Making The Best Grain Better

Kevin Holl is committed to making the best soil in the country even better. (See his full story here.) And he feels the same way about grain quality. The two passions connect with his Gleaner S96.

“I don’t know why I waited so long to get a Gleaner,” says Holl, recalling how he’d had “issues” with a previous competing combine and “I just said… this is enough.” Jason Deike at Deike Implement in Waverly, Iowa, had worked with Holl for years on his tractor fleet, had the S96 on the lot. “He said, ‘I’ll bring it down if you want,’” says Kevin, and it only took a bit of running to be “very, very impressed,” says Holl.

“Kevin is a special customer,” says Deike, who adds he knew about Holl’s commitment to stewardship. Holl says Deike “told me (the Gleaner) weighs like 8,000 pounds less than the competitors. You don’t see the wheel tracks in the field like you did with the other one, and it even has a bigger grain tank,” he says.

The bigger tank didn’t keep Holl from being able to store the machine indoors, something he also wasn’t able to do with his previous competing equipment. “It’s a shorter machine to fit in my shed here. I can fold down the grain tank extension and get it in my farm shop; that I could never do with the old machine.”

Holl grows seed corn and soybeans, and though he typically doesn’t harvest the seed crop himself, he was asked to last year; perfect timing with the new Gleaner in the field. “The grain quality… I’ve never had it look so good,” he says. “I never could have gotten that with a competitor. If it’s got a little crack in it or you’ve been too hard on it, that seed coat can come off. But the Gleaner did a really fine job.”