Tuesday 12 October 2010

You may like to see my tractors 8

 
You may like to see my tractors

It seems that you young un's would be interested in what tractors I've got, well today we'll stick to the up to date ones, well I think they are, but they're an old man's choice, driven steady, cleaned now and then, oil changed on time and sometimes even greased.

First there is the Fastrac, at the moment I am hedge cutting, done most of mine, and now started on my contract customers. Had a stone go through the lower door window last year and replaced it with a plastic green house panel, glued it in, you would never know if I hadn't said, and now the rear rounded glass quarter panel is badly cracked, so a bit late, I have fitted some wire mesh to protect it.





Next is the Deutz Agrotron it 85hp and today we had some yearling heifers eat their way through a briar patch and got into the wood, so I have got the post knocker on and been fencing. I fitted the brackets for the knocker to go on the front, it's a lot easier to see what your doing and you can reach on top of hedge banks, and across ditches, but having a longer hydraulic pipe slows the drop of the hammer a bit, but I can live with that. This was Matt's tractor, and as it turned out, it pulled a farm trailer, his granddads three ton fergy trailer, with his coffin on, on his last journey to his grave.
The tractor is just turning up ten thousand hours on the clock and looks like it could do the same again. We have broken some windows and the frameless door, when mowing with a disc mower on seeds. Every pane of glass is curved and by gad they are expensive to replace, the insurance people (NFU) slapped a big surcharge, we pay the first fifty quid each time.

The Discovery I run belonged to a business man, who occasionally pulled a caravan, and had over a hundred thousand miles on the clock, I don't think it had ever seen mud, but now its seeing real life, pulls the stock trailer, and a three ton flat Indispension trailer. I took some scrap metal to the scrap yard eight miles away, the outfit was snakeing and twisting if I went over thirty miles an hour, and over the weigh bridge I had got just short of four tons on board. Then on an up hill junction halt sign had to drop it into low range to be able to pull away, so I think it will have come to its last home. In the picture below its got the small Ifor Williams trailer hitched up, this saves having to chuck dirty thing in the back.




In the picture you see my loader on the Agrotron will not stack the bales more than three high, but then we have quite a long hay barn. Also in the back ground is the three ton trailer loaded up with an old Fordson Elite three furrow plough and a matching furrow press. Sixty years ago that was the bees knees, they fitted a three row seed box on top of the press and you drilled the wheat as you ploughed and it had a following harrow to cover the seed. Job done all in one pass, probably about five or six acres a day. This outfit is pulled by my Fordson E27N but I'll show you that on another occasion.



This is another one of my quotes but I don't know who said it.
When the going gets too easy, you may be going down hill.