powerrabbit

Very hot down in Devon today. Temperature at 2.00pm was 23.9C

Mark. Have you got a copy of the grey and red hard cover book titled 'Ferguson. The Story Continues'. It's A4 format and is 'an illustrated history'. Author is Max Smith. Produced for Massey Ferguson in 1996 and limited to 100 proof copies.

All my stuff is litterally all over the house on practically every available level surface. My Brothers Daughter is now 8 and 1/2 years old but ever since she was 4 has showed a great interest in it all but surprisingly has never attempted to even touch them and just looks at them. I think this is because that I told her that they were 'very special' and not really for playing with. She loves playing with some of my Britains animals but even then treats them with great respect.

Looks by your bookshelf Marky that you're not content to read a book twice, you have to have two copies of each! This is my latest aquasition. A very rare item showing the different positions for each of the hydraulic functions and explaining how to use them. Originally it was included with the 16 page Selectamatic range of tractors of which I have already got so this completes the set. Front. Rear.

It says in on the Amazon page that it is released on April 11th, that's next week so no-one will have a copy as yet I suspect. Over the years, and especially in more recent years there have been literally dozens of books published about the T20 series tractors but surprisingly few on the actual mechanical side concerning service and repair of which the author has obviously picked up on. I am glad that the title of this manual includes the word 'basic', a word that has been missing from the other titles that they have produced over the years for the motor vehicles they have covered as they are just that, basic. I expect it will sell in its thousands.

Sadly, as with the case of Countryfile, a lot of these type of programmes are only 'play' farming and bears no relation to the business side of things and orientated more towards the tourist industry and the people who like to 'dream' the country life but find out the hard way if they do get involved that the 'lifestyle' is not all roses around the door and as idyllic as the 'experts' would have them believe.

Yes, watching Kate Humble get down and dirty!

Sean. On the page there is no 'new topic' box either so am still no wiser.

I have just received an example of the new UH David Brown 990 Implematic andf would like to post up a review but looking at the 'rate and review' page there is nothing there to enable me to add it, no 'reply' facility. So what do I do?

I think it's to do with the ageing process. we all fade a bit with age. I know that where the decals are applied, paper ones in this instance, when they fall off over time when the glue degenerates, you will see that where they are or have been stuck, underneath will still retain the original colour and the area around the decals tends to 'yellow' a little. I won't say it will work in every case but a light application and rub with a soft damp cloth with a little kitcken/bathroom cream cleaner like Cif/Ajax will sometimes bring it back and a weak solution of T-cut applied in the same way also works on occasion. Myself, I would leave it as is.

There are a few ways to look at this subject. If you look at it from a financial asset or true value aspect then yes, the box is most important as it is, if in good to mint condition, 2/3rds the total value. Models that are rare will still be worth a premium without the box but with older obsolete models the collector should buy what he or she can afford at the time. As for more modern models presented in 'dealer' boxes, the ones from 3 or 4 years ago when dealer boxes started to come in will in the future be more desirable as they were only produced in limited numbers but now nearly all models are packaged in dealer boxes for the first production run and in greater numbers. Limited edition models should have their boxes kept as the box authenticates the model by having this fact printed on them, if the box has 'limited edition', 'anniversary' or some other specially printed wording or graphics then these will be more value in the future. Look out for 'mistakes' from the factories as well, wrong model number on the box, colour variations on boxes and models, you all know what I mean. This is where value lies.

Now that the weather is nice I'm out in my veg garden cracking on and clearing it off. Out there now to run the Merry Tiller rotovator over it.

Good job cows can't fly David! You'll have fun in wording your claim form to claim for the cleaning on the insurance, I would say that it was a crow.

Done the sweep out of a job this year then!

Hope you cooked her on gas Mandy, electricity would probably not have done it!

Put a leather 'bridle' halter on him with metal spikes protruding outward around the noseband, like the ones you get to stop a yearling from sucking the cow, the spikes conduct the electric shock better, worked on a persistant cow I had with this problem. Once had a cow, fat as a barrel, that would stand all day and graze with the fencer wire over the middle of her back and you could hear the wire 'snicking' against her skin. She came in the parlour as normal one milking, ate her cake, gave her normal amount of milk, opened the door to let her out of the parlour, she got ouside and dropped down dead, had to drag her out of the way with tractor and chain. Vet examined her and said that all her blood vessels had literally 'exploded' just as if she had been struck by lightning but it was a hot sunny summers day. I mentioned her grazing method and he said that although it would be difficult to link it could have had a bearing on her death, almost as if she stored up so much electricity in her body that it eventually may have killed her. Her death certificate recorded struck by lightning for the insurance purpose.

