Manor farm contractors yard & harvester barn.

[phil phoenix]

Our second Fendt 728 arrived on wednesday from TNS and its driver hitched it up to the front weight box he had made earlier this year, he also insisted it had a stainless steel exhaust fitted to it as well😄...........  It will be yolked up to the new Kawecko trailer and lead haulage of this years maize harvest. These 728's are very fast and that will definately help on longer runs, this one also has the tyre pressure adjustment system on it which will come in handy if the weather turns wet.

Our beans weren't as fit as we hoped earlier this week so weve held off, and as luck would have it our Claas dealer rang and offered us a demo of a year 24 Lexion combine, so we said yes and the top of the range 8900 will be with us all weekend.  My three combine strategy for this year has been hit and miss with the older 770 having a few breakdowns so we will see how this demo goes and have a good chat with the Claas team present.

 

[phil phoenix]

Our Maize team finally got started on Friday and we chose to start close to the AD Plant in 50+ acres of fields destined to be drilled with wheat during September.  The new Claas Jaguar 990 was taken out of the shed and we lined her up next to our initial trailer fleet of two Fendts and one of our contractors New Hollands. We will shortly be joined by one of our maize customers tractors to assist us whenever needed during this years 3000 acre harvest.  You won't miss Harry Bliss in his black Massey 7726S.

The maize crop in general looks very good this year thanks to all the rain,  wish we could say the same about other crops this year which ranged from excellent to awful, with many fields below average. Yet again we are hoping for better next year.  As harvest finally ends with a field of 30 acres of beans left to cut on monday we have today been evaluating the demo Claas Lexion 8900, a proper beast of a combine. Although it looks fairly identical to our year 2021   8700 machine it has nearly 200hp more on tap and simply flys along!  It munched through 40 acres today in no time before an untimely downpour stopped play. Claas were happy for us to keep it for another day as they have finished their demo schedule for the year.  I think we will be keeping the 8700 at our Suffolk HQ for a 5th season but the two smaller machines (770 & 7700)we used this year hasn't really worked out as hoped for so it looks likely another big machine will be needed.

Lazy Larry admires the Lexion 8900 demo combine. Whilst our Krone baler has finally finished all the straw.

 

[phil phoenix]

The cavalry arrived just in time to help us catch up with our flagging cultivations in the shape of a John Deere 8R.410...............this brand new tractor was supposed to be here on hire for 12 weeks starting early September, but it's already clear to me that we permenantly need a pair of these bigger muscle machines to really get on top of primary cultivations.  We started working on our badly rutted land after the awful wet winter and spring with our existing 8R concentrating on the wheelings with the Bednar Terraland, but I could see we needed another one just hauling the big Horsch cultivator behind the baling teams. So now we will keep the two big Deeres on primary & secondary cultivations and allow our Fendt 936 & 728s to pick up drilling and maize haulage & clamping duties at peak times. The JD 6R.250 & Fendt 724, 722 & coming 620 machines can concentrate on haulage, rolls and pre em spraying.

Another good reason to up our hp output is the increasingly difficultly in finding drivers for them, and so its inevitable hp will keep rising.  And so will the acreage we are farming, I have already signed two new agreements this month with landowners who are packing up, this has brought a few hundred more acres into the equation for 2025 taking us to over 3000 acres of combinable crops and already 3000+ of maize on our Norfolk enterprise.

Our new CLAAS 990 Forager is an absolute animal, its already clearly 10% up on last years 980/ Kemper combination and given me more confidence to go to two Claas combine harvesters next year. We currently run a 770 & 7700 models here in Norfolk and a 8700 over at Bury St Edmunds at the Suffolk estate. Next year a new 2025 Lexion 8900 will be at Suffolk and the demo 8900 machine we had on beans will our new machine. That one is a 2023 model that Claas kept for an extra season and is now back at HQ to have new updates done before returning to us.  If the 8900s are as impressive as our 990 chopper then harvest 25 should be no problem.

Lazy Larry will be driving the new 8R and can be seen in his usual repose watching Doug do all the work!

The two 728s are on maize, one on the clamp and the other on the Kawecko trailer.