Manor Farmyard

[phil phoenix]

A new layout being prepared. I didnt want to go too mad but knew I wanted grass, trees, fencing and an old style barn.  also some gravel and tarmac effect.  Its coming along nicely and will be finished by the weekend hopefully.

 

[phil phoenix]

So Manor farmyard  is up and running.  I wanted an old style barn with an open bottom to allow light in.   It will be home to the Claas Jag 980 & new Lexion.  I can get two drills in there as well.  The farm is around 3000 acres and 1200 acres is down to maize, the rest in cereal crops. We also contract drill and harvest maize for our neighbours and haul to our own AD Plant. The tractor fleet comprises of the farms two John Deeres  6250R ,6215R and two Fendts 724 & 720. Also our pair of CASE Puma 175s and the equivalent NH Blue power 175hp tractor.  In addition to our seven tractors we have a contractor who prepares all our Maize ground with his Challenger tractor and cultivator, plus a John Deere 7290R on a Muck Spreader.

Another local contractor assists with haulage tasks with additional CASE & New Holland tractors.

The 6215R is coupled to a Amazone spreader for the first few months of the year and the 6250R is mostly on our new Joskin tanker which splashes the digestate liquid from our AD Plant back onto the fields.  Our contractor spreads the dry digestate material back on the land with their Pichon muck spreader.

The three 175hp CNH tractors are main haulers of maize and whole crop produce.  We use poly tunnels to help with efficiency during peak periods, so we ferry that back from field to AD Plant using a mid range Manitou telehandler during winter and spring time. 

The Fendts take care of spraying and drilling and some fertilizing and whatever other duties are required.

 

[smithy]

Very nice Phil ,clad you have some Case tractors in the fleet but i reckon you need a old Wheatly trailor like mine around the place ☺️for all the odd jobs

[phil phoenix]

Ive got an old Benne Brimont one on the back of the old Massey 3120 as seen in first picture thanks Smithy😉

[phil phoenix]

Today we took delivery of a 7 metre Zurn whole crop header from our local John Deere dealer.  It was their demo model last year with little wear on it and fits our Jag with no problems.  The Claas dealer had a 5 metre version available but we felt 7m was best for the big Jaguar and the deal was to good to miss!  And frankly I prefer the yellow colour over the Claas green colour version.

[phil phoenix]

6215R and 6250R parked up and ready for the next days work🙂

[phil phoenix]

Early morning in the yard and the 6250 is on its way to the AD Plant to get its first load.

And our trusty old JD 3050 2wd is being photographed with a view to being sold shortly.  It will be sad to see her go but we have two other old yard tractors that are both 4wd and more useful to us.  What we are now looking for is a more powerful and modern classic to take her place. Basically all our implements and trailers are getting bigger and we need a useful runabout that has enough muscle to help out with jobs big and small.  Last year our Massey 3120 was charged with pulling our old Lexions 25ft header from field to field for example, this year we have a new bigger machine coming with a bigger header. So the new classic runabout needs to be able to safely move the trailer around instead of us using a newer frontline tractor for the task which would leave us short elsewhere. We want a tractor that is well built has a 50k box and will hold its value well into the future. Recently we have been looking at a JD 7710 & 6920S plus a couple of older Fendts. We are looking at a few more this week.

 

[phil phoenix]

We sent out the Fendt 724 out on some additional fertilizer spreading work this week to assist the bigger wheeled Amazone rig keep on top of things.  We had to dual up her back wheels due to the softness of ground we still have across the farm. Certain fields just wont allow the JD/ Amazone wheeled rig to travel so the dual Fendt is attempting to get some much needed fertilizer on the crops.

On Saturday morning our main contractor Bill Legge dropped in with his new Kockerling Vector cultivator on the back of a Fendt MT940 Demonstrator tractor from Thurlow Nunns, he is due to start working down our fields ear marked for Maize, along with another sizeable acreage belonging to our various neighbours.

Bill currently has a 10 year old Challenger 845C and is debating whether to go bigger or smaller with a replacement machine this spring. Nunns are looking too shift one of their trade in 775Es his way but they are 80hp less than his current machine and dont have a good reliability record either.  A new or ex demo Fendt is another possibility the dealer is pushing but would be rather expensive. He currently favours another 800 series if he can find the right machine at the right price. He will be sending over his other operator later this week to pull our new Pichon muck spreader with his JD7290R, provided the weather holds that is.

[phil phoenix]

Another busy week on the farm and a couple of deals have been struck.  Firstly we were finally persuaded by the area Krampe salesman to purchase a tri axle multi use trailer. We already have an 18ton Krampe Silage trailer plus a cereals trailer with the side tip option which is useful.  A 30 ton hook lift which can be left in the field during wheat harvesting and allow one man to keep on top  of grain carting if necesary will be useful.  And also be used as a tipper on maize and wholecrop. The trailer should arrive before months end.

