NELLES CORNERS—After more than 70 years in the Phibbs family, an Oliver Model 33 combine has made its final journey.
On Friday, August 21, 2026 Dave Phibbs drove the 1953 combine from his family farm in Jarvis to Jim and Guy’s Hart Parr Haven. Now a collection of antique farm equipment located at Nelles Corners, the site is a homecoming for the combine to where the Phibbs family purchased it nearly three-quarters of a century ago.
NELLES CORNERS—The combine in 1953 . —Photo courtesy of Haldimand County Museum and Archives. 
NELLES CORNERS—Dave Phibbs shakes hands with Hart Parr Haven owner Guy Heaslip after donating his family’s 73-year-old combine. —Haldimand Press photo by Mike Renzella. 
NELLES CORNERS—A Haldimand Press photo from July 2002 showing Tom Phibbs and nephew Dave Phibbs with the combine. It was in the field on July 18, 2002 to mark its 50th consecutive season of service.
The trip itself was a little nerve-racking.
“The combine’s pretty old,” Phibbs said, admitting he and his family worried the radiator might give out or one of the large tires might fail along the way.
Fortunately, neither happened.
“We didn’t have any issues, and everything went well,” he said.
For Phibbs, the trip marked the latest chapter in a family story that stretches back to the early days of mechanized farming in the area.
It was June 30, 1953 when his grandfather Ralph Phibbs, along with sons Rex, Tom, and Jack, travelled from the family farm on Concession 10 to WJ “Dutch” Heaslip’s farm machinery dealership at Nelles Corners.
They returned with a machine that, at nearly $5,000, represented a considerable investment for a farm family at the time.
The 12-foot, self-propelled Oliver was among the first machines of its kind, and it quickly became the talk of the neighbourhood.Farmers accustomed to threshing machines and smaller pull-type combines wondered whether the Phibbs family had taken on too much.
It didn’t take long to prove the doubters wrong.
The family began doing custom combining for neighbours, working their way through the small 8- to 12-acre fields that dotted the countryside. Over the years, the Oliver harvested wheat, oats, barley, red clover, grass seed, and eventually soybeans.
At its busiest, the combine covered roughly 600 acres a season, including the Phibbs family’s own crops and work for about seven neighbours.
And it did so for an extraordinarily long time.
Dave remembers riding on the combine as a young boy, possibly as young as five years old. He would later sit in the grain bin and help keep the grain level while his father worked, allowing him to finish a row before returning to unload.
“I was seven years old when I was riding in the bin, and now I’m 70,” he said.
The combine remained in service until about 2004, more than half a century after it first rolled out of Nelles Corners.
Its longevity was no accident. The machine was kept indoors, carefully maintained, and serviced before heading into the field. By the time it was roughly 40 years old, Dave’s father had moved it to the family farm, where it could be worked on and maintained in the drive shed regardless of the season.
That history has long been considered newsworthy. In 2002, the combine was featured in The Haldimand Press after returning to the field for what the family considered its 50th harvest season. Dave’s uncle Rex had hoped the machine would last for 50 seasons, but died unexpectedly during the 2001 wheat harvest.
The Oliver nevertheless reached the milestone.
“Mission accomplished,” said Phibbs at the time.
After its working days ended, the combine occasionally appeared at antique machinery events, including those hosted by the Golden Horseshoe Antique Association in Caledonia and the Walpole Antique Farm Machinery Association in Jarvis. Eventually, however, it spent most of its time stored at the family farm.
“It just sat in our garage, and nobody saw it,” said Phibbs.
The decision to donate it was therefore as much about the future as the past.
At Nelles Corners, the combine can now be seen by anyone interested in the machinery, people, and stories that have shaped local agriculture.
Guy Heaslip, whose family originally sold the combine, was especially enthusiastic about the machine coming home. For Dave, the greatest satisfaction is simple.
“I just like the fact that everybody has a chance to see it,” he said.
After decades of working the fields and outlasting the generation that first climbed aboard it, the faithful Oliver can now be seen at Hart Parr Haven, located at 3910 Highway 3, Nelles Corners.