Taking some garden rubbish out to the field with a rough patch at the bottom of it where I burn rubbish I discovered that my neighbour had started cutting off my boundary hedge, had planted on the top a large number of 'whips' and dropped three very large mature Sycamore trees. I rang the neighbour to find out what she was doing and told her that she should have asked my permission to carry this work out. She's doing this under a grant scheme from Defra and thought the hedge was her boundary and by all accounts, so did DEFRA. Not so. A word of warning for all landowners who may experience this. Look at your large scale Ordinance Survey land maps and your RPA, ESA MAPS and you should see 'T' bars on your boundary hedges. Whichever side of the boundary these 'T's are on, denotes who owns the boundary, if they are on your land side it is yours, if on the other side, it's not. If your neighbour intends to do boundary work, they should gain the permission from the owner and be furnished with written document of permission if you agree to the work with instructions of what you do not wish them to do, such as fell trees, and if both sides of the hedge is affected in digging out the foot and loading they are obliged to erect a stockproof fence to protect it on your side as well. It seems that DEFRA are unaware of the boundary marks on land maps and don't even consider who the boundary belongs to or even bother to contact the landowners to find out which is a big flaw in their system which is what causes the aggravation on these matters between adjacent landowners. So if you do experience this, make sure you stop them doing any work until they have your permission/agreement and ring DEFRA and tell them as well to make it official.

Early this morning two chaps and a box van turned up to do my cavity wall insulation in the house. Just been out painting over the cement filled holes they drilled to pump it in. Will be interesting to see if it makes any difference.

I ran a milking herd for many years and being only a small herd of 44 at the end and being on land at a higher altitude where dairying is harder I used to calve all year round as this sustained the level of milk production and kept the quality of the milk fairly constant all year round as newly calved cows have a higher butterfat content than the milk from a staler cow or a cow that has been in milk for a long period of time before calving again. Milk level did drop a little through the late autumn to end of winter period because cows will always milk better on grass than they will on silage and winter rations plus the fact that the milk quota always had to be considered because if over a 3 to 5 year 'history' period you were under producing your allocated quota you would run the risk of loosing part of it and would never be able to recover it, I could never actually fill my quota and the only way to use it was to lease the shortfall out to another producer which would also bring in a 'top-up' income on the milk, there was a time leased milk was 20p per litre. Another advantage of all year round calving was that those cows I calved from a Freisian bull, hoping they were hiefer calves, would be kept as replacements for the future and were a constant on-going supply, doe's not always work as practically at that as you will get gaps but that's the principal. These were what I considered my best cows. The younger and 'lesser' cows were put to a Continental bull such as Limosan and these calves at 3 weeks old would be taken to market and sold to either dealers or farmers for rearing on for beef in the case of the bull calves or for future sucklers. I always got the top market price in the market for my calves as they were quality and the farmers and dealers would fight over them, the farmers would ring me up on a regular basis wanting my calves as they knew I always invariably had a few. Never to this day have had any problems with TB although overrun with badgers as the local population of badgers have been monitored and found to be clean so fortunate there. I am out of milk now but winter produced milk was always paid more for than spring/summer milk.

Yes, I should have included in my last post that the 'key' words will also mean that your listing will appear under catagories that use the key words in the 'titles and descriptions'. Saves adding catagories and listing fees but does the same.

If you list it under 'Agricultural/Farming' it will reach the widest audience. The more 'key' words that you include in your description the wider sub-catagories it will appear in especially if you put such words in as 'John Deere', 'tractor', 'collectable', 'anniversary' and such, anyone looking for specific items with words like this in the description will see it. A lot of eligible things are free to list up until the end of today.

They also make up for it in the prices they can command at auction as well. I have an example of the David Brown 25D made in 1957, here's a picture of it, sorry for the poor quality.

This is my latest general purchase although I think that there should be a seperate topic dedicated to these BFA studies of animals as there is for the tractors so Perhaps I'll start a topc for them. What say you?

It is a little disconcerting when you see modern brochures offered for sale but like any printed ephemora once it is out of date and passes into the annals of time then they do become collectable and therefore carry a certain monetary value. Years gone by when we older ones as children and young adults attended County Shows and machinery open days we would ask for these as they were free just out of interest rather than perceive that they would become of some value in time and as said, they were aimed as a promotional aid for the manufacturers and suppliers to inform the potential customer of what they could be buying, after all, it was no good buying a machine without reading up and knowing something about it. Just see what old railway posters, film posters and other advertising printed matter can command in price, thousands of pounds in some cases. It's all about nostalga and memories of a time past and at the time they were current who would have thought back then that they would actually be worth anything? So don't be too hard on people offering the modern brochures for sale, those of you that live long enough to see these again in 50 or 60 odd years time will probably wish you had a shed full.

Been doing a bit of up-grading of the 'home entertainment'. After buying a new flat screen tv just before Christmas, today I purchased a new DVD player/recorder. It has a 250GB hard drive and you can either record to the hard drive or straight to disc or transfer the recording from the hard drive to a disc at your convenience. It also has an internal 'freeview' and a 'Sky' facility and loads of other aplications. Playing DVD's, it has an 'upgrading' feature that automatically enhances the quality and screen aspect and resolution of what ever you are watching, pretty good bit of kit. Handbook instructions are a bit hard to follow but playing about and experimenting gets you up and running. Quite a pricey bit of kit, anthing up to hearly £300 in some stores but the one I bought was an ex 'rental' that was returned from a local B&B which bought it 3 months ago and never used it, pehaps they couldn't understand how to set it up!, so at £150 with my 8% loyalty discount and a 6 month warrantee it was a snip. Model is a Toshiba RD-98DTKB.