Bright and efficient ideas from far-flung farmers
Inventive farmers exist everywhere, in fact the far-flung corners can be the most fruitful of places. These places have farmers with less cash to splash on new kit, and farmers who have a tradition of problem solving.
The Orkney Isles off the north coast of Scotland are a case in point. A cattle farmer send a brilliant set of pictures of a tip-up cattle crush he had designed and made in 2008. He uses it to look after bulls’ feet. The crush fixes on a tractor loader, and the animal is put on its side by tipping the crush back. The crush has been used to do many of the 50 bulls which are on his small island of Westray.
This January I was asked to talk to a farmers’ discussion group on my favourite topic — Successful Farming Needs Bright Ideas — and was lucky to have a few days of agri-touring when there, and the machine I describe today comes from this visit. I believe that a knowledge of the practical is the first essential of successful farming, and wonder if tuition has not moved too far towards business management and away from learning and discovering successful methods.
Here is a farm machine with a simple function — lifting old strands of wire which have become buried by matted grass. Heaving the wire out by hand can be back-breaking, and there’s a temptation to leave it rot. Chances are that some will be pulled away to be picked up by a forager, or the barbs eaten by cattle. Stomach wires are to be avoided.
This machine was designed and built by Ian Sinclair who has a substantial contracting business. Last year he converted a Yanmar C30 tracked dumper to be a self propelled post driver, and more. He fitted a front 3-pt linkage to the frame of the dumper and made a rack on the deck to carry stakes and on the back there’s a reeling system for the wire strands.
He has always disliked the job of pulling out the old wire, and rolling them up, and so made the job faster and easier with this machine that uses a car wheel. It is mounted on an axle that goes on the front of the machine — and could equally be fitted to the front linkage of a tractor or on the tractor rear. The rim of the wheel stop the wire dropping off the side, but he still found that this happened from time to time, and so added a second rim to the machine.
It means he is able to concentrate on laying out stakes or paying out new wire while lifting the old stuff up onto the surface.
Ian has based a whole fencing system on the rubber tracked machine, which makes minimal mess in wet conditions. The result is that he can have a fencing crew out throughout the whole of the winter, providing his staff with year-round work instead of seasonal summer work with forage harvesting and combining. The corn harvest is an important part of Orkney farming, despite low barley yields, as importing grain and feed from mainland Britain adds considerably to costs. Many farmers use Propcorn on wet grain which can be as high as 30% moisture. Combines need to be tinkered with to work the wet straw which is often still unripe. Cattle are universally kept on slats, and the straw used for feed as well as bedding.
Orkney farmers are workshop conscious and concerned about costs, which are always far higher than those of mainland Scotland due to the additional shipping. Similarly there’s a charge to get the stock off Orkney and into the markets and abattoirs of Scotland. Farmers on the west coast of Ireland are in a similar situation. Teagasc, through it’s local offices and advisors, could encourage farmers to use the problem solving resources of Practical Farm Ideas, and readers are encouraged to mention this to Teagasc officers.
