james f

I never heard of anyone rolling beet before??

Modelled on a Fordson F I would say.

Thanks for the good wishes guys, and yes, i am an April fool [ :D

I know that some of the mods can be quite enthusiastic about deleting or removing posts and topics. As far as I could see yesterday there were only a few posts out of three pages of discussion that contained information that was perhaps better kept out of the public eye.

Great photos there Sascha, some really interesting machines they have

OK, here's all the 4 cylinder one I could find, all robbed off the net at one time or another sorry if its too many in one post i'm in rush

OK, hands up, I couldn't get Google Maps to work to check it

Ostensibly Belarus (as it is now known), but I think Belarus was just a brand name mainly and many of them were made in Minsk which I think is in the Ukraine?

I've got plenty but none to hand I'm afraid. Have a look on farmphoto.com under County, or maybe Colm can reccomend some sites such as John Bownes??

One thing Marky, since the thing can bale all kinds of waste, are you not limiting yourself by calling it 'plastic' fantastic? I mean willl customers look at your ad or logo and think, "that guy only bales plastic, I really need someone to bale cardboard" or such like? You want to maximise your customer base so you need to make it as wide as possible

Ever hear of a studfinder? :D

Thanks John. We could actually use a few more tractors sometimes to save switching things around! Never thought of it like that but I suppose the river does provide some nice scenery

Well we looked at a few makes before buying the 6650. We were all Ford until then and the local New Holland dealer is just up the road so it wasn't a case of just going with the obvious. Several local contractors were after moving to Valmet/Valtra up to that time and the salesman was the guy who used to do our first cut silage with a whole fleet of them before he gave it up, so that was a factor as well as price I suppose. We didn't really like the TS even though another local contractor had good service from them, and we had no real attraction to other makes such as Case, Massey, John Deere or Renault, so I guess it made sense to go with a brand that had been tried locally and been found to be reliable and hard-working. I don't know how we ended up with Class green, blue would have made more sense, I think it was my younger brother's choice \

One of those Ertl tipping barge wagons,have the tipping ram sorted now, all I need is a shaft and a respray.

Interesting to note the three 135s, all with different cabs

Swears on them or at them?? :D

By special request; a better pic of the Looby trailer during last harvest. You can see that the sides split into 4 parts, and the central pillar splits into two also so you can have low sides or high sides. The two top sections on one side are off at the moment for collecting bags of fertiliser.

Well it wasn't getting one from us anyway Pud. Honestly, I don't know what we were thinking bringing a Fiat around the place anyway :D South east of Ireland

Finally, the two jeeps we use to get around to all the different bits of land and haul the Ifor Williams cattle box and home-made four-wheel trailer. The red one is a short-wheelbase 1994 Isuzu Trooper with over 220,000 miles on the clock, and the black one is a 1995 long-wheelbase Isuzu Bighorn jap import that we bought before christmas with only 20,000 km on the (metric) clock. That's all our fleet anyway, some of the other machinery can be seen in the backgrounds, any questions just ask, I'll be happy to discuss the pros and cons of any of the stuff.

Not a tractor but indispensible at a certain time of the year is the 1976? New Holland 1530 combine. Bought about 8 years ago from a farmer and small-scale contractor via a dealer in absolute perfect condition, looked after in every possible way. He was even able to give us the operators manual and engine parts book, and an operators manual for the Claas 44 baler as well! Since we have owned her she has had a couple of new tyres, an engine swap, a drum bearing and a new concave, and is still well capable of cutting about 100 acres of barley each year. Included in this photo is Patch the dog, the Claas 46 and a nice inside view of the shed that I am basing my model shed on

While I'm on tractors I'll include one for the closet Fiat fans out there, a Fiat 55-90 that we had on trial last winter. Not as clean as she looks, there was plenty of painted-over rust . Unfortunately the trial was unsuccessful as the lift lever and spool levers were all seized on to the same shaft so we were unable to operate the beet chopper on the back. A bit of a pocket rocket but very bouncy on the road.

Thanks for the comments guys. I know what you mean about the 46 Rich, that one had two new bearings in the bottom roller last year, the 44 was much the same, but a good baler all the same. The 44 has recently gone off to sunnier climes, or 'on her holliers' as I like to say :D Now then, on with the rest of the fleet. The smallest tractor in the fleet is the 1961 Fordson Dexta, bought about 5 years ago from a local farmer who didn't use her much after getting a MF 390 with Tanco loader to take over the heavy work. Her main duties with use are yard scraping, driving a roller mill, moving the creep feeder and going to world record breaking events! Photos below are of her at a local vintage rally and loaded up with 3 Massey 135s and a Ford 4600 to go to Cooley last August.

Since I've mentioned the JCB it might as well be next. This is a 1989 3CX Turbo 4x4 with Perkins engine and Xtradig. Bought 3rd hand two years ago, it has been a very useful piece of equipment around the farm, cleaning drains, laying pipes, knocking gaps, digging soak pits and even digging out for a slatted tank last summer, as well as some contract work. A bit rough like most construction machines , she required a reconditioned king post carriage, a new windscreen, some welding to the window hinges, work to the headliner and a new fuel filter after stopping in the middle of a junction shortly after we got her! Winter work now consists of putting out silage bales in the rented yard with a converted buckrake and cleaning out the odd loose shed. That's all I have time for today folks, tomorrow I'll finish off with the Fordson Dexta, New Holland 1530, Isuzu Trooper, Isuzu Bighorn and Patch the dog

Another indispensable piece of machinery is the 1963 New Performance Super Major that has been in the family since almost new, though first registered in Dublin. Being the only tractor in the place that will go into the cubicle houses at a rented yard to scrape them out, she is used almost every day in the winter. We also used to use her for putting out the silage bales in the same yard with a Quicke loader until the arrival of a JCB in 2006, not a job for the faint-hearted! Not used much outside of the winter, last summer we rebuilt the engine to cure excessive oil blow out of the exhaust, to find that the last person to rebuild it had left out some of the oil control rings!! :o

Possibly the most important tractor in the fleet is the 1985 Ford 6610 equipped with a choice of Tanco 978 or 868 loaders and a range of attachments. Seeing action in nearly every farming activity throughout the year, not to mention feeding most of the cattle during the winter, she really is indispensable. Some people don't like the AP cab, but I love jumping up on her and going off haybobbing in the summer or drawing bales or bringing loads of grain back to the shed. 100% reliable with the exception of a reconditioned engine and a coulpe of new cluthch plates, her duties include feeding silage and beet to cattle, lifting fertiliser bags, turning hay and silage, drawing and stacking said hay and silage, turning straw, drawing straw bales, hauling and loading grain, and doing any loader work that needs doing, including putting up sheds! Unfortunately being left outside all the time has taken its toll on the tinwork, and we recently put a new roof on