CCF

Well done Mart, Congratulations! 

I actually have my License test this Saturday in the AM... bit nervous right now to say the least! 

the battery on my quad wont hold charge  any ideas ??

Check the fluid on the battery cells, from personal experience small engine/motorcycle batteries have an extremely hard time holding a charge if below 5ish degrees, particularly if the fluids are low. 

Any of them in your area CCF?

None really mate, we do have tractor Rotor Tillers that are about the same size as power harrows and basically perform the same function of breaking the surface soil, followed by the disc. 

Quite interesting, that front end loader looks like quite a piece of work. I'd be curious to see some of the specs on that machine if you have a chance to post them up sometime mate. 

Nice collection of photos Luke, that 6640 photo is a true winner! 

Simple but well affective, nice work Oli mate! 

Nice little conversion mate, looks well smart. Looking forward to seeing what you have planned next. 

We got our lost cat back today. Disney is seven months old, and was found in a garden about a hundred yards from home. A man had seen her in his garden several times and had been feeding her. He rang my wife this afternoon as he had seen her again, and was wise enough to take a photo of her. She was soon found nearby and after a bit of coaxing managed to get her out of the bushes. My wife rang me to say that she had got her, and Disney was so pleased to see her; she was howling the place down. Disney looks like the cat that got the cream now. She was a little thin looking, had some scabs on the back of her neck where she had been bitten, and a nasty great tick on her neck, which was immediately removed, but other than that she was fine.

    We put up a fifty pound reward for her return, but the man who found her wouldn't accept it. Kinda restores your faith in human nature, doesn't it.  :)

For the cat lovers of you; Disney's dad, Oscar, is a Snow Bengal crossed with a Rag Doll Siamese, and mum, Tia, is a Chocolate Point Siamese, crossed with a black cat from down the road. She looks like a pure Siamese in build, but is totally black. 

Excellent news Will, your family must be so relieved to have her back. Glad she was found mate! 

Happy birthday mate 

Happy belated birthday James 

I bought one of those when they first came out, it is by far the largest model in my collection. Has some cab detail and the dual wheels are a nice touch, the actual weight of the model is quite impressive though. Weighs in around 12 pounds if I remember correctly! 

Had 2-3 Inches of snowfall on Friday...been nice with temperatures around 7 most of the weekend so most of it has melted. 

Lovely day here, partly cloudy and 14 degrees 

Thank You very much chaps, The Easter Sunday journal is always my favourite journal of the year to write. Glad you liked! 

Brilliant work Jez, unbelievable detail you've packed into your display...can't wait for the next installment! 

Nice sunny and crisp Easter morning here 

As the egg finding ended, the participants headed off to the field with their tractors and eggs for a ground photo. Deerepower, the hired security guard, was happy that he did not have to chase anybody or break up any fights over eggs during the event. Most surprisingly, he did not have to shoo the evil Bazza off from the event. After everyone had cleared the area, he rode around on the farm's Gator to look for any personal items that were dropped by accident during the event. He was quite happy to find an egg that nobody had picked up on the edge of the goat field for himself:

The farm owner also took a spin on the other Gator to look for any extra eggs. He was happy to find one extra egg for himself:

As soon as everyone was ready, the Farm Owner took a group photo of the event. Once again, the evil Bazza managed to get into everyone's copy of the group photo. Nobody seemed to mind though, everyone had enjoyed event and feelings were good throughout the day:

Overall, the event was a huge success, and everyone who participated had a great time. The event went by unbelievably quickly, and everyone was done with the event by 10:00 a.m. Cider Hill Farms was glad to host the event, and is already making plans to make next year's Easter Sunday Easter Egg Hunt even better. Now that Easter is done, the bulb plants will begin to give off life, as will the trees and the grass. Spring is finally here, and the year is off to a good start.

That's all for the episode this week folks, I hope you had as much fun reading my journal as I did writing it. The next Farm Journal will be Farm Journal #1.

EASTER SUNDAY DOWN ON THE FARM

* I apologize if you were not included in today's festivities, I only have a limited amount of tractors and am not familiar with some of the new User names as of yet.

Today, Cider Hill Farms once again hosted its annual Easter Sunday Easter Egg hunt. The object of the event was to drive around with a tractor or piece of farming machinery, and collect a jumbo Easter egg filled with Jaffa Cakes and other Easter goodies. The event was a huge turnout, and over twice as many members attended this year. We were quite pleased by the turnout, and the members seemed to appreciate the day of fun. We hope to host this even again next year, and hope to host more FTF events throughout the year.

