The Combine Derby at the Hillsdale County Fair was back this year after a two-year hiatus due to difficulty in finding participants and combines.
This past Sunday, combines with names ranging from “The Mad Farmer” to the “Purple People Eater” with paint schemes more appropriate for the Mystery Machine than farming equipment met up in a test of mechanical endurance and prowess.
“We set up with the Monroe County Fair board to get these people to come out. Those combines are real old and it’s hard to get them [here],” said Fair Board Member Gene Conrad.
The combines entered a rectangular “ring,” for which a local logger supplied massive tree trunks to create the buffer. At the announcer’s call, the drivers revved up their engines and all at once charged one another.
“You have to be the last one moving with your engine still running to win,” Barbara Siebarth from Monroe County said.
Sparks flew and steel was crushed in a number of preliminary matches. Nancy Goodman watched her son and her niece take the wheel and battle in the mud.
“We are from Swartz Creek,” Goodman said. “[My niece] is just 19 years old. This is her fourth derby. My daughter painted [the combine] and my husband does all the welding. It’s a lot of work but we love it.”
Eric Bastien from Monroe County took home the trophy on Sunday. He has been involved in derbies for three years and said he felt great about the win.
“[The combine] held up pretty well I think,” Bastien said.
For Bastien, friends and family supported the mission. His girlfriend, Angela, painted the 1960s flower-power scheme on their combine with the help of cousins Sarah and Emily.
“It’s a lot of good fun,” Bastien said.
Dave Traxler, a William’s County resident who came to watch the derby, has entered into combines derbies in the past.
“I did it for five years,” Traxler said. “We had an old ’55 John Deer, painted a new scheme on it every year and went out and tore it to pieces. Came back and welded it back together.”
Traxler explained that the combine derby is never about winning.
“[It is] just about the fun of doing it,” he said. “Some people had baseball or football. Guys here grew up farming. You think ‘what can you do with a combine that’s junked out.’ We are doing what we know.”