On Monday our trusty old JD 3050 left the farm and has gone to a good home and a SG2 cab enthusiast.  Its replacement was viewed on Tuesday, bought the next day and arrived on Friday. The 14 year old Fendt 716 is a classic and in its various upgrades ran from 98 to 2013 before the newer shape was introduced. Our Gen 2 model has run up a modest 7000 hours under two owners and will be ideal in the back up roll to our front line machines. Its throaty roar, vario gearbox and comfortable ride are already appreciated by the farm staff.  Our 10,000 hours MF 3120 & Ford 7810 will continue on light duties as required.

Our main contractor has been doing deals as well. Bill Legge had been testing a new Fendt MT900 series on his Kockerling cultivator for a couple of days and felt it was well matched. However he then rigged it up on his own 400 acre farm to pull a 6m Horsch tiger drill and found the tractors limits in sticky conditions!  His 845C Challenger is about 60 hp more but quite a bit heavier and just about copes in all but the heaviest conditions with the Horsch unit, which drilled all our 400 acres of rapeseed for this season.  This made up his mind to look for another 800 series going forward. And as luck would have it TNS had just sold their first new MT1100 series Fendt onto a Suffolk farm which in return was trading in a 4 seasons old 875E tractor with just over 2000 hrs on the clock. Bills 845c has over 9000 hrs on it so he was well pleased to get first refusal on the 600hp beast. Its a bit of a jump up in power and will easily boss his current kit, but theres lots of scope now for extra capacity and he doubts it will use much more fuel than the 845 he is trading in.  His operator is due back on our farm this week, hopefully with the 875 to continue working ground down in front of our maize drilling team which will commence sowing in 7-10 days time.

This week we will be carting maize off fields where it has been stored in plastic sheeting.  2 or 3 carting tractors and our  newish Manitou loadall will be on the job.

Muck spreading, tanker digestate spreading and fertilizer spreading and spraying will keep the rest of our team busy.

 

[catkom3]

You'll like the Krampe hook lift trailer, well detailed and heavy it's all diecast, But to operate it as a tipper you need to take two wee phillips screws out from underneath, But once you do that it's like trying to hold a well oiled jellyfish, There is also a little pin in the bag with the wheel chock's That goes in the spine of the hook lift to hold it in position.

Regards

Joe.

[phil phoenix]

Thanks Joe...............Thats the trouble with quite a few of these modern implements theres no instructions!   The side tip Krampe was on the verge of being sold until I realized it could be reset to be a normal tipper trailer,  and just like the standard version its superbly built and detailed. 

[phil phoenix]

We set up the Fendt 724 on duals for our maize drilling campaign due to ongoing soft ground conditions. Bit of a nuisance to move between fields but Im sure we will manage. We are using fertilizer this year and so we bought a Lemken front mounted tank to do the job.

Leading our maize planting campaign this year is our contractor Bill Legge in his newly acquired 875E challenger, a deal too good to be missed he told me.  It hardly knows its got the vector on the back of it and he will source something wider once he completes our 3000+ acreage.   The mighty 875E is being followed in certain heavier fields with our 6m Kuhn power harrow sat on the back of the JD 6250R and our 6215R will also be working on some specific fields with the 3m Cultimer implement.  A set of rolls will follow behind the drill as per usual.

Meanwhile we are ferrying maize back from the poly tunnels to the AD plant and Bills other tractor the JD 7290 is working ahead of the cultivations gang on the muck spreader. We currently have no spare machine to pull the tanker and it looks like Im going to have to get my cheque book out again as the business has expanded quicker than I anticipated over these past 12 months.  TNS are keen to get some more demo machines out on the farm at this busy time of year and have offered me a chance to see both an MF 8S and Fendt 900 next week which will both get plenty of use!!

[phil phoenix]

The farm had the opportunity to look at an MF 8S this past week, the 225hp version arrived on monday and got hitched to our tanker for a couple of days before TNS took it back.  The overall opinion was positive especially from the drivers seat. However I think at 200hp plus we are likely to stay with their AGCO stablemate Fendt and my two JD drivers are staunch green and yellow men so I dont see one coming this way soon. Also all our tractors are varios now so perhaps we will look again when the VT gets released next year.

This coming week I am hoping to see the Generation 6 Fendt 700 and 900 machines as both have been promised to demo but are in demand.

Maize planting is now in full swing and the weather has dried up a lot of the ponds we encountered earlier in the year thankfully, so seedbeds are presently mostly decent.

