Gav836

Here's a few pictures of our grading and store filling operation. The grader is sporting a new shelter on it that was built mostly by myself after the original tarpaulin split and was uneconomic to repair. Yields are down this year Sean, size isn't as good either, lots of little ones this year

Well we started potato harvesting on Saturday (why wait until a Monday in my bosses opinion!!)and got rained off on Sunday, we've now had 29mm of rain so I planned on having a days holiday today. All sounded good until I got a phone call last night saying "I think it will go tomorrow, can you come and try it" well I've tried it and after nearly getting stuck with the harvester (with 4wd, diff lock and harvester wheel drive running at the limit) we decided it had better be left!! Pictures from this morning

Only from a collectors point of view, some Wiking tractors will have been bought as toys though so it just adds to the play factor of them if other companies implements will fit. I'd hate to be a model manufacturer as you're damned if you do and you're damned if you don't, people complain that their hitches aren't compatible with other companies then when they come up with a solution, all be it not perfect for collectors, then they still are in the wrong

As good as it always is, not a signal of quieter times for us, just a brief break between harvests here. The white tent is the canopy on the potato grader Yes one of the farms is ours, the other is a neighbouring grower. Its a system that works well on our land and we get less slug problems from ploughing than we would do with min till, its still quite a common practice to do it that way around here.

We are now creep feeding this years calves as well ready for weaning and the cows are having straw ad-lib as well. We had a local engineering firm buils us a creep feed gate to fit in the barn doorway last year so we could use the feed bins in there instead of having to buy more mobile units

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