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College life- the goings on at Lackham College


Tommy Gough

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:unsure: Whatever is the young generation of today coming to?

Back in the day when I was a student, a discussion about 'College life- the goings on at (whatever) College' written by a young man would have been entirely about sessions of heavy drinking and encounters with, ahem, 'friendly' young ladies/other young men/young sheep/whatever, according to preference. 8)

More of that in the 2nd year i think David, judging by the state of some of the studentslast week (and some of the lecturers as well)

A small update from the college silaging. Quite hectic so not much chance for the students to take photos but I did get this group photo although sadly missing the forager

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I also got a picture of a fastrac that we had on demo

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Dont dispair though. One student was very dedicated to getting photos and spent a lot of his own free time ( we worked in shifts) to capture photos from all of the different operations so I will upload some of these soon.

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  • 3 months later...
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Whoops, I never did get round to posting 1st cut photos. I will be able to in the next day or two if anyone is still interested? As for the current occurences: I have just started my 2nd and last year of the course. the 2nd week back some of us were asked to come in for a couple of days to help the college farm with some late 3rd cut that got delayed by the rain.

A few pictures

Mowing some lovely wet organic clover on the 2nd morning that was going straight into the clamp ( :o )

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My view to the front ( I was travelling with the rows at the start of the field)

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and to the back

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The forager

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and a vid from the day shift

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Good update Tommy, keep posting up the pictures

Thanks Pat, will do.

where do you come from tommy,some of the ground you were ploughing i used to plough when i worked in stockley,its up at derry hill got a good view for miles from there !!

I come from a farm just on the outskirts of chippenham, just before derry hill. Have to agree that the views from the top of the hill are brilliant. May have to get my proper camera out and wander up there for a photo session.

Is that the colleges forager then? It was a 682 (??) when I was there but so say had an 820 chopping unit. Is it still about? Havn't watched your videos yet but I certainly will :)

Yeah, thats the current forager, probably in its 2nd or 3rd year there. No the old machine isnt around anymore but i did see it working a couple of years back. On the video front, to make it easier I will just post a link to mine and my friends pages in a day or two when I put the 1st cut photos on here.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Tommy, brilliant photos mate. It's good to see what a wide range of machinery you ate getting access to on your course. Did you all rotate yourselves around each job/machine? How many acres did the college harvest?

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Tommy, brilliant photos mate. It's good to see what a wide range of machinery you ate getting access to on your course. Did you all rotate yourselves around each job/machine? How many acres did the college harvest?

Cheers Tris. The course of 18 is split into 2 groups for all practical lessons so we have group a doing the morning shift, group b on the afternoon shift and group a again for the evening and then the other way atound the next day. Then someone makes up a timetable so everyone has a go on the forager. The other jobs are then spread around a bit so you may have not have gone mowing, for example, but have gone on trailers twice. I think we harvested about 150 acres but it took a while with us swapping around a lot and quite a long haul from the colleges other farm (our neighbours) back tothe college through Chippenham.

Yes, fantastic topic this. A great brochure for the college too for anyone younger and looking at doing such a course. Thanks for sharing!

Cheers Andy. That was one of the main reasons I started this topic as I realised that some of the younger members on here may be thinking of going to an ag college. This is just my way of recommending Lackham.

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  • 3 months later...

Whoops never got round to adding the photos did I. Better add a few now.

The run of the headland of the first field of the first day pretty much set the standard for the rest of the harvest

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Not a brilliant photo but there was a bit of a quality and quantity issue in most of the fields, this one included

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Help

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Case to the rescue

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The maize on the front of the trailer slightly gives away the exuberance of the students on the spout

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We also had a krone on demo for a bit. By a bit i mean the farm decied we could use it to open up a trial plot field which involved a lot of manouvering and swearing and not much actual chopping so it was a bit wasted really. It was a big x 700 if you were interested

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I also did some trailering for the trial plots. Bit of a faf as the different crops are planted in a bunch of four rows around i think 50 meters long. The forager chops the middle two rows and blows them into a holding hopper. At the end of the run the operator lets the chopped material back through the chopping unit and this time out of the spout. As it is unloaded another worker takes the sample. At the start of the field the chopper was an old two wheel drive Claas SF70 but it struggled at the headlands getting out of the ruts made by the front wheels so they bought in a front mounted pottinger machine mounted on a Case MX110. Sorry if the description was a bit dragging but just realised that I dont have any pictures of the chopping, just the trailers.

No option but to drive over rows

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Whoops

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The replacement trailer

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No time to bang in some greedy boards I suppose,,

On which trailer chris? The little orange weeks was just temporary whilst the webcox was being repaired. No greedy boards on the webcox as the forager would blow in to it. Would have been useful though on the opposite side to the forager as the driver never adjusted the spout so as the trailer filled up it became a challenge to stop the crop going over the top and we tried to avoid changing trailers whilst driving down the rows

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The clamp on the first morning

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Think this was on the third day

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After a few days we had to move across a main road which meant we had to increase the machinery pool by one

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And increase the workforce by one

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He wasnt smiling after a couple of hours stood at a road junction slowing down cars

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