats, sheep and emus to name a few. To learn more about Ricklyn Farm check out their website.

Greg Wood will be up to his usual tricks entertaining young and old alike with mind boggling sleight of hand illusions. Check out his Facebook page to see some of his work and learn a little more about what he does.

Bill Klassen Auctions Ltd. will be helping us out by auctioning off our Harvest for Kids Meridian grain bin with the sales going towards Children’s Camps International. Read more about the bin and stay tuned about other potential auction items on our ‘Projects’ page. To view pictures check out our ‘Media’ section.

We’re still working at confirming the live music for the day so keep checking back for more news on that. Things are really coming together and we can’t wait to see you there!

According to the Canadian Wheat Board, the projected wheat yield for this fall is 37.5 bushels per acre, and for the sake of this blog I will use that number for my calculations. In a further effort to make this easier for me, I will also overlook some other variants that would likely affect the calculations.

If we harvest 250 acres, the projected yield for the Harvest for Kids field would be 9375 bushels. With an estimated 60lbs per bushel of wheat, that would produce around 393,750lbs of white flour and approximately 308,823 loaves of bread weighing 2lbs each. If the wheat were to be made into whole wheat flour it would produce 562,500lbs of flour and approximately 441,176 loaves of bread. That’s a lot of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

Since we will already be breaking one world record on the Harvest for Kids field… perhaps we should try to break another one by using the wheat harvested and bake the world’s largest loaf of bread. Someone would probably have to build the world’s largest oven and the world’s largest bread pan, anybody up for the challenge?

Jonny’s Java… ‘The place to be!’
Okay so maybe that’s not their actual slogan but it has definitely been true for me today as Jonny’s has their Donation Monday, the first Monday of every month, where all sales go to a local organisation. Today’s organisation was Children’s Camps International (that’s us!) and we want to say a huge thanks to Jonny’s Java for their help in bringing hope to children around the world. It only takes $5 to send a child to camp and allow them to hear the Gospel of Jesus, that’s about one child for every two drinks sold!

Jonny’s Java, located in the Southland Mall, has been open since March 2010 and right from the start they have been committed to supporting the local community, raising awareness and giving generously to various organisations. In addition to Donation Monday, any tips left when using your debit/credit card go towards sponsoring 7 year old Derwin Daonil Dipre Vasquez in the Dominican Republic as well as an organisation called Coffee Kids.

Be sure to stop in at Jonny’s Java today, or any time you’re needing that extra caffeine kick for your day, especially when you can enjoy a delicious drink and support your community at the same time.
Check out their website and their Facebook page.

Jonny’s Java… ‘The world is bigger than us.’

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