Wallaceburg, Ontario, Canada
Situated only 90 minutes away from downtown Detroit, the border town of Wallaceburg, Ontario possesses an old world charm. From its location on the banks of the scenic Sydenham River, it offers access by water to the St. Clair River and from there to the entire Great Lakes system.
Water has always played a large part in the town’s development. Originally a small settlement focused on the boat-building industry, the town now boasts unique marina facilities that make it an ideal vacation spot for fishing and boating enthusiasts. Even those who don’t enjoy anything more energetic than shopping can moor their boats right along the main street of town!
Rich farmland surrounds the town — fertile soils coupled with warm temperatures and an abundant supply of moisture make this part of south-western Ontario one of Canada’s most productive agricultural areas.
Situated a short distance from Wallaceburg , Leeson Farms is a cash crop operation owned and operated by Darcy Leeson and his father, Reid Leeson. On their 1350 acre spread they grow a wide variety of produce — seed corn, soya beans, peas, tobacco and sugar beets. Sugar beet production is a new initiative, this being just the second year Leeson Farms has grown a crop for Michigan Sugar. In addition to its cash crops, Leeson Farms also runs a beef cattle operation with about 60 head of Herefords.
Running such a multi-faceted farming operation calls for a wide variety of equipment and Mel Pietens is the mechanic who has been responsible for keeping Leeson Farms in good working order for the past 14 years. “”We’ve got about 16 tractors and four wheel drives around here, two combines, a sugar beet harvester, a defoliator to take the tops off the beets plus the usual assortment of trucks, mowers, and implements.”
Performance that counts
According to Mel, Leeson Farms has been using Power Up products for the past four years. “We use it in everything that runs around here, including our pleasure boats,” says Mel. “After using Power Up’s NNL 690 in the engines, NNL 690G in the gear boxes, and Gen 49D with Anti-Gel in the diesel fuel, we’ve noticed a definite reduction in our fuel consumption on the farm as a whole.” Mel is also impressed with fewer breakdowns in the machinery under his care. “There’s a lot of moving parts on a combine,” says Mel, “and a lot of opportunity for things to go wrong. Our two Massey combines date back to the ’70s and we used to have a lot of problems with bearings going but now they’re running well.”
Last year was a trial period for sugar beets at Leeson Farms. According to Mel, the harvest should start around October 14th and be completed around November 5th. “Unfortunately, we had to take them out of the frozen ground because it got wet here and muddy and we had to wait for them to freeze up. Part of the problem was that we didn’t have our own harvester so we had to wait for someone to come and help us do the job. This year we will have our own harvester so when the beets are ready to go, we will be right in there taking them off. We know we can rely on Power Up’s Thixogrease on the bearings, shafts, and universal joints when the weather is cold.”
Busy as the farm keeps him, Mel is still able to take advantage once in a while of Wallaceburg’s boundless opportunities for recreational boating. His favourite activity is fishing for rainbow trout on Lake Erie. “A couple of weeks ago D’arcy and I went for a ride in my boat which is an older model. Coming back up the river I was running it wide open when about 2 1/2 miles from Wallaceburg, I looked down and my heat gauge was right over on “Hot”. So I thought, ‘Oh well, it’s got Power Up in it , I guess I’ll keep it running.’ I brought her right up to the dock , shut her off and opened up the dog house on the engine. You could hear it crackling from the heat. Just out of interest, I tried starting the engine and it fired right up again — I hadn’t hurt it, at all. Later I discovered that the impeller on the water pump that is supposed to draw water up from the lake to cool the engine had failed so I guess I was running my boat ‘Power Up-cooled’ for a while!”
Whether running hot on the river in the summer, or operating cold in the field in the fall, Mel feels the motors he maintains are much more reliable, thanks to Power Up. “You get consistency and performance, no matter what the temperature,” says Mel. “That counts for a lot.”