smithy

Thanks ,yes made it up one sunday morning as church was closed for the day haha ,used to do a lot of welding a few years back when I worked for a company building generators in the winter months I used to help make up the base units and convert 20foot shipping containers into sound-proof units

This was power-harrowing on Thursday this week at times I could not see the bits I had done just had to hold steering wheel without moving it and hope that I was still on course

Pressing land last week

Just over a week ago I had 50 Christmas dinners turn up ,not all for me to eat

on some of the land that was really hard though lack of rain I had to run this machine that I made a few years ago along the tramlines and round the headlands to get the plough in the ground

well over the last few weeks I have been busy with all the farm jobs that need doing at the moment but a couple of Sundays back I thought I would make up a front linkage mounted weight frame for the case mxu135 I have a full set that came of my 4240 and another set that used to be on my 956 I used to own but went with the ones that belong to the 4240 ,to start with I tried to use the headstock that came off a Ransomes Faun potato harvester that I broke up a few years ago but decided that it was not suitable so started with a bit of steel channel with bits welded in the ends to take the mounting pins and then a strong bit of box upright for the toplink ,only put 6 weights on it as just need to stop front from lift a bit whilst pulling the press

Ok thanks

On Wednesday after loading grain lorry at 6am I went on to spread 60 tons of lime which was made harder as the lorry drivers ignored the instructions we gave them and tipped the lime on the wrong pad which then gave me a 6 mile round trip to reload with 5 ton at a time at a guess it added 3-4hrs to the job as the pad we told them to tip on was only 100yrds from the 2 fields ,as I had to have spreader back to the farm I borrowed it from the next morning I just had to keep going I finished at 11-30pm that night so a 17.5hr day then back up farm next morning at 6am as lorry in again

Pressing down the land that I ploughed this week

Had this lorry in every morning last week between 6-7am 29tons of evolution feed wheat ,145 tons in total going strait into the feed mill

Been ploughing some of this week but ground is hard as we not had any rain since the 10 August as you can see there is a lot of dust coming of the plough

Is that just feed barley and why is it being tipped outside

all roadside hedges Chris , the lorries will have to be 3foot on the grass verge now before hitting there mirrors , but it is nice to be a naughty boy now an again

Listening to BBC RADIO SUFFOLK tonight while in the tractor hedge-cutting as at 6pm till 8pm they have Rock-an-Roll Radio a bit of Elvis , Bill Hayley and a bit of the Stray Cats lovely as when you here someone tickling the slap-base it get you going and you go back and give the hedge another good thrashing will have to go back in the morning to see what a mess I have made o well it will grow again next year

Well done you sound pleased with your results ,a neighbours to me has his son at Harper Adams bean there a year now on a agricultural course

not sure how much work it has done ,its a 2002model so 14 years young still got nearly all the paint on the pickup tine bands so like you say looks good

Just a update I have since sold my 377 and 945 balers and bought the 575 that Mr Goodwin lent me on demo (GOODIESTRACTOR) , MB 86 asked how it was different from the older ones so here is a few pictures for you , knotters are the same but stronger rear of bale chamber is a bit longer,3 feeder tines rotate instead of the telescopic action with 3 chains driving them instead of one long one gears on the side to drive the knotters instead of a weak chain and a shaft driven by a strong/short chain from flywheel to drive the knotters/feeder tines flywheel is still into a gearbox which drives the plunger

Got 6 bags of slug-pellets to spread after the rain on Friday/Saturday so looks like I will be working again on sunday

Finished cutting the beans today only had 10 acres as they was part of my greening rules , had 2 2acre fields of Tundra which was tall but had lodged over in places and pods all the way up both fields yielded 3-7tons each which I was happy with as it nearly 2tons to the acre the other 6acre field was Wizard and not as tall and only pods lower down looked like the top ones had been burnt off so not so good total of that field was 8-5tons , most of the tundra will be used as seed for the coming year . have blown the dust of the combine and put it away for the year rain forecast for tomorrow so just in time will get it out again on a day when I cant get on with anything else and wash the outside panels but not under as don't wont bearings to get wet will also change the oil so its got clean in over winter will also grease every bearing and just run it a bit in yard to get new grease and oil round it all

I had one just like that but mine was a 1545 with a cab and a 17foot table used to get b##### hot in that fiberglass cab but it was a good machine

We did not spray-off are beans but some do depends on how clean they are

We try to get the barley planted about the 25 September but as long as its in by the 10 October its ok ,we like to get CRYSTAL sprayed on within 48hrs from drilling but seed must be at a depth of 32mm so good seedbeds is a must, if its a bit cloddy we go at peri-em which is then followed by a Cypermethrin spray end of oct/start nov and then in the spring hopefully just the fungicide . the seedbed would have a 0-12-12 Fibrophos at 500.0kgs/ha before drilling then in the spring feb/march it will have nit/sulphur at 192.0kgs/ha then appox 25 days later just nitrogen at 232.0kgs/ha and the 3rd dose of nit before the end of april at 116.0kgs/ha. Are local radio station every week have the same farmer on saying what is going on down on his farm and what is happening round the world also they have other farmers on from time to time and also the debates about slow tractors on the road and holding all the busy people up as they go to work and why do farmers always put mud on the road when harvesting sugar-beet,the station is BBC RADIO SUFFOLK and doing the day there is often tractor driver phone in for songs to be played or to enter the quizzes/competitions and a lot of them have nick-names the best one is Grumpy-tractor-driver allow he is quite jolly when on the air

My fingers are crossed as well Mark

Will come back to you with a bit more info bit later as bit pushed for time right now as nearly midnight and got a 6am start in morning and still got to have a shower as been in the dust

We sell the barley straw and some of the wheat straw , if the weather is against us we chop the wheat so we don't end up with fields full of wet straw but most years the big baler boys have at least 50% of the wheat ,they pay us by the bale