Despite COVID-19, the harvest clock kept ticking, so MacDon’s US custom harvest support team was there to help keep things running smoothly.
Events moved swiftly after the World Health Organization declared a global pandemic on March 11th, 2020. Within hours, the US restricted travel to 26 European countries, and just 10 days later the US/Canada border was shut to non-essential travel. Instantly, companies across North America that do business internationally found themselves scrambling for work-arounds.
In a year full of unexpected surprises and challenges owing to the COVID-19 pandemic, it has been relatively smooth sailing for farm manager Chris Barron and his crew at HJ Fairs & Son.
Located in Colchester, in the county of Essex near the south-east coast of England, Barron says the family farm has managed to carry on as normal when it comes to its owned, rented, and contracted farming land, which spans 4900 acres (2000 hectares).
Typical senior pictures are filled with bright-toothed teens in their football jerseys and band uniforms, or posing on a chair with a rose or in front of a city skyline with a blurry, glamour-shot background.
These photos are meant to capture a specific moment in a teen’s life, when things are about to change more than they ever have before as most head off to college and begin their adulthood.
Sometimes the smallest thing can have the biggest impact on the course of one’s life. In the case of Design Engineer Andrew Bell, it was not something small, but something downright tiny, that would set him on a path to creating products for MacDon.
When Eric Wright of Wright’s Agriculture – a U.K based family farm and contracting business – was considering investing in MacDon FlexDrapers to amp up his harvesting capabilities, the first thing he did was turn to the internet to do some research.
He looked at the equipment that Custom Cutters most often used in the United States and Australia – two countries that make up much of the world’s harvest – and noticed one glaring similarity.
Just 90 minutes northeast of Toronto, Ontario’s Kawartha Lakes district with its 250 lakes and rivers offers a convenient escape from the congestion of Canada’s largest city. But tourism is only part of the region’s economic story. Agriculture is also an important contributor, and almost 1300 farms can be found scattered throughout the area.