As Luke P and JohnDeereMatty were busy on Sunday and could not attend the event, they volunteered to hide all of the jumbo eggs around the farm on Saturday afternoon. The Farm Owner let each of them take home an egg as a reward:

All of the participants lined up at the starting line at 7:30 a.m., and got ready to egg hunt. The starting line was much larger than last year:

At 8:00, the Farm Owner blew the starting whistle from the top of the barn, and everyone scattered off to find eggs:

First off down the farm road was Andy, once again with his New Holland 4wd tractor:

Andy finds his egg in the parking lot by the stream:

Following up next is Simon M in his John Deere 9420T:

Simon finds an egg in a harder to get to spot on top of the rock pile by the pond, but is able to get to it with the help of his tracks:

Mandy comes up next in her Case IH Quad trac:

She finds an orange egg near the road to the tractor boneyard out in the woods:

Jason Cutts barrels down the road in his IH 5288 shortly after Mandy:

He drives around the edge of the pond and is able to find an egg hidden on the outside rim of the pond:

Gavin follows up with one of the most interesting tractors out of his antique tractor collection, a Case 1370 Spirit of 76' tractor:

He drives off to the same place as last year by the pig pen, and finds an egg without any trouble:

Sean roars off in the opposite direction towards the field in search of his egg:

Sean finds his egg in a large grass plant by a few of the small ponds:

James F and Colm follow behind Sean:

They both find their eggs out at the beginning of the field:

Marky roars off in the other direction with his Massey Ferguson:

He finds his egg in the flower garden near the farm entrance:

At about 8:30, someone everyone knew all too well pulled up in front of the farm in a stolen police cruiser with the roof missing:

The evil Bazza knew very well that the farm would be hosting this event again, and it would provide him with a prime chance to steal some Easter eggs and cause havoc:

In order to not get caught out of jail, the evil Bazza knew that he would have to find a tractor to use so he could blend in with the rest of the party. After a quick search, all he could find was the farm's old Minneapolis Moline tractor. The evil Bazza did not like the idea of running that tractor around the farm, but he knew beggars couldn't be choosers. As soon as the evil Bazza hopped on the tractor, the back wheels became even more clapped out than before:

The evil Bazza rode around the farm, and searched for his own egg as he knew trying to steal Marky's egg would get him into more trouble than it was worth. He found an egg that was particularly filled with sweets out by the woods road. The sweets would be more than enough to cure the evil Bazza's sugar addiction until his release in a week:

Jez came roaring along after Marky. After some looking, he found an egg in the goat's water hole:

Even though he had been quite busy as of late, Nathan managed to come again to the event on his John Deere utility tractor:

He had a pretty good feeling that there would be an egg of his favourite colour in the same spot as last year, and he was right:

Rick came next after Nathan. He decided to search close to the farm entrance:

Rick found his egg under the farm sign after a bit of looking:

Shortly after came Will and Old Ford:

They each headed for the same spots as last year, and came out lucky:

Following next came Ben:

Ben purposely ignored some of the eggs, until he found a yellow egg by the edge of the goat field and pig pen. Rumour has it that Ben chose the egg because it was the easiest to spray over with gold paint, and shortly after the event was seen bringing his egg to the local pawn shop to trade in for 99p:

After Ben, came Nick on his John Deere GP spike wheeled tractor:

Nick found his egg under a tree up in the farmyard:

After Nick came Tris, barreling down the farm road:

Tris found a lime green egg in the stream after a bit of looking:

Shortly after Tris came Martin and Stan:

They both headed for the back of the equipment barn, and each found their egg:

Luke came next on his John Deere crawler:

Luke found his egg in a rather obvious spot, the rock pile right by the starting line:

Bill followed shortly after in his old IH 600:

He located his egg in the duck pen:

Marcus rolled down the road towards the field shortly after in his John Deere loader tractor:

He found his egg on the outskirts of the field:

Kevin came after Marcus:

Kevin found his egg on the edge of the Goat field:

Next up came Kiwi Nick, who traveled on overnight flight all the way from New Zealand to be a part of the event:

Nick found his egg on the rock wall dividing the large field from the new field:

And finally last but not least, Scott showed up with an alternate means of transportation once again:

Scott found his egg on the side of the compost pile:

Another great episode Tim, I like the shot of inside the excavator cab!

Wait in anticipation for the next episode 

Cheers Luke 

Have a good one Steve 

Now THAT is a proper wall...definitely can see lots of time and effort went into making that, superb work. Keep us updated! 

Cold and windy here today, had some winds up over 40mph at times!

This week, the farm focused on cleaning up the pond. Quite a few leaves and pine needles blow into the pond during the fall, so we always try to clean them out before spring when things get busy in the fields.

The fastest way to clean out the pond it by scooping up the leaves and pine needles with the excavator. As the excavator had not been ran since July, Marky gave it some extra time to heat up before going to work:

In the meantime, Garret got in the dump truck and drove down to the pond:

After five minutes of idling, Marky drove the excavator down to the pond, and got to work:

Surprisingly, not even a full dump truck load of leaves and needles had collected at the bottom of the pond during the fall. Although the dump truck did not have a full load, it still had a hard time getting up the hill. A small push from the excavator helped Garret get up the hill:

Once Garret was out of the pond with the dump truck, he headed for the woods road and dumped the leaves off to the side:

After he dumped the load, he parked the dump truck back by the barn. Marky also brought the excavator out, and parked it beside the dump truck instead of putting it back behind the barn. During the next few weeks the farm will be focusing on final cleaning and fixing up anything broken around the farm, so the excavator will be needed:

After they finished putting the machines away, they packed up for the day as it was five o'clock:

Hate to say it, but that's all for this week folks!

Easy day at work for them 2!

Nice pictures Tim!

Cheers Luke! 

Those vegetables are amazing, great work my friend!