Gav836

Ros Grimme GT170, surprised by how heavy it is

Here are a few pictures from today, had an early day today as the haulier ran out of bulkers to send us unfortunately, as it was we sent about 120t of spuds away into store today for Walkers

Its a water tank Ol, there's a spray bar above the roller table at the rear of the machine to dampen the rollers therefore making the soil stick to them and giving an extra cushioning layer for the potatoes to land on. May well be needing it at the moment as well with how dry it is and the fact that its too windy to try and put any water on the field before harvesting

I've spent the last 10 days getting the potato harvester ready, some of the major repairs were carried out single handed this year which was not easy given the weight of some of the parts involved. By the time our usual dealer had sent someone out to assist (our usual engineer has been nursing an injury hence the in house rebuild this year) I'd already done the heaviest tasks. Here's a couple of pictures of what I found when I removed the hydraulic motor that drives the XS cleaner unit on the harvester, no wonder I had a vibration problem with it towards the end of last year Second and third pictures show the new gear with the old one as a comparison And the Case with the topper and the harvester ready for the off once the Case engineers have been and sorted the hydraulics out in the morning, I can't use the front linkage with the harvester hydraulics plugged in for some reason so the need to have a look at the flow control on the tractor. I was expecting some teething problems when I got into th efield today so it came as no surprise, there is however a bumper crop of potatoes this year, never seen so many going up the machine. Will get some more pictures once we get going

We finished our wheat nearly 3 weeks ago now and the bulk of the spring barley around the same time. The boss cut the las 12m of headland around a 14acre field that had been too green when the rest was done Thursday evening so we're all done and dusted now. The student is currently in the process of moving our oilseed rape from the spud store into the grain store a mile away as we plan on storing it for a while this year as there's a world shortage apparently so we're hoping the price escalates

As much shock as sadness, the workshop manager at the branch of our local JD dealer we use the most has passed away after a short battle with cancer at the age of 45, hard to believe as two months ago he looked fit and well

Its increased my productivity thats for certain, today for example I went to work at 10am and by the time I finished at 4pm I'd ploughed 8ha, not bad with a 5f plough set at 16" furrows and dragging a press, including headlands as well. Even my boss has commented on how much quicker I'm getting things done as the Case has the power and weight to handle the plough and subsoiler better and uses up to 4ltrs/ha less on the plough than the JD in doing so which adds up over the course of the year.

Thanks for the comments guys The tractors going well thanks Mark other than a small oil leak due to someone fitting two o-rings instead of one to a valve block bung there's been no problems The Case has plenty of pulling torque Tris, its been playing with the 5 leg subsoiler that my old one struggled with at times. There's no boost for draft work, that only comes in on transport and pto. I really do like it now I'm getting the hang of it, its so much quiter and more comfortable than the JD, a much nicer place to spend the day. We find that ploughing gives us good germination results so don't want to mess with what works really Niels. We do have a min till option of sorts available but that would cost just as much as ploughing and drilling as it involves a TerraDisc pass, subsoiler pass and then the Vaderstad so uses just as much if not more fuel and more labour.

A new laptop, been getting a lot of error messages and page freezes lately on the existing one if it even starts up at all so thought the time was right for an upgrade

6910 and Vaderstad

Here's a few updates from the past weekend from when we were ploughing and drilling for OSR

We seem to always get the ones that need constant baby sitting, that lack common sense and forget everything that you tell them within the first 10 minutes after doing so........hence how we had over a ton of malting barley trailed down the road after he forgot to check the tailboard twist locks after going down the track despite being told to I have a feeling of dread over potato harvest at the moment as he is unable to drive straight beside a combine so god knows what he will do beside my spud harvester, he's under the threat of having the biggest spanner in my toolbox wrapped around his skull if he damages it ;D

I did but two of the three red ones were old ones which I knew were ok, it was the new one bundled with them that done it

Wrapping around the neck of annoying students............

Opening my washing machine to find the white t-shirts that went in it are now pink thanks to the red one that had got mixed up with them

Given where you say those two Lexions are working and that they replaced New Hollands and also there being a Quadtrac in the field it wouldn't surprise me if they didn't belong to Velcourts at Royston We finished combining at lunchtime today, other than 14 acres of green spring barley that needs a dose of liquid sunshine out of a can everything is now done. All the straw that we were baling for our own use is also wrapped up and the baler is now blown down and put away for the year.

The sight of one of our students this morning after doing the irrigation, not only did two pipes blow apart as he was walking past them but after he repaired them and went to turn the line back on the pipe blew out of the take off tap just as the pressure built up and soaked him from head to toe, he came in the yard dripping ;D ;D

Mine does have the mounting bar in it Sean, its one thing I insisted on as it looks much neater than something I could knock up in the workshop given the angles of the cab pillar mounting holes

Definately me, I spent the days swapping between baler and combine as the boss had to go do other things some of the time. No one else knows how to use the baler at present either

We did think that we may go here this afternoon on the spring barley but it was 21% at 1pm and still 21% at 4pm despite there being a good wind and sunshine, I thought that he was being hopefull after it rained yesterday morning

After the rain we cleared one of the fields of bales ready to plough for forage rape, we normally wouldn't plough for this but there is a herbicide residue on the field that would have wiped the seedlings out had we min tilled it. All was going well until I turned into the last furrow on the field and heard a very loud hiss from the front of the tractor...... The offending flint Tyre now has a gator over the slash and a tube in it, once we have the row crops on we will be sending it away for a manufacturers repair

Combining rape, the white film on the combine is some sort of mildew off the rape stalks which seems to have been prolific in this area this year

Time for a few updates, I've taken a few pictures from harvest so far and also got one of our students to take a few for me while I've been on the combine or baler (one of the few harvest tasks he can do without raising my blood pressure \ ). All of our winter barley has been in the store for two weeks and I put all the rape in the barn last weekend after pulling a 10.30pm and 11.30pm finish last Saturday and Sunday which surprised the boss, 40 acres in 11hrs with our combine isn't bad going especially without a rape extension hence why the stubble is so tall. We started the wheat on Monday as the spring barley wasn't ready and had got the best part of 100 acres in the barn by wednesday afternoon when it rained despite the combine trying to eat one of its own cross shaker tines Monday evening and a field fire on Tuesday evening. Heres a few from cutting and baling a 66 acre field of wheat, well was 61 acres after Tuesday's incident

Found this on ebay, I know they don't come up very often in this condition so come on Marky, dig deep, imagine how good it would look on the back of Mavis or Penny ;D http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Massey-Ferguson-potato-harvester-/120756465760?pt=UK_BOI_FarmingEquipment_RL&hash=item1c1da57060