“Give me customer names.”
Ron did.
Six of them.
“Call whoever you want. Don’t tell them I’m listening.”
Derek spent most of the afternoon on the phone.
The stories were mixed enough to sound real.
One owner loved the machine.
Another liked it but disliked cleaning access after corn.
One had lost half a day to a bearing.
Another had replaced an electronic module under warranty.
Nobody claimed four thousand perfect hours.
Nobody said the machine had never thrown an error.
That made Derek trust the reports more.
He returned to Ron’s office.
“What do you want for this one?”
Ron gave him the number.
It was significantly below the cost of a new flagship combine.
“Trade mine?”
Ron shook his head.
“No.”
Derek laughed.
“That bad?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“What are you saying?”
“I don’t want three hundred thousand dollars tied up in a machine with unresolved warranty history unless I know exactly how the exit works.”
“That’s honest.”
“I’m selling you equipment. Honesty is cheaper than litigation.”
Ron offered to help structure the transaction around an independent sale or negotiated disposition of the Deere.
Derek drove home without buying anything.
That mattered.
He wanted the new decision based on comparison, not panic.
The next day, Mark called from the Deere dealership.
“We found you a loaner.”
Derek paused.
“You did?”
“Not identical, but enough machine to keep beans moving.”
“When?”
“This afternoon.”
“Thank you.”
“I mean it, Derek. We’re not leaving you stranded.”
“I know.”
That complicated the story in a useful way.
The dealership had not abandoned him.
They were trying.
The S790 was still a problem.
Those facts could coexist.
That evening Derek’s father arrived.
Harold Hutchens was seventy-one, retired only in the sense that he no longer worked every Sunday. He had heard about the breakdown.
“How bad?”
“Fourth major interruption.”
“Dealer?”
“Loaner coming.”
“Good.”
Derek leaned against the shop door.
“I’m thinking of switching.”
Harold stared.
“To what?”
“An IDEAL.”
“Red?”
“Yes.”
His father removed his cap.
“You driven one?”
“No.”
“Then you’re not switching yet.”
Derek frowned.
“I inspected one.”
“That’s not harvesting.”
“I talked to owners.”
“That’s not harvesting either.”
Derek folded his arms.
“I expected the paint-color speech.”
Harold smiled.
“You think we always owned Deere because God wrote it on a stone tablet?”
“Grandpa practically did.”
“Your grandfather bought whatever gave him good parts service.”
“He loved Deere.”
“He loved that dealership.”
Derek stopped.
Harold continued, “We had a New Holland baler in 1986.”
“What?”
“You were little.”
“I have never seen a picture.”
“Because nobody photographs balers.”
Derek laughed.
“Why’d he buy it?”
“The Deere baler we had before it made him swear enough your grandmother threatened church intervention.”
Derek shook his head.
Harold pointed toward the old 4440 inside the shed.
“That tractor stayed because it worked.”
Then toward Derek’s disabled combine.
“If that one won’t earn its place, stop treating the paint like inheritance.”
Two days later, Ron brought the IDEAL north for a field demonstration.
Derek refused to buy without putting it into his beans.
Ron’s technician spent the first half day with Corey.
They did not simply point at the ignition and wish him luck. They calibrated crop settings, walked through header control, rotor adjustments, unloading, emergency shutdown, cleaning points, diagnostics, and what the operator could reset versus what required service.
Corey entered the field the following morning.
Derek followed with the grain cart.
The first half hour was uncomfortable.
Not mechanically.
Psychologically.
Every time Corey slowed, Derek expected a problem.
Every time the cab screen changed, Derek watched.
Nothing happened.
Soybeans fed evenly.
The grain sample looked good.
Loss remained acceptable.
After two hours Corey called.
“How’s the tank sample?”
“Clean.”
“How’s loss?”
“Good.”
“Then I’m staying where I am.”
Six hours later, Corey finally offered an opinion.
Derek climbed onto the cab step.
“Well?”
“I don’t like the menu.”
“That’s your verdict?”
“Armrest screen takes too many steps to get where I want.”
“Anything important?”
“Visibility good. Feeds good. Unload is fast. Header response takes getting used to.”
“Faults?”
“None.”
“Anything you think is better?”
Corey thought.
“I haven’t had to call you.”
That mattered.
They ran the machine another day.
Again, no field-stopping problem.
Then Derek made the purchase.
The story reached the co-op before the combine reached his farm.
By Thursday, farmers were already saying Hutchens had abandoned Deere.
Kyle Erickson arrived Saturday.
He farmed eighteen hundred acres nearby and operated an S780.
Kyle stood with his arms crossed and stared at the red combine.
“You actually did it.”
“Looks that way.”
“Because of the S790?”
“Because of my S790.”
Kyle noticed the wording.
“You think they’re all bad?”
“No.”
“You had four failures.”
“I had one machine with four major interruptions.”
“Sounds like a model problem.”
Derek shook his head.
“I don’t have enough data to say that.”
Kyle smiled.
“When did you become reasonable?”
“Melissa reviews my statements now.”
They laughed.
Kyle walked around the combine.
“How’s this?”
“Ask me in a thousand hours.”
“What about today?”
“Good.”
“Errors?”
“None so far.”
“Dealer?”
“Good so far.”
Kyle nodded.
That afternoon another neighbor stopped.
Then another.
Nobody in a farming community changed a major machine without becoming public entertainment.
Some admired it.
Some mocked it.
One older farmer looked at the badge and said, “Didn’t know they still built these.”
Corey answered from beneath the header.
“They do.”
“Any good?”
Corey slid out.
“So far.”
The man waited for more.
Corey shrugged.
“That’s all anybody gets after one week.”
The soybeans came off before the next major stretch of wet weather.
Not because the IDEAL harvested impossible acres.
Not because it was twice as fast as the Deere.