The Gathering of the Green attracted hundreds of John Deere collectors and enthusiasts from numerous states and several countries for the four-day event that featured workshops, tours and a vendor area packed with treasures.

“This is fun, there are a lot of happy people here,” said Ed Vieth, chairman of the event that was first held in 2000. “We have people here from Ireland, Australia, South Africa, United Kingdom and Canada.”

Organized by a group of volunteers representing several John Deere collector clubs, the event’s theme, “An American Original,” featured barn find items in the display areas.

“A lot of the equipment is original, nothing has been done to it and they all run,” said Brad Mundt, chairman of the display committee for the Gathering of the Green. “We have some rare stuff here and nothing in the display is duplicated.”

Collectors from 10 states brought items featured in the display areas at the RiverCenter in Davenport, Iowa.

“There are 57 pieces of equipment and I turned down 77 pieces of equipment,” Mundt said. “People brought items from California to New York and from Texas to Canada.”

Many unusual items were on display, including a 1948 John Deere one-row level bed potato digger.

“It digs the potatoes and then it is like a shaker to get all the dirt off the potatoes,” Mundt said.

“This is a John Deere 88 Crop Dryer from 1959,” he said. “It could dry corn, hay or peanuts.”

The John Deere Handy Farm Mixer was built from 1923 through the 1950s.

“It was for grain, but you could also mix concrete or anything you needed to do,” Mundt said. “This is a Dixie Mill that ground corn into cornmeal.”

Since the theme for the display was barn finds, the chairman said, the committee decided to build a barn.

“The barn is in three sections and it is 24 feet high,” he said. “It was built by Denny and Jamie Doonan in their machine shed.”

“All the barn board on the outside is original. It has not been painted,” Mundt said. “This whole side of the barn came from Aledo, Illinois, where they had a tornado and this is what they saved.”

To go with the one-row 1930 No. 10 Corn Picker, Mundt designed a cornfield to make it look like it was picking corn.

“This corn is from October, we put it in a crate and sealed it and it was still green when we opened the crate on Sunday,” he said. “This is check-row corn, planted on 40-inch rows so you could cultivate it in either direction.”

Ron Kreider from Quarryville in southern Pennsylvania displayed his 1936 John Deere B with the No. 15 Cotton Stripper at the show.

“It is very rare,” Mundt said.

The John Deere threshing machine barely made it into the RiverCenter.

“It cleared that 10-foot door by one and a quarter inches,” Mundt said. “This is the ultimate that I had to have here and it works every year at the threshing show in Wisconsin.”

The committee chairman asked Kevin Bos to bring two combines from his home in Geneseo in northwestern Illinois. The John Deere 111 Peanut Combine was made in the mid-1960s.

“They made 300 of those peanut combines and it’s one of only seven left,” Mundt said.

The second combine from Bos was a 1955 John Deere 45 combine with a two-row head.

“Kevin uses that combine every year at his farm show,” the committee chairman said.

Mundt, who farms near Bettendorf in eastern Iowa, owns his grandfather’s 1953 John Deere 40T.

“I sat on his lap on that tractor when I was 6 years old,” he said. “When he passed away, I got all his tractors and now I have 17 tractors and the oldest is a 1936 John Deere B up to a 1959 John Deere 720.”

The farmer’s collection includes seven John Deere 40Ts and the correct implements for each one.

“I have a two-row planter, two-bottom plow, two-bottom cultivator, spring tooth harrow, disc and dirt scoop,” he said. “Nobody that I know in the U.S. has a collection like mine.”

The two-row planter was purchased from a guy who worked at a John Deere dealership.

“There were four of the planters that had never been sold and were still in crates,” Mundt said. “He said that I needed that planter for my grandfather’s 40T tractor.”

The farmer likes to put his tractors to work.

“Every year I use that planter for about one acre of sweet corn,” he said. “All my implements are set for 36-inch rows so I can cultivate corn if I want to.”

Each of his tractors are set up for a certain implement.

“For the plow, you need weights, so that tractor has a set of front weights on it and rear weights on the wheels,” explained the president of the Deer Valley Collectors group.

Mundt is working on ideas for the displays at the 2028 Gathering of the Green.

“I already know what I want for the display,” he said. “I want new generation like quad-track tractors because I want to grab the younger audience.”