Gathering of the Green 2022

Gathering of the Green, alias GOG was back! The show was shut down in March of 2020 for the pandemic. This year it went forward with the “Its Fair Time” theme. It was back and was better than ever before. The Gathering of the Green show was held March 16-19 at the River Center in Davenport, Iowa. Along with the tried-and-true items of the past, they added a few new items for visitors. My brother-in-law Kim joined us this year making this a fun filled family event!

The Plow City Tractor Show

This was the first year for the Plow City Tractor show. It was held at the Mississippi Valley Fairgrounds in the Iowa building. There was a nice array of tractors and memorabilia. The theme was honoring the agricultural manufacturing heritage of the Quad Cities.

Loren Book and Mike Jahn shared some of their locally manufactured items and memorabilia

from Moline Plow Co. and Universal tractor.

Our friend Dan Shima, a Minneapolis Moline collector shared that although this MM R was not produced in the Quad Cities, that the R cab was manufactured in Moline, Illinois.

Friend Dick Bockwoldt made a John Deere service truck. I got to sit in this amazing creation. Some of the companies covered at the event included Rock Island Plow Company, Moline Plow, Root & Vandervoort, Heider, J.I. Case, International Harvester and French & Hecht according to the Gathering of the Green Commemorative Program Book. This was our first GOG stop.

Displays

There was a wonderful representation of lawn and garden tractors. There was a Corn Show display. Perhaps my favorite was the toy display. Joe Trout was in charge of this and said that his” Toy Posse” did him proud. Several wonderful toy modelers are involved in this and created a wonderful variation for visitors to enjoy.

The Gathering

There was cool equipment in the River Center. There was even a cutaway John Deere 730 diesel. This was the first I’ve seen.

In the vendor area, best of all, I saw people I had not seen for quite some time. The Hains of Green Magazine and Kate Goelzhauser and Brandon Pfeiffer of Lawn and Garden Tractor Magazine were onsite, and Sherry Schafer of Heritage Iron presented. I enjoyed reconnecting with the talented Charles Freitag!

Workshops

There were several workshops, I enjoyed one on the history of barns. We also saw JD engineer Darrell Miller talk about his time working on the 8010. Almost any subject you wanted was addressed.

Tours

My favorite part of the GOG are the tours. We toured the Charles Deere Wiman home as well as the Butterworth Mansion. Gretchen Frick Small was our guide. She offers an amazing tour, and it was notable that I interviewed her at least a dozen years ago! She said that she has been at the homes for the past 34 years.

The mansions were beautiful as always! Our last tour was a collection tour. The collector tours were magnificent. We saw three amazing collections that I can’t wait to write about. Andy Hinrich’s collection is one I have been wanting to get to for years. Then there was Chris Fink’s cool combine collection and Jim Ludwig’s beautiful John Deere 30 and 40 series tractor collection!

The Gathering of the Green offers something for every JD collector!

The GOG is a wonderful opportunity to see everything John Deere and it did not disappoint! I think the highlight of the event though was when we got to meet John Deere’s great-great-great grandson Sandy Hewitt. How do you beat that?