Archived News

29th August 2009

Inevitably breakdowns do occur during summer, our busiest time of year, when machinery can be working throughout the day and into the early hours of morning.  However, due to such high repair costs and so much down-time in the last financial year, we replaced some of our old tractors with new, and exchanged the combine harvester for a larger one of a similar age, and began harvesting with high expectations! 

In the space of one week, the bailer had an electrical problem, the sprayer boom broke and the relay packed up in one of the new tractors - the engine just stopped as it was travelling along Whitedown Lane.   To top it all there was a major breakdown on the combine harvester when a bearing went on the elevator pulley.  As the combine is so heavy, a Tele-handler was taken across to the field in Shalford to lift the rotar out of the combine and into the waiting Southern Harvester van.

Southern Harvesters maintain the new tractors, Tele-handlers and the combine harvester and supply replacements in the event of a breakdown, so thankfully the harvest continued with an alternative harvester which arrived the next day. In the mean-time, in the Southern Harvester workshop, the rotar bearing had to be cut off and replaced with a new one before transporting back to the field, lifting back into the combine harvester and reconnecting.

These things are sent to try us and make life a little more interesting!

Last September, a few weeks late due to wet weather, about 160 acres of winter oil seed rape was planted at Shalford, but the crop was hammered by pigeons over the coming months.  There is always that fine line in decision making; whether to right-off the crop entirely or to re-plant the worst areas and hope that it will come good overall.  The decision was to re-drill 50 acres with spring rape.

Unfortunately it is not the best looking crop we have had but it has come into its own in the past few days as Laurence has sold 232 tonnes of oil seed rape to ease cash flow.

Harvesting 110 acres of winter wheat was completed today but the 50 acres of spring rape isn't yet fit to cut.  Now there's the choice of dessicating the crop or leaving it to be cut at a later date which may result in lower yeild and lower oil content.

A selection of plants are inspected to see whether the crop might be ready to be killed off or dessicated.  The seeds from the middle pods on the main stem can be split open and should have started to turn from bright green to a pale green or yellow colour with a splash of brown.

If the decision is made to dessicate this will aim to bring together the readiness of the patchy crop and minimise pod splitting and seed loss during harvest.  Crop production cost will rise per acre using the sprayer, but hopefully the crop will be more easily cut, harvested more quickly than it might have been and with a better yeild and good oil content.

Last year the straw was shredded and left on the field to be ploughed into the soil. This year we are considering selling the straw as a fuel and so instead of shredding, it is being baled up.  More on this topic if it progresses.

This is my favourite sky shot from this afternoon, but now it's time to get my head out of the clouds and begin to sort out all the ideas and projects whirring about in my mind, well maybe just a cup of tea first!