FASTRAC PLOUGHING IN MUCK

Howdy folks, so we're in the last field that we've got to drill, we've got muck to move first, which we're just loading up at the minute, and then we are going to plough it, because it was the field the other side, just over there, Richard drilled that yesterday and it was, the drill was dragging it a bit, so we're just going to flop this over with the old plough. So, um, uh, yeah, so we don't, you know, it'll drill nice a lot. So, yeah, we'll get this muck spread and then, um, get plowing. So it's a, a Fraser muck master, um, orbital spreader or rotary spreader. Orbital spreader, ain't they? Um, yeah, wondering how many dairy farms have got one of these tucked away at the back of the shed, cause obviously we have, um, henry uh hs ag who i used to work for they come and spread the you know the main heaps which they have done and then um but this is just what we've produced since um since then and we thought well we'll get the take the opportunity to uh take the opportunity to get um get rid of it like before we plow so off she goes still do a good job i mean look at that, they're spreading it quite nicely, obviously you can only get you know two scoopfuls in it like but it's doing the job and it does you know does a nice job. I have been just before he got here, if I've not got here, I've just been stirring the mucky buck so that it's because we had one straw reload in here the rest of this is muck from the separator so it's like some really nice sort of wet muck. You can see I've stirred some, we had one of the yards out, one of the yards we run over the summer, straw yards. We had that out three or four weeks ago and of course that was straw-y like you know because it doesn't get a lot of muck in this time of year. So I've just stirred that in so it spread, you know the beaters can cope with it a bit better a lot but yeah how many of you i got one of them old not necessarily a Fraser lot but they're all very similar ain't they uh and some companies still make them they've got a lot of little spreaders like you know so uh just means we can get rid of this like it will take a little you know probably take a three quarters of an hour to get rid of this lot but uh it'll be done then i can plow the lot in it's on the plow There's about 8 acres or something like that. Not the biggest bit but it's long and thin so it's fairly easy to plough. It's got a real sandy soil though so it hasn't got a lot of body so it will shine the boards up because they're really rusty but it might take a little bit to, I don't know, sometimes sandy soil needs, it hasn't got enough body to, you know, it doesn't take much pulling through so there's not much resistance so it might not flop over nicely to start off until we get a bit shone up like but yeah we'll see how we get on. Right, let's see how we get on here now. We've got the hydraulic top link on, see if I can set that somewhere, I think, that's about roughly where it was last time. Dirt control is there, we want four-wheel drive, we want a few revs, and we'll see how we go. That's not bad for the first pass, I'm not going to bother about looking, seeing how level we are and everything, until we get back in the furrow, so, well that's chucking over lovely i'm quite surprised at that i'll say it's taking zero pulling but i'll just you know it's burying the trash that means the uh you know the drill uh because obviously it's a tine drill they can drag trash lot um which like i said earlier is what it's done in that next field so it's the decision to flop this over it's a clean um you know it's a clean seed bed then isn't it like all right we've got a um we've got a power pole here to get round i'll just back her off just while we get round it we don't want to hit it just like that that's how much pulling it's taking we're in a thousand thousand rpm um um yeah and it was yeah about 5k so not a lot of pulling that will do right flip her over using my new russell fast tracks um spool valves beautiful do like the old dowsled pal do like them that drop speed is a bit quick uh yeah slow that down a bit look slide the front far right over yes it has stuck a bit to them boards which is gonna it's that type of soil that's a better drop speed oh we'll just see what things look like a minute i don't think we're far off the mark there are we that front um front skimmer's just catching i think down there yeah that's always the trouble with this sort of soil when you got um see that one stuck pretty quickly that one not so bad um yes it's gonna stick a bit like but it'll be what it'll be so but it'll get it turned over won't it hopefully we don't um that don't become an issue blocking up the where's that rear disc trashy stuff in there look and that gets all bound up and then you end up lifting the thing like but i don't think think we're far off the mark there lot. I don't. We'll do a bit more and crack on. Right, that's straightened up past that power pole. Yeah, I wonder if I've got to flip them with them discs off. Blooming thing, that is clearing. Yeah, I could just keep an eye on it lot. Good bit of forward speed as well hopefully should help stop the soil sticking to the boards quite as much and I'll do a level of job. I do love a bit of ploughing though. It's got to be, I've probably said it before, it's got to be one of the most favourite jobs on the farm. Love a bit of ploughing. Who doesn't like ploughing actually? If you don't like ploughing, put in the comments that you don't like ploughing and why you don't like ploughing. it's just nice these are back beautiful it might just oh squeaky brakes we'll stick her into medium um you should be able to hopefully might have to change gear then for the headlands lot right so i'm just gonna although i can pull through here obviously there's no you know we haven't got a lot in the way um you know there's no hedge or fence to prevent you pulling through but i'll just plough them corners out a little bit while we're there drop her in the furrow just speed that up a little bit drop and we are off lovely chobly well it's certainly not the prettiest