Gav836

A phonecall from Mum to tell me that my aunt who's been in hospital for the past 6 weeks after being diagnosed with cancer has been sent home today and told to make the most of the time she has left as there's nothing they can do for her due to the location of the tumour, the doctors have estimated that she has about 4 weeks. Just to make the situation worse for our family its 14 years ago this Friday since my Dad died of cancer, this is his sister, his other sister also died of cancer a couple of years after my Dad so this time its really hitting our family hard, particulary my uncle, Dad's brother.

Maize is the least of our worries or any of our neighbours at the moment as two of them and ourselves still have potatoes to get in. One of our other neighbours drilled some maize on Wednesday but that was straight into stubble as he uses a strip tilling machine

Due to the lovely weather (again) I've spent the best part of the day fitting a new set of track rod bushes, seals and pins to our JCB Loadall as when they fitted a new set of tyres to it 2 weeks ago they noticed that there was a large amount of play in them. probably 2mm of wear in the bush and pin but that turned into about 30-40mm of free play in the steering.

Been a while since I updated in here, we haven't done alot since before easter now due to the wet ground conditions. Luckily we only have around 27 acres of potatoes to plant unlike one of our neighbours who still have between 500 and 600 acres remaining. Other than a bit of liquid and solid fertiliser application nothing has been done out of the yard.

I was tidying up one of the barns today but had to shunt one of our AS Marston 14t trailers over to get the other one in beside it, however all the main four tractors had something hooked onto them, rather than take something off I decided to use the only other available tractor......don't think it'd handle it loaded or tip it though :D

The largest spanner in my toolbox..............

................is usually my boss when he goes rooting through it looking to borrow something without asking :ha ha!:

A small 46mm x 50mm Britool spanner, brand new @ only £5.70 as mentioned elsewhere on here

Winning a brand new Britool 46mm x 50mm spanner on ebay for the grand sum of £5.70......price in the shops is £70+ so even with the postage I've saved at least £55

Were these farmers MB-trac users before the fastracs came along Gav?

They were all John Deere before I believe, the last one only went in the previous couple of years. Another local farm was an MB Trac farm befor they went JCB, they buy for the dealer not the product though usually.

The problem with JCB Fastrac's is that, they are sh#t. . They struggle to stay alive on polite little East Anglia farms, let alone rough ol Irish contractors!

Best stay honest and hit the nail on it's head shall we!

I can't agree with you there, the early ones weren't the best but for the last 5 years or so they have been a lot better, our neighbour who has somewhere around 1000 acres of potatoes doesn't have a conventional tractor on the farm anymore. He runs a fleet of at least 7 Fastracs, possibly more as I've only ever seen 7 of them in one field at once when potato planting. The steering lock is a lot better on the later ones as are the gearboxes and from what the blokes say they are no more unreliable than any other tractor these days. If the steering lock was still as bad as people make out he certainly wouldn't be able to use them for potato harvesting or destoning with standard size field headlands. These tractors are doing 24 hour shifts at some times of the year and stand up to it well.

on the gandmfarmmodels website a Ford 5000 Ernest Doe demonstrator tractor in 1:16 is shown.. anyone know anymore about this?

I had details of it this morning, expected in 6-8 weeks time and limited edition of 999 pieces.

just about to leave my place,off into plymouth to meet my mates, then up to north london to watch spurs who are playing norwich,will be back home hopefully around 11.00pm

......only to see them get beaten by the boys from Norfolk :D :D

I would have thought T Cut if its bad followed by a good colour polish.

I'm going back to the late 80's/early 90's when they made a Deutz Fahr trailed one, not the Kemper front mounted one

About time we got a trailed harvester. Has there ever been one from any other model maker sence the Britains one with the maize header?

Hmmmmm 1st of April and 1 hour remaining to do it...........coincidence?

More destoning after sorting out last nights little problem with the machine where it ingested an old plough share which jammed the 4th web and top web together bending a bar on each in the process Started on our last field today as well so getting there now

I usually drive it with the top half of the door open but the bottom half just doesn't make sense. The straightening effort hasn't helped either as it now doesn't shut right and is bending the latch again. It's the second bottom glass he's done in it, I'd like to see how it goes down on the insurance claim

Hearing how my boss managed to break the glass in the bottom section of our JCB's door.....he had it open and caught it on a staunchion in the cow shed bending the hinges in the process. He then proceeded to try to straighten the hinges out by hitting them with a sledge hammer only he missed the hinge and hit the glass instead..... :D

A picture taken in the stoniest part of the field

A couple my colleague took of me destoning today

Heres a few planting pictures from today and yesterday

Do you not plough then Gav? I've seen a few people do it without ploughing i.e. just heavy cultivate with a chisel plough/subsoiler or similar, the last farm I worked on grew about 100-120 acres each year, both salad type straight into boxes and set skins over the grader for crisps/chips etc, our routine was -

1, spread field with manure if field needed it and if FYM was available

2, subsoil with a McConnell shakerator (buried nearly to top of the legs)

3, plough 'n' press at right angles to the way it was subsoiled

4, fertiliser applied then power harrowed / rotaspiked

5, ridged up and depending on quality of seedbed possibly bedformed/rotospiked

6, destoned and planted, we used to put on that horrible pink powder stuff when filling the planter

It's interesting to see how other people do things, I guess lot of it is down to soil type and farming policy used, keep up the good work I really like following your topic

As far as we and several other growers are concerned ploughing for potatoes is a waste of time these days as its more of a recreational activity if you are subsoiling it to 16 inches anyway, you get just as much soil by ridging straight behind the subsoiler. Another plus for not ploughing is the fact that you don't create clods then have to beat the ground into submission with a power harrow or bed tiller to get rid of them saving a lot of diesel and man hours.

Yeah, planter on the back and a bed tiller on the front fitted with a granular pesticide applicator. It mixes it in as its applied for the control of soil borne nematodes

A couple of pictures of planting from 2 years ago for you Barry, outfit is still the same but we have rowcrop wheels on this year. I'll get some more pictures at some point.

Barry if you're going to try and be clever and badger me for photo's take a look in the last two pages and you will find the ones of the fertilser being applied with a sprayer :ha ha!:

Will get pictures of everything else as and when I can

We run a Grimme planter at the moment but its had a lot of work in its life. There won't be anything else new bought until April 2013 now, the destoner isn't actually a purchase its on a lease/hire agreement for three years after which time we can either buy it or upgrade it for another new one.