Gav836

Its a Centenery event on the farm, will know more details for those interested over the course of the couple of months or so.

good advice. we use a long spear. grain that has been dried then put into a floor stoor needs close attention, as does grain thats between 15-18% moisture. grain temperatures can change dramatically over just a few feet, especialy when pushed up with a dozer. we often find that it is sometimes a couple of months after harvest until we reach our target temperatures. cold, dry autumn nights are the key, to keep fans on flat out.

It does indeed, we actually have a Grain Butler stirring auger that we use in the grainstore just to keep it moving and alow the air to flow through the grain better, the harvest student usually gets the pleasure of monitoring its progress. Since having it we have no longer had any more "cliff face" effects in the grain store where grain has been put in damp and then dried on the floor

Trip is now postponed, I have had an email off the manager at Coldham today to say that they will be too busy at the end of March to commit to accomodating a visit however they are holding an event on the farm in June that he will be keeping me updated about.

Neither of those would do the job accurately Martin, you need a much longer spear to do the job as the temperature will increase as you get deeper into the heap. We sample at 50cm, 100cm and 200cm deep in our bulk store to check both storage moisture and temperature. The only way that you may gat away with those instruments is to use a spear to bring a sample up to check with them which wouldn't be as accurate in my opinion as the grain would be cooling very quickly as it came out of the heap.

That's probably spot on Paul,because this picture in the Amazone leaflet shows 36m

Whereas the Manual say's 14 to 40m

Regards

Joe.

The manual would probably say 14 - 40m as there are a range of boom options available for any make or model of sprayer, may not necessarily be whats shown in brochure pictures. In the case of our sprayer at work it has a 12/24m boom fitted so is 12m wide with the two end sections folded in or 24m with them folded out.

Had a relaxing morning and now cooking lunch before going out to introduce the pigeons to Mr Webley and Scott this afternoon

Are you going to be taking any pictures and a notepad for sales prices per chance Gav

Nope definately not, just noted a few bits of interest for me and what our own items made (or didn't make ), I went more to catch up with some people who I knew would be there who I haven't seen for a long while.

Been mucking out the store cattle today with my colleague, he does the forklift side and I do the carting so we can get it done quicker. We also had to fertility test the two bulls and that makes our eyes water every year when the vet does it Got a day off tomorrow to go to a clearance auction at our local MF/Fendt dealership where we've also entered some machinery, just hope it sells as I don't fancy dragging it back again!

I've just spent 10 mins carefully taking my 8830 out of its packaging. The little screws were done up so tight that they just rounded off even though I've got a decent set of small screwdrivers. Had to resort to small molegrips and then side cutters to finally undo them Its a wonder nothing broke off the model while this was going on - and to top it off there's a couple of hard to remove ties round the front axle. Really pleased with the model though - apart from some excess glue at the base of the exhaust

Whilst I don't want to run it in I am in gran canaria and the temperature is a balmy 25 degrees see you all next week

This post was brought to you by fat-fingers.com ;D

Are you there on apprenticeship terms or as a normal employee as there are loopholes relating to students/work placements/apprenticeships meaning they can be paid under the minimum wage as unfair as it is, if thats not the case then get out and speak to the relevant authorities about it. One more tip, don't make posts on facebook or similar slating employers, things have ways of getting back to them.

I had to go and pick up some compost for our biobed project on Friday so I thought I'd get a few pictures for you lot from around the yard while I was there. They also do wood chip and bark supplies alongside the compost on an old runway, quite a large site once you get on there.

The grading line/screen

"Little" Volvo shovel loading me with compost

What do you refer to as the annual minimum Jordan? Minimum wage or AWB rates?

I've no idea on the pricing with Walkers Ricky, I do know that the McCains Contract potatoes were worth just over twice as much as the free market ones we supplied them with though

Don't take this the wrong way but I'm going to be honest with you here Jordan, at your age I think to say you have plenty of experience in arable is an exaggeration, yes you have worked on arable units but I'm guessing that you have done the odd day here and there on the main tasks like ploughing and not done that day in day out. If I were to recieve a letter/cv from someone your age saying that I would think that you were being cocky and padding things out a little. It would be better to say that you have experience of working on large arable farms where you have tried your hand at most tasks (insert tasks here) but wish to find a position where you can gain more experience and improve your knowledge of the various operations that are carried out throughout the farming year, you stand more chance by being honest as the farming world is a small community at the end of the day and lies and boasts will soon come back to haunt you.

Thats exactly how we do it Bill, will get a pint for those pigeons, done the same with a brace of teal a fortnight ago and my excess vegetables all last summer.

Had a relaxing morning before going roost shooting pigeons this afternoon, only got three but had good sport in the process. Just about to have something to eat before going up the pub for the night, they will also be having the pigeons off me to put on their menu

Are you in need of a second copy of all those pictures I have Sean

Looking good so far, personal thoughts are that the tank looks like it might be a bit on the large side for a Cheetah though

2000 ton bulk store Niels in 2 x 1000 ton bays, no boxes. Its not a case of we must be making money to erect our own store its a case that its costing us money in downtime and haulage with our current system and Walkers are getting more and more into the carbon footprint involved with their crops so with ours being stored 30 miles away we could see our contract with them being lost. As an example of costs, in 2011 it cost us more than £6500 in transport costs to get the potatoes to store add to that the amount of hours lost due to a lack of available bulkers or changing bulkers over at the grader then the new store should pay for itself within a few years. It wasn't unusual to lose 3 hours or more a day with our current system due to these hold ups, during that time I was usually sitting in the field twiddling my thumbs, its not good sense to have the harvester sitting still when the conditions are good.

Not at all but if you speak to any operator of tracked diggers they will all tell you that the bigger they are the easier they are to operate. It'd been over 10 years since I'd last used a digger before yesterday but within 10 minutes it had all come back to me with digging the hole then scraping the spoil off the grass without pulling that up too.

The groundworks contractors have also moved in this week to start doing the base for our new potato store. The store itself measures approx 30m x 30m and will hold 2000 tons. At present we are only able to store half of our crop on farm, the rest has to go to a store over 30 miles away and the rising cost of transport along with hold ups caused by waiting for bulkers and the increased bruising risks have meant we've gone down the route of having our own purpose designed store built on farm. The building will be temperature controlled by 6 large fans so should give us the ability to store other varieties than those that we grow now.

Yesterday morning these 3 machines turned up, 2 Terex 9 ton dumpers, one of which is new and a nearly new JCB JS130 digger which I was hoping to have a play on but the contractor turned up to soon. I'd rather use a machine that size than the small Case in my previous post, they are much more controlable.

I'll try to keep this topic updated as the build progresses

We've been doing some groundworks in the yard this week at work, we've recieved a grant for the construction of a bio-bed to deal with surface water/residue coming from the concrete pad where we fill the sprayer up. Not much to see with regards to this, just a couple of holes dug, one lined with sand, geo textile and pondliner and the other with a large container sunk into it to act as a sump at the moment.

These are the two machines getting the most use in the project other than our teleporter, the Case digger has now gone back as I finished with it last night after we'd dug the holes and trenches out, the 135 and mixer is doing all of the concrete mixing for the job.

I really need to be getting a bigger cabinet with all that lot being released.............

Good trucks Chris, just a shame the ground clearance isn't better on them.......and the wheelbase isn't a bit longer than the exact distance tramline tracks are apart when crossing them.......not recommended, had to be extracted by the farmer ;D

Just remember what you told me a while back, the Subaru was good fun but was no where near as economical as the BMW you replaced it with ;D