New Agrifac Sprayer
Lemken 8 Furrow Demo
It has been all go in the last couple of weeks as the rain has finally subsided and the sun has shone through. All winter crops have now had their first pass of nitrogen and all P&K has been spread. The sun and wind in the last two weeks improved ground conditions significantly allowing the sprayer and spreader to travel. After such a wet winter there are still areas that needing drying but the improvement is remarkable and very pleasing to see.
Having done no winter ploughing, due to the weather, we had a huge amount to do come the middle of February. However 3 ploughs going nearly everyday since then has helped us catch up and as this is written we are ploughing our last field. Soil temperatures are slowly rising so we will look to start sowing our first spring barley after the weekend.
535 Quadtrac arriving for the spring
March has also seen the arrival of some new pieces of machinery. The first was our new Agrifac sprayer. We decided to change our old one for exactly the same again. Agrifac's build quality, back up and reliability meant we were so pleased with our last machine we never looked anywhere else. Lets hope we get the same reliability with this one. We also had a demo of a Lemken 8 furrow on land plough. Pulled by our Fendt 936 on dual wheels on some sticky stuff it got a good test but proved more than capable of the challenge and made a fantastic job.
New 8.3m Vaderstad Rexius Twin
Now we no longer have potatoes we have been looking closely at the changes we need to make in order to do the job more efficiently. We don't think we are getting seed in the ground quick enough, particularly in the Autumn. We highlighted cultivation as a major area which was slowing us down so we decided to change our 4.5 meter Vaderstad Rexius Twin for an 8.3 meter Twin which should double our output. However, with the increased size we needed something to pull it with and decided we should try a Case Quadtrac so we have hired a 535 Quadtrac for the spring to see how we get on.
Hopefully the good start to the spring continues and we get the spring crops in and established in good conditions.