ploughing i've done and we are getting a bit of trash that sitting on top but that's purely because we're pushing the furrows over we're not rolling them As you can see, we've got two clean mould boards on the top here, but none of the skimmers have shone up, they're all holding dirt, I mean it just is what it is like, but it will drill, it will drill nicely, so it's not even worth mucking about with really and sort of fiddling and that and knocking the dirt off them because, well, about an hour, probably an hour and a half, I'll be done. So it is what it is. Sometimes you just have to, you know, accept that it's not the best job in the world. Sometimes you fail to understand. The last pass, you see that line of trash along there? That was the last pass the way we were going i've not changed any of the settings depth settings anything like that and i think i'm fairly sure it was the the rear furrow that wasn't buried you can see it a whole line of it and indeed goes you know so you can see it up towards the end there like no particular reason why it's not bearing that one this pass absolutely perfect and like i say I haven't changed anything. I mean we're going obviously not, like I say, the same way so sometimes blowing is just magic isn't it. Just pure magic. I still think these old 3000 series cabs you know they stand up to the test of time. The only thing the only thing with them really is you are limited depth wise so forward to back they're quite a you know short cab in that respect but they are full width and that makes a difference so there's plenty of room to you know store a bag down there um or like drone and all that sort of stuff toolbox if you really wanted to have have it you could have it in there there's a vast floor space although you do struggle I can't stretch my legs out. I can't do that, which is the only downside really. But other than that, they're a nice old cabin. Like I say, they've stood the test of time, I think. They're, you know, they're perfectly functional. So we're just coming to the end. See, I think it's pretty much to hand light, you know. up she goes in reverse flip the plow over using the patented russell fast tracks hydraulic joysticks very very nice to use if you know what i mean probably even nicer to use than an actual spool valve especially them the these ones because they're momentary so you just flick it back let go and it and it stops so we've got the fastest got a good old Bosch heatstronic you know rear linkage system so that there is you've just seen does your debt does your up and down hand throttle just here you got power shift buttons on the gear stick so we'll go up one they are replicated back here probably can't see that not the the best place to put them they're not you know don't tend to use them but they are there and they do work so um yeah so they're historic so you've got obviously in the down position you've got a neutral position where it won't do anything then you've got up but you've also got um another stage further down so if i just hold it it basically puts the arms into like free float and they'll go all the way down so if you get into a hard bit and it's riding out a bit you can just go like that see we're gonna track that's gonna stop just because I buried the plough there like but that's a handy little feature you can just think that down if you're a bit that's you know headland or whatever and it's not going in hold that down and it'll just sort of like it will go in as deep as it as it wants to that is your depth control so that sets so further round it's like seven o'clock is full depth all the other way around at five o'clock is like the highest depth so that just you twiddle that and that adjusts your depth that one there is your maximum lift height so because we've got the plough on that's fully fully up so that will lift up as as the rams will go if you've got a power hammer on for example you don't want to lift it you only you know tend to lift them up just enough so that they clear otherwise you get too much of an angle with the pto you can set that lower down so it only just lifts up you know clearing the ground so you can turn that one there is your drop rate so how quickly the implement drops so i've got it at the minute set with the plough at about halfway. If I had it all the way the plough would just literally you know drop full speed. Clattering to the ground, not very good. So basically it depends how much weight you've got on the back. Oh you're brave mate. No no no you nutcase. Laurie just, oh man there's gonna going to be an accident there. Jesus. Laurie just turning in here. Shouldn't be coming in there, lot. Really shouldn't be coming in there. That's the A1. Bloody bit of a nutcase. Easy enough to have an accident on a Friday afternoon. We're good. Off we go. I am, as you can see, using the CHC now. I know it's cheating, but it does just keep an eye straight line without me having to concentrate especially when i'm doing a video so where were we and that one is yeah basically your mixer between uh draft control and position control okay now they're about halfway so um that is basically acting on the the rear linkages is sensing the draft load on and you can see the little uh lights here should be able to see that on camera as it sort of gets to easy bits and harder bits it puts it up and down just to maintain um you know a decent forward speed light so you put it into position which the symbol is normally a fertilizer spreader it turns that off so it just it goes down to depth and just sort of stays there put it all the way into plow and it you know reacts really quickly a lot but you don't really need it set to that like so i just have it set about halfway and that's normally about right um the thing i do like about the old fast tracks these old ones and on the new ones as well i'm not sure about the icons could still be on the icons but you've got a manual up down button for the rear linkage so if you want to you know drop your pickup hitch down you just use that that just overrides well as long as that's in in that position in the stop position that