During the 2016 harvest season, Andrew Rennie had a problem: many of his grain crops went flat and were almost unretrievable. After some hemming and hawing about what to do, the Scottish farmer picked up the phone and gave his friend (and longtime MacDon support specialist) Paul Pickford a call. 

Pickford thought about it for a minute and made a suggestion Rennie wasn't expecting: to run through it with his MacDon M Series windrower.

"I was on the phone at the time, and I said, 'Put your windrower into it, windrow it.' And he sort of thought, 'Well, I’ve got nothing to lose,'" says Pickford over the phone from Australia, where he is currently based.

"He actually windrowed his barley, which everybody thought was completely lost, and then used his combine to pick it up. And to this day, I still remember when he rang up and said it did an absolutely beautiful job."

Not long after, Rennie added an FD130 FD FlexDraper to his collection of MacDon machines.

"After that experience, I always said the next time we're going to buy a new combine it's going to come home with a MacDon header… and we've never looked back. That was one of the best investments we've ever made with a combine, putting a MacDon header on the front of it," adds Rennie.

"So that's the reason that we've stuck with MacDon with the headers as well, after seeing what the windrower could do, we want to emulate that on our combine harvester as well."

The unconventional solution has become a favourite anecdote for both Pickford and Rennie, who, oddly enough (and unprompted), shared the same story during separate interviews. Still, it is far from the only memory the pair shares after more than a decade working together.

Rennie and Pickford met around 2014 when Rennie purchased an M1 Series Windrower with a 20-foot header. At the time, Pickford was based in Russia but made his way to Rennie's farm in northeast Scotland, near Aberdeen, to help get the machine up and running.  

Left to right: Annabel Rennie, Gary Clark, Euan Gray , Mark Stuart , Scott Mackie , Andrew Rennie  

"In 2014, that was the first windrower they had sold directly into the UK. So there weren’t any others for us to look at or dealerships to visit, and nobody really knew too much about them. So it was very good of Paul to come across, give us a heads up, and set it up for us," says Rennie.

"And he would have spent the summer in the UK, going up and down the length of the country, setting up the combine headers as well. When he had spare time, he would always come back up when we were busy working and help us with the settings."

That M1 Series was just the first in what would become a fleet of MacDon Windrowers Rennie has built up over the last decade, due to increased demand and growth in his operation.

Rennie and his team run an arable operation alongside a contracting business. The team grow cereals on 1200 acres of their own farm, with a stubble-to-stubble contract on a neighbouring 400 acres, and contract work drilling, spraying, swathing, and harvesting arable crops. In addition, they run a renewable energy business, where they take in waste from local abattoirs, fish factories, and bakeries and run it through an anaerobic digester. This generates electrical energy and also produces their fertilizer for next year's crops. Add to that "endless amounts" of other jobs, and it's safe to say Rennie keeps a very busy schedule. 

Before they invested in the first MacDon Windrower, Rennie had tractor units with smaller headers. Around the year 2000, Rennie says they were losing quite a bit of business because newer, larger combine harvesters came in, and the rape swathers couldn't provide enough volume and material for them to work with. 

"Sometimes we'd try and pick up two swaths at the same time, but it slowed the whole thing down, and it didn't really work. So we were losing a fair acreage to desiccation, which was becoming the preferred option. And by 2010, we were either at a point where we were going to stop swathing rape altogether, or we had to do something radical," explains Rennie. 

"And that's when we started looking in the marketplace for a modern-type rape swather. It was at Agritechnica in 2013 where we met MacDon. We confidently made our decision to buy an M155 Windrower, and we had one home for the following season."

That year, they maintained their acreage, and the following year they increased it by 50 per cent. The year after that, they increased their acreage by another 50 per cent. It then became clear to Rennie that they needed to add another machine, and where else would he look but MacDon? 

So, in 2017, they bought another M155. This was followed by an M1170 NT in 2022, 2024, and another in 2025. All whilst still increasing their acreage.  

"We are in an area here in the northeast of Scotland, with a lot of windmills. It’s quite flat, and we're surrounded by the coast on two sides. So all the windmills tell you a good story that we've got quite a lot of wind," jokes Rennie, explaining this year's particularly severe winds would have negatively impacted the desiccated rape crops. 

"We've increased our acreage not by competing against fellow swathing contractors but by taking back desiccated acres, with many farmers returning to swathing after seeing the work of the MacDons.”

"At our smallest, around 2013, we were down to about a thousand acres. Within the space of 10 years since buying MacDons, we have increased our acreage to between seven and ten thousand acres a year, depending on the season.”

As Rennie added more and more MacDons to his operation, Pickford made more and more visits to Scotland, at one point travelling almost annually to offer the hands-on support that Rennie so greatly appreciated.

COVID made things a bit more difficult in terms of product onboarding when Rennie was adding new machines to his operation, be it a windrower or his FD130 FlexDraper header. Pickford wasn't able to fly to the UK because of pandemic-related travel restrictions. Still, he was always just a phone call away to offer insights and advice on setup, or to arrange a trip for Rennie to see a demonstration machine nearby. 

"We navigated that a lot through WhatsApp, where Andrew would be able to show me what was going on or what was required. And then I could walk him through the process if there was an issue, or just with the setup and things like that," says Pickford.  

This friendly relationship and fantastic service from Pickford and the entire MacDon team are among the reasons why Rennie continues to buy MacDon products and has remained loyal to the brand for more than a decade. 

"It's an excellent backup service we get from the whole MacDon family. They've got their engineers across here during the season, and they'll pop in to see how we're getting on. MacDon check up on how the machines are standing up to our conditions and give us lots of advice to improve the performance of the machines," says Rennie. 

"They're very well-built, reliable machines, and it’s seldom that we have a problem. Our local dealership, Ravenhill Limited now import and maintain the machines for us. They are well supported by Paul and his team at MacDon when trying to repair any damages or diagnose technical issues. Always on the other end of the phone, MacDon talk them through and share their inside knowledge. When we’re buying new headers, Paul is pretty good at giving us advice on our best options for the equipment.”

Pickford, too, has only kind things to say about Rennie, who he describes as not only an exceptionally loyal customer but also a well-respected farmer and businessman, an excellent operator, and an all-around great person.

"He's a very, very good operator. A lot of people look at him from the outside and really respect what he does, not just because he runs MacDon equipment, but his operation in general is top class, that's for sure.

"The good thing about Andrew is that he does call a spade a spade if he has to. Obviously, he's spending a lot of money on the equipment, and in general, I think he's pretty happy. I think the proof is in the fact that he's spent a lot of money with us over the last 10 and 12 years and built a fleet of MacDon machinery now, it goes to say that he's pretty satisfied with it."

Rennie is a third-generation farmer, and now his daughter, Annabel, is preparing to come into the business as well. Rennie says Annabel and her husband visited the MacDon factory whilst working two harvests in Canada a few years ago.

“She studied architecture at University but made a career move when she finished her degree, and has come into farming with me. She's very interested in it, and she takes on a lot of responsibility across various aspects of the business as well. I work for her now, that's what I say," Rennie laughs. 

"She's dedicated to the MacDon line of business as well."

Visit our product pages to learn more:
M2 Series Windrower
FD2 Series FlexDraper® Header

Additional Resources:
MacDon Dealers

Photograph/Video Credits:
Amy Watson-Riddoch, Ravenhill Limited. Norman Riddell, Ravenhill Limited.