When Walter Chipak grew up on a farm in Glaslyn, a community north of North Battleford, the most important agricultural machinery of the time were horses, just as in the days of ancient farming practises. When Chipak left the farm, horses were still being used for labour on family homesteads in Saskatchewan during the periods shortly before and after the Second World War, along with simpler, rudimentary tractors and ploughs.
But during the late 1940s to the early 1950s, Chipak said there was a gradual process in machinery improvements, such as the shift from ploughs to one way systems.
One way ploughs with metallic discs for blades are pulled by tractors. One ways are advantageous, because they can turn over the soil efficiently, can penetrate light and clean soils with ease and also have great manoeuvring capabilities.
Chipak noted other changes in farming technologies. Combines had transformed from pull-types to self-propelled machines. The last of the larger pull-type combines, the Case IH 1682, was discontinued in 1991. Pull-type swathing machines had also become antiquated as equipment on the farm sustained a continuous evolution towards mechanized perfection.
Chipak mused on how John Deer tractors and other makes became larger and gained increasing sophistication since the 1950s. For example, two-wheel drive tractors had been replaced by FWD machines, which are capable of touring over rough, sloping terrains with ease. “I don’t even think they make two-wheel drives anymore,” Chipak said.
Chipak had been a salesman for John Deere in Assiniboia since 1972 until retiring in 1998. He had always wanted to visit the John Deere factory in Moline, Illinois, where his son David R. Chipak works as the Director of Global Marketing at the Deere & Company World Headquarters. Additionally, himself and a group of like-minded friends who were also ex-John Deere dealers had always planned to see the John Deere Tractor & Engine Museum in Waterloo, Iowa. “We’ve been talking about this for years,” Chipak said.
The group left Canada to see the factory and museum from September 22-29 and they were startled with what they'd found. The scenes at the factory in Moline were especially impressive. Chipak said the factory represented 63 acres of industrial activity underneath one roof, complete with a parts department serving the entire world. “It’s a big, big organization,” Chipak said. The former John Deere dealer in Assiniboia, who had grown up on a farm where horses had once been used for labour, was astonished to watch hundreds of robots autonomously constructing tractors inside the factory in Moline. “I was amazed to how these things could work,” he exclaimed as he talked about John Deere’s mechanized employees.
