Archived News

30th January 2010

Today we were blessed with perfect weather for our winter harvesting of grain maize along the Tillingbourne Valley.

Instead of tyres, the combine harvester has rubber tracks at the front which have less impact on the ground. Rubber tracks reduce the pressure by 66% compared with a  900mm wide tyre and they create greater traction for hill work and on muddy ground.  However even this cannot cope with cavenous holes beneath the ground as Laurence discovered last week. 

The electricity board have been digging trenches along the field edge in order to bury cables, unfortunately one area hadn't been back-filled adequately and the ground had become a vast unseen swamp, into which the combine harvester fell! It's a shame I wasn't about, as that would have been great practice for my new camera!

As Laurence waits for David to bring an empty trailer back to the field, he climbs up onto the combine to shift the grain in the tank which is almost full to the brim.

He should manage to cut a few metres more before emptying the contents of the tank into the trailer, which will be transported back to the farm for stoeage until it is sold.

The red trailer carries about 14 tonne of maize and the blue trailer holds about a tonne more.