works so which it normally is once you're not doing field work you leave that in the stop position and then you can go up down with the buttons on the back and that and it's just a steady pace sort of thing like um that is the diff lock cut out so you click that on and if we had the diff lock in that would cut out when we're turning and all that sort of stuff. That I've explained that before is the cut out of the hydraulics on the back so it's like a low pressure system so you have to have that activated like that for them to work especially the safety cut out so if you don't want the chance of them activating you click that like that and they won't you know nothing will happen but we do need it because we're going to turn the plough over. That little button there is the area meter so it counts up if you want a tractor to work out the area you're doing that is what that does. I'll never bother be honest especially when you've got GPS that does it for you. The other good thing about these old Eaton box gearbox tractors is that you do have a lot of a lot of gears available so it's got 54 Ford gears it has so six speed manual with three ranges low medium high and it has got three power shifts per gear so you've got three right you've got six manual speeds in three ranges and you've got three power shifts for every gear you're in so we're in third gear at the minute medium so we've got three power shifts in that oh that's a bit of a jump there to the high range wouldn't it like that's better then to low so um yeah so you say you're six gears times three 18 times that by the ranges gives you 54 and i can't remember if you get you don't get high range in reverse i think you get low and medium but you might just get low it could just be low i can't remember off the top yet um so it's an 18 uh you know 54 times 18 like um but yeah you do get loads of overlap for gears which is quite handy, but you have got the power shift that gives you the flexibility if you get the tough spots or lighter spots when you want to go a bit quicker, you've got that versatility. So that button there is your PTOs, so in the position it's in at the minute, it's PTO brake, turn it into that position, the brake comes off, so it will sort of start rotating with the drag of the gearbox then that one there is actually going it's actually going around so there is no um there's no um you know like the modern ones the safety ones where you can like hit it and it disengages it this is before that time they come on with the p-tronic edition so like uh 2010 onwards but these do give you the ability to um uh these do give you the ability to um tweak a baler on or something like that so you've got the because you've got the you know the ability to turn it on the light that you can get something just moving ever so slightly which is with the other with the the yellow yellow ones, if you know what I mean, not quite so easy like, that's about it really, that is your two-wheel drive, four-wheel drive diff lock selector, so at the minute we're in four-wheel drive, that puts it in the diff lock, put it into the down position, that's your two-wheel drive, so that's about it really, there's not a lot else uh on these but they are you know they're a lovely comfy place to sit you know you shut the shut the door they're not the quietest uh even in their day they weren't exactly the quietest machines in the world um they're not bad like you know you still hear the radio quite happily a lot decent air conditioning in them. Yeah, I like the old girls. Just like we're, oh I don't know, two degrees straight off of this ditch that we've ploughed over to. Which is annoying. So we'll have to go back up and yeah just plough that top corner out a little bit. we're going to start coming out of the furrow now where we are. Rear furrow is in about the right spot so now I need to just fettle the depth control a bit, drop the ploughing a little bit because I'm now only ploughing rather than in the furrow because we're taking probably two thoroughs now three to two thoroughs i'll bring the front out of it now every i'm never very good at this so we've got a bit of a dip there and we've got we're bringing a little bit of trash out a lot i really do find it tricky to do um very acute angles like that it's not easy at all obviously it doesn't matter because uh we'll nip over this with the joker just to level it down and consolidate it a bit because it is now fluffy then we'll drill it so it doesn't matter too much like i say it's not the prettiest plowing i've ever done but sometimes you have to get a bit dirty didn't you i might say two or three days time it'll be drilled and rolled anyway so it won't really won't matter benefits of hydraulic top links. Blow that down a little bit so you see the hydraulic top link is holding rear of the plough out of the ground. Doesn't help that it's a bank as well so I'm just going to drop the dropper in a little bit as we come up here. It's not ideal is it look that is not too bad actually i'm happy with that these are out a little bit that's not too bad i am happy with that right two headlands to do just drop that top link back down the way it ought to be out there just using the auto steer just to help me get a nice parallel mark because I'm going to plough it in so it means I have to start on the inside and then come out to the edge and again I'm not very good at gauging being parallel to you know the outside of the field so I've got an auto steer I shall make use of it so you just drive this manually it's recording exactly what i do then it'll it'll um replicate that as we go in all right so that's that's in we'll just mark that down just so we know then top headland all right so you can see what we've got now up there and then round to the corner a bit and it's replicated that for me there very nicely so we'll engage that line it will now get onto that nearest line for me we can now hold on we need to need to flip the plow over if we do anything course we're on plow ground so we can't flip it over i'll tell you what we can do bring that top link in a little bit gives us