Ryan Dennis, a farmer from the Holdfast area, took his farmyard invention - the Better Buncher - to Canada’s Farm Progress Show last week.

He says the show was a great way to showcase his product which is used for making piles to facilitate the burning of the straw.

The key difference is that the Better Buncher has two batts that rotate around a central axis to leave the straw piled.

"Better Buncher is a flax rake for plying out flax to be combined with a straw," said Dennis. "Basically started building it a couple years ago because I couldn't find anything else on the market that did what I wanted. They were built really light or you had to stop and start in order to dump your piles or things along those lines. I set out to just build a better buncher, and that's what I did."

The Better Buncher won the People’s Choice Award and took home the $5000 prize.

"Right now this is just the end of the prototype stage, and they'll be available for purchase this fall," Dennis said. "We'll get some manufacturing lined up and stuff, and we'll get them out there. But anybody who's seen any of the videos or tried it thinks it works great. Price will be $12,000 on these."

The Farmyard Inventions area at the show also featured the Grain Auger Sampler and the BinKnocker.