I did another deal this week by swapping in our 5 year old JCB 531-70 for the more powerful and sophisticated 542-70 version.  This would appear to be JCBs most popular model and two of our neighbours are already running them. Once again I decided to buy an ex hire machine with only 500 hrs on the clock. Its fitted with harder Bibload tyres and will be responsible for yard duties and loading grain into trucks etc. Our other loadall the smaller manitou is well suited to digging the maize out of the poly tunnels and that will occupy it for at least a couple of months of the year.

Our Contractor is getting on well with his mighty 875E Challenger and eating up the acres, however his JD 7290R is being a bit bothersome and muck spreading schedules are falling a bit behind. He has stuck with it for four years so far but is currently considering his options.

 

[phil phoenix]

One word to describe the past week on the farm "Fendt",  We got our two Generation 6 demos and very impressed we were.  Firstly the new 724 Gen 6 was collected from TNS yard on Monday (see pic) and yet again it appears they have raised the bar. The machine seems to be a bit more responsive and efficient all round with some nice software improvements. There are few obvious differences with its predecessor externally, mainly the changed bonnet decals.  And although we have only had our 724 Gen 5 for a year we agreed to swap it in for a new Gen 6 once it has finished Maize drilling in late May. Our 724 is on an annual hire purchase agreement which suited us best at the time. Some machines get bought outright, it just depends on the best deal and our longterm plans concerning its duties.  The dealers Fendt salesmen was keen to get some of these new models out and about so the deal got offered and accepted.

The 724 left on Thursday and the demo 936 arrived on Friday.  We have it for a few days. So far its been on the tanker  which is easy for it, its powerful and very nimble for such a big tractor. We will keep it for a few days and try it on various kit. We had to wait a while because the dealer only had a 942 to try and that was too much power for our requirements presently. 

Claas have told us that the combine has arrived in the UK so delivery will follow when its convenient and we are past this busy period.

Our Contractors steaming ahead with maize preparation with no issues and our drilling is going well although some rain would be now welcome after a mostly dry 6 week spell following the biblical rains back in Dec, Jan and Feb.  We are also taking all our maize spraying work back in hand, currently the Lemken 5000 Vega handles our 1800 acres of cereals and another contractor did all the liquid  fertilizer work. This is another reason for considering a higher hp tractor than our current 250hp John Deere. Watch this space.

[phil phoenix]

After five days of use our dealer came to pick up the Fendt 936.  What a fantastic tractor it is, its done everything effortlessly and helped us make a decision as well. Currently we spray our own cereal crops with our Lemken/ Fendt 720 combination but our maize is tended by a contractor who sprays chemicals and liquid fertilizer for us, but not this year.  We were looking to bring it in house but werent sure weather to go self propelled or trailed, now we know. A machine like the 936 would be able to incorporate all our maize spraying requirements with big trailed unit and not effect its other duties. All spraying would take place from May through to July over 3500 acres and finish in time for cultivations or trailer work.  The 936 demo unit was already vouched for before it arrived here, and so we got a quote for a new machine. And then on Thursday we were told the deal to buy it had fallen through and were we interested?  Yes we were and a deal has been struck on the 350 hour ex demo tractor.  It has two more demos to do and a couple of extras added upon our request, it should arrive back with us in 2 weeks.

Everything else is going well but some rain would be welcome.

 

[phil phoenix]

The Fendt 936 arrived on Friday with its new running gear in place.  We didnt want the larger tyres that were fitted to it during its demo and asked for them to be replaced with the more popular size of 710/75/R42s  x 600/65/R34s.  We have also tracked down a large double axle Amazone Sprayer to go behind the 936. We will start using this rig shortly on all our Maize cropping. The 936 is an awesome bit of kit and everyone wants to drive it. Also the new Gen 6 Fendt 724 will arrive in June.

Our secondhand Gen 2 Fendt 716 has been very useful, in fact so useful we are buying a second one, a mint Gen 3 version. The only limitation is it could do with more power to pull our tanker when the occasion arises. We dont need anything new but Im keeping my eye out for something suitable above 200hp to do just a few hundred hours work a year, a Fendt 820 or JD 7930 maybe.

Ive ordered a new Rolland special edition silage trailer for the coming season which should arrive in June. Our current four year old trailer has performed well and we have a long established connection with the brand. My father used to run a pair of yellow and blue ones back in the 80s which lasted for years, plus a yellow turbovac 20-29 in the 90s.

