Gav836

Latest purchases.......

For the Defender..

A bar and spot lights

Mantec snorkel

2 new door latches

Passenger door catch assembly

Fan belt tensioner and 2 idler pulleys

Pair of rear mud flaps

Rear brake pads

Injector wiring harness, not currently faulty but not risking it as a known problem area.

For the house, 500 litres of heating oil as the tank is nearly empty, I might be leaving here but I'm not getting cold until I do!!

Nope was use for shepherding duties. A-bar and spotlights will be going on later this week, not sure if I'll be fitting a raised air intake on it yet.

It is very tidy Sean but believe it or not I did buy it off a farmer but its been very well looked after.

Picked up my latest purchase today, had a good run back from near Market Rasen in Lincolnshire to see how it went and I'm really pleased with it. Its a 2003 Land Rover 110 County Double Cab which I won for a really good price on ebay. Its got the later more reliable version of the Td5 engine so should be trouble free I hope  

After all the annoyance earlier tonight something seems like it might have gone my way..........had some luck on ebay, pictures and details to follow within the next week or so    

Gav, leave, and have yourself a nice long holiday!

 

 

Not quite that simple Tim when I live in a tied cottage, takes a bit more planning than just telling him where he can insert his job!

The fact that it seems everyone else is allowed to have a 3 day weekend off work apart from me.........and he wonders why I'm wanting to leave!!!!!

Its raining!!! After battling to get the plough to stay in the ground over the past week and when it does heating the wearing metal up enough to fry an egg on it we were desperate to have some meaningful rainfall!

After looking for one for a little while I finally managed to find a decent second hand semi auto shotgun today, a nice Franchi Raptor 712. Looking forward to introducing a few pigeons to it at the first chance I get!

We started combining here on Friday afternoon, we'd been waiting for our new combine to arrive as we could have gone a day or so earlier. The grass seed was just fit to cut and we wanted to get it before we got the rain they were talking about, we've managed to get the stuff what was still upright but there's still 10 acres of laid stuff to combine. It seems to be yielding well both in seed and wrapped haylage bales but is a pig to get out of the combine tank as it bridges everywhere and needs a man with a stick to poke it out every tank full. Half the problem is everything has paint on it still so the crop can't flow very well.

On with the pictures, this is our new 2013 13 reg John Deere W540 with 618r header which replaced our 19 year old 2058. Its a much better combine and you can actually get crop to feed in the front better!

That is some of the problem, all sales and service staff are based in Holland with engineers spending 2 weeks here on a rota basis from memory.

I did unload some with the teleporter without damaging the ducts but then I'm a more gentle operator than the other chaps are........bit of scrap metal laying about and panel beating to do.

No, we've only got the more basic one, ACT-25 I think as there are only two areas to monitor. Any problems we've had so far have been dealt with reasonably quickly, some of the problems are through having the store built to a price though from what I can make out reading between the lines

One of the neighbouring farms also had one build last year, a 4000t, 4 bay store with two bays on the left and two on the right along with a covered yard between them. There's is underfloor ducting though which seems much better in my opinion, easier to work with!

That seems to be the most popular name that's been used for it. There's a reason for that.......everything on the inside of the store IS Dutch designed, just waiting for Omnivent to come and sort out the complaints we have with it.

Its also that time of year where the weed beet are showing with a vengeance, I was tasked with weed wiping Friday but in the end also put the hoe on the front to try and get the smaller ones that were between the rows.

Before

After

I've also had a new toy delivered, its goodbye to my old furrow press, aka "The spawn of satan", and hello to a nice shiney new Lemken one that's slightly wider

Been a while since I posted any updates in here so here we go......

Last years potato crop finally went at the end of July, not exactly stress free for everyone but luckily I missed most of it due to being on holiday.

We have a new toy for unloading the store so that we don't damage any of the ducts with the forklift. It's a dutch made store scooter which is self propelled and electrically powered, just steered by using two small joysticks and driven in and out of the heap to pick the spuds up.

We've also had to have a new irrigation pump control panel installed as the old one drew too much electricity to be able to use it at the same time as the fans and chillers in the potato store. The new one is an u to date "inverter" type which removes the need for the clayton pressure equalising valve by regulated the pump to the speed it needs to run at to operate just the one or both irrigators. It also removes the possibility of someone having a heart attack when the old panel engages with a sound like a shotgun going off, no matter how much you prepared yourself it got you everytime!!

The old panel

The new touch screen one

You know exactly what I mean from your previous life I'm sure, there's some good and bad drivers out there but some shouldn't be allowed on the road with a push bike let alone a car and caravan.

That's the exact same conversation the examiner and myself had Mike, he was of the same opinion as myself that the driving category rules and restrictions need looking at as it makes no sense at all when, as you say, I can pull a trailer behind a tractor and have done since I was 16 but not behind our Defender at work whereas Grandpa Joe blogs who's more dangerous than shark infested custard can pull a trailer behind his car with no training and be a hazard to all around him.

Passed my category B+E (car and trailer) test this morning after having a days training for it yesterday to get me back up to test standards with my driving and to learn various test routes around Norwich.

In to work at just after 5am to move the irrigator again just back home having some breakfast and more strong tea to wake me up before going back to work. So far moves today are looking like 8.30am, 12.15pm and about 8.30pm failing any problems. Should have some help for the next three pulls so I can keep training him on how to do it then the next three days will be done by me and me alone as both the lad and my manager are off until Tuesday and Monday respectively, going to be like a zombie by then!!!!

Been putting in a couple of 8' posts and some trellis today as part of a screen to protect my new greenhouse from "Spaniel damage" as he runs past it, just need to make the gate now to shut him out of that part of the garden

That's quite a sorry tale there......there's one from my childhood I remember though called "The Boy who cried Wolf", he told so many lies that no one knew when to believe him.......

What happened to being an apprentice brick layer for a building firm up your way then Harry..........?

6810 and Grimme GL32B planter with Reekie bedtiller applying pesticide

We've finished potato planting today after one of the easiest seasons we've had. Our hedge cutting contractor has been doing the bed forming this year with his 6920s but we did have to put the 6910 on it for a few hours when his lift ram seals went. This year we are growing VR808 and Russet Burbank, we've now ditched the Saturna in favour of the VR808 as they yield better. Total area for this year is about 135 acres. The last field had a crop of grazing rye on it which left us with a lot of residue to deal with, the destoner was struggling with it as it was blocking the webs up so we had to get a contractor in with a blade type bed tiller to chop it up at a cost of £60 an hour, not cheap when he's done 25 acres at a speed of 2kph!!

6910 and bedformer

Contractors 6630

Puma and Standen Uniweb destoner

We've had to buy our own for it, by the time I get mine back on Monday and this one goes back it'll have used £60's worth of Adblue so not too bad. Finally found out what was wrong with mine today after having two chaps from Case UK working on it all day, seems like a valve problem but will find out more when I pick it up on Monday all being well. The loan 230 has had one breakdown this week when a hydraulic hose exploded under the cab on Wednesday, made a nice mess over everything but was soon fixed by stealing one off mine back at the branch.