Gav836

I've also been ploughing for next years rape crop and the forage rape for the cows to graze on The ducts have also been fitted to the potato store and the fridge units installed outside

Here are a few updates from the past few weeks at work, firstly combining our rape. My workmate took over while I nipped home so I took a couple of pictures on my return One of many wet patches in one of our rape fields A couple taken last Friday as I cut our last field of the year, spring barley on a contract farm

5 pairs of mole grips in assorted sizes and styles, a pair of bent snipe nose pliers and a 24oz ball pein hammer, all original Britool items at clearance prices. Been needing some decent mole grips for a while now to replace my £1.99 ones so after a good month at work have treated myself.

Norev Claas Lexion 770 Terra Trac.........I need a bigger Claas Cabinet

I have a Firestone App for tractor tyre pressures on my phone, found it handy for checking them at work, also have one from Hutchinsons for seed rates, chemicals and other things for work.

We've had a few...... 1) Hydraulic pump gave up on the combine.....came to the end of the run in a field with it and the steering locked solid and lost all hydraulic function, 15 minutes later I would have been on the road so lucky escape 2) Main drive belt snapped on combine, lost 24 hours replacing it as every other belt and guard had to come off to get at it!! 3) Harvest student turned in too tight at junction with trailer despite plenty of tuition and hit flint wall around churchyard, he's no longer allowed to take trailers on road. 4) Lift arm mounting clevis snapped off McConnel topper while student was travelling to field, seems to have been speed related after following him up the road the next day with it!! 5) Hydraulic hose burst on baler out of sight of tractor, luckily it stripped some net off the bale at about the same time so I had to walk round back of baler and noticed it or tractor would have been drained. 6) Lots of round bales (400) with centres hot enough to bake a spud in after being baled when too damp or too much green straw despite my objections about doing so!

We finished cutting our own crops yesterday and our contract farms spring barley today just as it was starting to rain so all done for another year now.

Nope, only one very tiny patch in a field corner where the boss missed with one of the sprays. We have a very good agronomist and this year has proved the fact, the field we are in at the minute has a massive yield but the grain is quite shrivelled on the 30 acres drilled ehind maize, the 15 acres behind kale drilled in early December is a very good sample and we're now not sure if dropping that variety this year is the right move.

We're getting on well with harvest at the moment, we need three more good days and we should be finished. We also have the best wheat yields since my boss arrived there in 1997 so some things are going well this year

Unless the header trailer has hyd. brakes fitted even towing it behind a tractor is illegal, if its towed by a combine its perfectly ok as it goes as a trailed appliance but when put behind a tractor it becomes a trailer and subject to the usual rules for them. Information obtained from an ex traffic officer who is a well known authority on the subject.

Know what you mean there, I've already ploughed one field that has some clay patches in it, however the slats on my plough don't smear it like solid bodies with. That field is already drilled and growing away nicely. Talking of wet.......I've been having fun with the combine on two of our wettest fields today, took me 3 hours to cut 4 acres as I was spending so much time reversing out of it. This was one of the worst wet bits, dropped in there before I twigged what was going on......not nedded a chain yet though!

And we're off......Maris Otter barley on a local contract yielding a good 2.5t/acre by the looks of it, better still at 11.2-12.5% moisture and lots of straw.

Our neighbours started on winter barley today and I imagine that we will start tomorrow or Tuesday on ours, rape is still at least 2 weeks away as its not been sprayed off yet

Been putting on alot of slug pellets this year on the potatoes due to the wet weather, those on the heavier land have now had two doses of 7.5kg per ha and the sandier fields have had 7.5kg per ha, we have another 400kg in the store to put on which will bring the heavier fields up to the maximum allowable dose of 22kg per ha per year. This is more of a prevention method at the moment to kill the young slugs before they start damaging the potato tubers. Plants are looking well all things considered though I also got sent for 12t of malt nuts for the cattle this week, its a god job the loader man underestimated what he'd put on me when you look at the figures on the weighbridge ticket or Mr Vosa may have been rather unhappy if I'd been pulled over I had this little fellow swoop on me while I was dropping the beet drill off in our old brick barn this week, certaily made me duck in a hurry when he flew across the barn at head height!!

Here's a few more updated pictures for you all, I'll get some of the outside now this week as the exterior is just about finished. Chiller units in place in the roof now, I had to lift the last two up for them using a hired in 14m JCB.....shame the controls aren't standard across their range as it came close to me tipping one of them off instead of pushing the boom out!! Shutter doors now fitted, also insulated against the cold Middle partition wall all sheeted in and finished now Venting shutter control motors and mechanism fitted, the electricians are still in at the minute wiring everything up

Thanks Have to say I always enloyed doing the spreaders, something nice and simple to break the monotony of the more complicated builds at times.........almost tempted to revisit the workbench

They were indeed....me ;D They were one of my best selling conversions along with the Richard Western version when I was selling/building/converting models full time

I have the day off work today to keep an eye on Buster after he had an operation on his neck yesterday to remove infected tissue. Poor little fella is in a bit of discomfort and has a large swelling under his chin today which hopefully will go down once things start returning to normal there after the surgery

The Daily Mail twisting things to suit their own agenda.......how could you say such a thing Mike :ha ha!:

This.......I mean honestly Whats your take on this Mike? http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2170338/Driver-fined-60--admiring-pretty-girl-Police-insist-motorists-distracted-gorgeous-people.html

Nope no new ones compared to way back in this topic. I only done it for the one morning just to refresh my mates memory of how it all works as he's going to be doing the bulk of it this year thankfully

We started irrigating last Monday and stopped again yesterday morning, since then we've had 25mm of rain so we'll be looking at next Wednesday/Thursday before we start again now unless we have anymore rain in the meantime.

Yeah it is Chris, especially when you've been told to check them daily due to weeping oil seals anyway

I have no objection of students who listen to and do as they are asked by people in charge of them. What however does annoy me about students, and this particularly applies to ag students, is that many of them think that because they have done a days ploughing here or an hours drilling there they are experienced in it and won't accept the fact that they are not and have only just played at it. I've come across some real arrogant know it all little sods with a massive ego and chip on their shoulder who think they know the lot and are unprepared to listen when people try to offer them advice and instead will just rant and rave about how unfair things are for them because they think older farm workers are picking on them, these are usually the same ones who have a list of employers as long as your arm by the age of 25. Sadly its this sort that give the good, honest keen to learn students (of which I am aware that there are a good number of) a bad name and make things harder for them in the long run.

Not sure where he abouts he was from Sean but I know he covers a large area with it. Not been much going on lately at work but I have a few pictures here. I went into our oil store the other day to be greeted by the sight below, my boss is good at putting batteries on charge and forgetting about them, this is the result......just glad that no one was in there at the time My mate is back working with us now for harvest and the autumn, he went to use the topper yesterday and called me to say it was shaking the tractor, upon further inspection the bearings had an escessive amount of play in them and were on the verge of complete failure. Luckily we've caught them before that happened or it may have been a complete new gearbox needed instead of just bearings and seals. I think the final starw on the bearings was last years student running the boxes dry of oil for two days due to being to idle to check them.........