The Maize drilling has been held up by some much needed rain which guarentees the whole 3800acres gets off to a good start🙂

 

[phil phoenix]

We collected the combine header bar from our Claas dealer Manns on Tuesday and parked it up Manor yard.  The Lexion 6900 is still at the dealers for a while longer as we have no where to put it until the last of the wheat is shipped out over the next 3 weeks.  Our latest Fendt 716 which collected the header is lovely little tractor which we were lucky to get, a local farmer whos land we grow some maize on, recently decided to retire and had it as his main tractor on 300 acres for the past 6 years.  Its only done just over 4000 hours in 10 years since its registration in 2011,  and I snatched his hand off when he asked if I would be interested in buying it.  The tractor was bought from PHR in Essex originally and its been serviced by them ever since.  Our other older 716 will not be staying as long as I thought, as we took it into PHR to get a front suspension issue checked out and a couple of other cosmetic jobs, and were then quizzed about an opportunity to trade it in to them for a slightly older 2001  Fendt 926 Gen 2 tractor, provided its owner still wishes to sell it. This 270hp beauty is in very good condition now that PHR have done a mini restoration job on it for the current owner.   It looks like a 2000 hour tractor and not the 6500 hour 20 year old machine that it really is.   It would give us plenty of power for pulling the digestate tanker or muck spreader when nothing newer is available to do the jobs.  The tractor could be ours in the next few weeks, the prospect of owning a classic 926 is almost as exciting as when the Gen 6 Fendt 936 turned up🙂.  Having recently retired three 30 year old 90s stalwarts from our enterprise our classic Fendts have their work cut out to be just as reliable performers.

 

Edited May 24, 2021 by phil phoenix

[CX820Joe]

Good read Phil, is that the Gen 3 716 with a smaller weight?

[phil phoenix]

I cant remember which weight block was on what model to be honest Joe😄...........I thought it looked right on the Gen 3  tractor.

Im on the lookout for an 820 now to go with the gen 3   716 and the 926.

Theres two big farms in a neighbouring village who have several new tractors including Fendts and both have 11 year old Fendt 820s which were bought new.  My mate at the Fendt dealership TNS reckons the farmers wont let them go to trade ins because they are so good and reliable still, even with 9-10,000 hours on the clock.  Im still kicking myself for letting my UH 820 go a few years back.

[Dusty Dan]

It is all an awesome job. I love it. 

[CX820Joe]

I think the gen 2 had a smaller weight, and the gen 3 had a bigger one like the 818/20.  That one looks spot on.

The 820's don't come up very often but I hope you find one.  I had a white one, didn't keep it though.  818 reasonably close, I managed to get one of those recently.  As UH are re-releasing older stuff at present, would make more than few people happy if they did another run of 820's  It seems people don't want to let the model versions go in the same way as the real ones.

[phil phoenix]

I noticed I put the bigger gen 3 weight on the gen 2  716  Joe, so ive still got it.  But the smaller weight is better for the light duties the Gen3  716 will be pictured doing. 

Mind you Ive put her on verge mowing duties now and she could do with more weight on the front!!😄

[CX820Joe]

2 hours ago, phil phoenix said:

I noticed I put the bigger gen 3 weight on the gen 2  716  Joe, so ive still got it.  But the smaller weight is better for the light duties the Gen3  716 will be pictured doing. 

Mind you Ive put her on verge mowing duties now and she could do with more weight on the front!!😄

And a Shropshire number plate too I see!

[phil phoenix]

The maize planting finished on June 1st with all 3700 acres going into ideal conditions, and the subsequent weather of warm sunshine and some nice downpours have seen the crop get off to a flying start!   This means our two sprayers and digestate tanker are now flat out trying to get their liquids onto the plants.

The new twin axle Amazone 11200 is surprisingly manouvrable for such a large rig, especially sat behind our new Fendt 936.  The 936 is a terrific machine and pulls the full sprayer up slopes with ease.  Our 724 Fendt has now left us to go to its new home and its replacement should be with us in July.  And whilst we were at the dealers dropping it off I had a look around their yard.  This was full of tractors, especially older Challenger C and Es looking for a new home and not finding one it would appear!  Also a couple of nice Valtras and quite a few big MF 8740s which are on route to our leviathon sized neighbours🙄

Combining is probably a month away yet and our Lexion 6900 is due its on farm Pdi by Manns sometime next week.  We previously ran an early 760 hybrid machine with 30ft header, having run a 560 straw walker before that.  Claas assure me that the new 500hp straw walker machine will see no drop in output against the old combine, with the added benefit of much improved grain sample and straw for baling.

Unfortunately my plan to buy a classic old Fendt 926 fell through as the owner changed his mind about selling it.  So we are still running our two old 716s as handy yard tractors and sprayer bowser tugs.  Our contact PHR in Essex are keeping an eye out for another suitable classic and we hope to hear from them soon.

 

[CX820Joe]

A great read as always Phil.  Did you decide not to include the 926 in the layout in the end?