bluegreen

Its similar but the tractor had a Pecks dealer sticker on it, also I think the trailer was all red and the unfilling arm was at the rear.

Saw one JD Combine on my drive home but by next week the same drive should see loads of activity...….Rape looks ready in places as is the barley. And I will be getting my camera ready for tomorrows drive home as I passed a triple axle Annaburg trailer or similar on the back of a 2018 CASE Magnum Rowtrac 380 trundling along a fen road. I didn't have time to follow her unfortunately but I will be back...…………...I now know where 5 or 6 Rowtrac 380s are and just as many T8 blue versions, these half track tractors have really started to catch on!!

Hey Smithy has Goodie heard when the new Case Pumas are getting launched yet? Must be coming soon.

Lots of different tractors of all ages have been whizzing around my village getting hay cut, teddered, raked and baled in various little fields. How much is a good quality round bale fetching this year Smithy??

I suspect wheat could go up a fair way in price this year what with the apocalyptic weather in Europe and the unimaginable flooding over millions of acres in the USA mid west!! You might have Goodie chasing you to upgrade one of those red tractors

Your wheat crops looking well Smithy, fields round me in the Fens looking very good presently except a few flattened spring barleys. All in stark contrast to last year I must say.

Nice machines there Paul, I would give NH the nod for best looking tractor line up throughout all the ranges (Valtra T best looking tractor) and the T handler looks cool in its new livery too

Im putting the Britains T7315 wheels on my second Marge T7315...………….As I have yet to see any T7HD or Optums on the 900 wide tyres Marge sells the model with!!

Maize planting has just finished around here and the biggest maize company Pretoria energy has its 5 tractor fleet of New Holland T7.315hd concentrating on tanker work with Garrant tri axles and spraying with large Horsch 6000 litre trailed units. They also have added at least two new T7.210s to their growing fleet as well...……...impressive set up as they appear to be utilizing 300hp T7hds for various different works previously carried out by 200hp JCBs on a smaller scale.

Sorry to see your rape crop looking so sick Smithy, good luck with the spring barley replacement...………………………………..had you not considered getting one of the maize boys in?

I can see a lot of farmers giving up on Rapeseed after this poor season...………………………………..I drove by Eubrink Farms fields near Kings Lynn a couple of times last week and where there was a block of a good 1,000 acres of Rape now its all been worked down!! And the few fields of Rape I found on the other side of their 7000acre estate were barely passable. I also noticed a brand new very large Vaddy Tempo maize drill parked in their yard which suggests they really have had enough of rape, especially as the crop failed almost as bad back in 2014. I went for a walk round the back of my village on Sunday and was shocked to see a couple of rape fields of 50acre+ in total had also been ploughed up...……………...both of these looked decent to me back before xmas and had both gotten away well but something awful must have occurred in the winter. Probably both be into maize I suspect.

Hows your rapeseed coming along Smithy? Round these parts its ranging from ropey to catastrophic!! Ive never seen so many ploughed up fields due to failed rape in all my life

Actually it underlines just how good looking Valtras are because New Holland cant get away with crazy colour schemes and looks awful in those colours, stick to blue please NH

Ask it where its bigger brothers have gotten to, there way overdue!

The final two pics of the Massey archive and the also the last pics of Vesty MFs were the first ones taken with a digital camera that are stored on my computer, so that's why they are so much better quality than the others.

In 2002, 2003 and 2005 Vestys switched brands too CASE having Maxxums and Magnums but the estate managers complained about the poor service of DOE Power when compared too Weatherheads! So in 2006 the accountants got overruled and once more Massey got the business. This time it was 7x 8480s, and a dozen 6485, 6490 and 6495s. These 6400s were Tier2 versions and the first sold in the UK too feature the new "shark gill" bonnet styling which imo are the best MF bonnets ever! I must admit I was surprised at the time as I expected that Weatherheads would probably sell the old tier 1 6400s as they would have been cheaper. MF got the deal again in 2008, then got half the deal in 2011 with 6400s only as CASE Magnum 335s were preferred for the heavy work. 2012 saw a major reconstruction as the estate went over to a controlled traffic set up seeing 3 x CASE Quadtrac 550s, 3 x JD 8345RTs...………….and they kept the 3 big Magnums too pull 30 ton chaser bins behind 3 new Lexion 770s over 12,000 acres!! Three MF6499s from 2011 stayed until a couple of years ago, think they may have bought a 7726 Massey just before Weatherheads lost the MF franchise.

Im not too knowledgeable on Wisbech farms, although I understand that Waldersley farms which farm around my village also extend thousands of acres all the way to Friday Bridge near Wisbech. Yes Fendt are more compact than JD in all classes except 1050 which is 100hp more powerful than Deeres 8400R so they really have outmanoeuvred JD. And of course we live in Fenland where front linkages are very popular and not an add on feature like in some other parts of the country, so if you buy a Fendt with front links as standard down here your not paying for a feature that wont get used. I do like to see the old guard of NH, MF, JD and CASE doing well but its good to see JCB, Valtra ,Claas and Fendt shaking things up a bit.

Thanks for looking in Phill, Im not to down on Fendts I just don't like it when everyone thinks they have to have one, which makes it boring when when theres too many of one make! But to be fair, because Fendt have done so well for TNS it has allowed them to offer a very high quality back up service to all of their franchises which has actually seen MF increase their sales locally and also we are beginning to see quite a few Valtras showing up as well...…………….which is especially good news as these are replacing Fendts on some farms Where do you farm now Phill ?

The final 8200 picture from Vestys was this 8220 drilling wheat on a cloudless blue sky day

More ploughing primary cultivations pics from Vestys, 8270s and 8260.

I think I was a bit hasty about Valtras current blue colour scheme, I have to say that when you see a fleet of blue ones they look very nice indeed

According to John Brownes Ltd, the fleet consists of 13 Valtra T174 and seven T254 models. Some are ‘Active’-spec tractors; others are ‘Versu’ models. Three even have Valtra’s TwinTrac reverse-drive system fitted.

I can remember Mark Weatherheads claiming they were the UKs biggest sellers of 8200 tractors after the latest fleet deal to Vestys in 2000, mind you when they lost the next fleet deal to DOE Power CASE in 2002 they probably only sold a couple across their entire region! Chris at work in his new toy 8270 and one of the Vesty Thurlow estates 8260s on the 7 furrow Dowdeswell.

Its covered in straw Brian, he must have gotten too close to the combines straw chopper and the radiator sucked in all the chaff. After the combining was done Vestys always sent out fertilizer spreaders working in pairs on rape stubbles and just ahead of the primary cultivators. This new 8220 was one of 8 on the three farms and I must say I do prefer the rear wheel design on this model over the closed centre bar axle version that UH have decided to put on the new model 8220. Nothing wrong with UHs accuracy in the wheel design, just my personal taste on a 160hp tractor of the era And another wheel centre option is featured on a spraying pic from cereals 2000 of a quite rare 145hp 8210.

And one of my favourite ever pictures of a new 6290 with new straw coloured radiator grills