more clearance we may not actually be in the right spot with that top link no so i've got some little marks down there so about there it's all good fun right forwards go for it see it's turning it for me i anticipated it isn't it now we can just back her up a little bit let's show you actually what we're doing that'll do drop her in there lift her up because we're out of the ins and outs now See now, that first headland pass is now accurate and you'll notice at the end, basically either end of the field I'll run the plough out as far as it'll go. So we get in the corners and now just suck that back in a bit, so there, see if you put a plow in the ground george here so now we can just um plow it out manually but because we've put them um that first headland pass in accurately we should end up level with um the outer headland that is the hope anyway like i say i am absolutely terrible at gauging it so i've got the technology i will use it spin around obviously fast track's very good on the ins and outs because you're going in and out your open furrows that you make when we went up and down but the old suspension front and rear self-leveling well cool springs on the front of these self-leveling on the rears smooths it out lovely it's only on the newer like what the 4000 series um is when you've got front um as well as rear self-leveling so i don't think i'll win any plowing matches with um this plowing but it's turned brown anyway that's amazing do seem to remember i think it was cavernan bought out a section control plow So each furrow had a ram on it so it could be lifted in and out of work and as you would come into and out of work it would put the furrows in and out depending on obviously if you're going in or out like. So you ended up with perfectly square headlands, no sort of triangulated ins and outs. let's see them i remember them yeah they made one like whether anyone bought one or not i mean obviously it's uh you know adds quite a bit of complexity to the plow lot three passes four passes something like that i did go out um lift out far enough that um i do like to plow the uh the headland tram line you know with the you know the way you know the way you go around it so to speak so it's a little bit smoother when you know you're ploughing it the same direction as the headland tram line so it's a lot smoother rather than ploughing 90 degree against it so it just gives you a bit of a bigger headland like but it's a bit smoother when you're doing spraying and all that sort of stuff because you're not you know you're not going across you plan yes obviously we're going to level it and everything like but tend to go in this heaven so i am just um helping it go in by um like i was saying earlier press it just pressing the down button on the uh three what linkage so it drops you know what almost forces the plowing back her in drop her down sure she bites in there we go we're off all right so we're getting the tricky bit now final bit that looks like there's a couple of passes there in she goes this as far as we can there we go and pull this around the corner a little bit so that's doing it nice I think we can get away with taking one pass back down that bit. Is this one or two here? I think it is two in this last little bit here. Going as far as we can, trying to ram me box into the pavement. It does really rise there look. I don't want to ram me box. got that in as early as we can let her drop in deep like so pull along as far as we can without hitting the dinosaurs we've got uh what triceratops the stegosaurus i think they are you've probably seen them on the video already like but you'll have a one's definitely a triceratops I'm sure it's buddy behind is a Stegosaurus, we'll see him in a sec, let me back up, see if we can spin that plough, yep, we're just going to feed it around the corner a little bit, like so, see is that forward a smidge, so yeah you see we've got, I'm sure that's stegosaurus and it's mate there that's a triceratops in it i reckon come on plow bite there you go it's biting lovely i wonder if we can just turn this round this bend a bit that'll be handy if we can come on baby oh yeah oh yeah come on plow bite rear of the plow is not wanting to bite in there we go that's got it we care we don't take too much of this we're going to get ready to pull around sweetly well there i mean to be i mean to be fair that is not bad that's not the worst plan i've ever done grind it's not the best but you still see them mold boards they're still a bit gammed up, ain't they lot? It's not bad, but like I say, for how big a field it was, it wasn't even worth the hassle of getting off to lock them. But yeah, that's fairly level. So all we've got now is the bottom headland down here. We'll do the same. Head back. Alright, pass I'm just gonna graze the rear furrow so that so we don't have a bit of we don't have an open furrow down here like so we'll just choose a slower gear so I can correct it a bit quicker and that's going quite nicely so that last that fifth furrow is he's only just scratching the depth wheel is just sort floating there the whole weights being carried by the tractor so just a little bit more top link out you get ready to lift her out and we're done boys we're done all right so in me box we should have a nice little shovel with me water out and then in here somewhere there it is look at that little beauty groundhog micro shovel and it even matches fast track. Yeah, how about that? I was in the garden centre a little while back and I see this little shovel and I thought that would be perfect. Goes in the box easy and ideal for whipping the soil off these furrows. There we go sports fans. Got to pull the mud off. They're back to the farm now. It's tea time. uh local pub does uh burgers burgers and chips tonight so that's uh guess that's what's going in my tummy yeah anyway i'll stick you on the back of the plow you can have a nice ride back up the a1 and i'll see you on the next one ta-ta

The only bit of ploughing i've done this year, not my best, but not my worst either. How many of you have used an orbital spreader like that?