May on the farm
This month Andrew Huxham is joined by Harry, who was driving the crop sprayer that caught fire in April. They discuss the search for a new sprayer to stay on top of applications at a critical time on the farm:
Harry relives the moment the sprayer caught fire – he escaped unharmed, but his lunch wasn’t so lucky!
The choice between Horsch, John Deere and Bateman machines, trailed or self-propelled
Testing sprayers from Horsch and John Deere on the farm – the pros and cons
While the Horsch impressed, varied field layouts mean a self-propelled sprayer remains the best fit
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Transcript
This month Andrew Huxham has been testing new crop sprayers at his arable farm
Andrew
Hi there, welcome to our May update on the farm.
We’re going to do something slightly different this month. We’ve got Harry with us who was driving the sprayer last month when, was it last month or earlier this month?
Harry
End of April.
Andrew
When we had a bit of an accident and our Bateman sprayer caught fire. So, Harry talk us through what happened because it was a bit of an eventful day.
Harry
I was out spraying some maize pre-em down at one of our farms at Donnington. Just finished three of the four fields, was folding up and then all of a sudden just heard a loud bang and I was, like, well that’s not right. What’s gone on here?
So I hop out of the steps, look underneath it and it was up in flames. So at that point I thought there’s no point going back in the cab and getting anything out. I’m just going to run, get the phone out, ring you up and then you told me to ring the fire brigade, why on earth am I ringing you?
Andrew
I mean, yeah, I was a little bit surprised that you hadn’t phoned the fire brigade.
Harry
No and then quickly hung the phone up and then rung the fire brigade and then, yeah, so not the best day.
Andrew
And when I first spoke to you, my first concerns are that, A: was it on the road?
Harry
Yeah I didn’t tell you any of that, did I?
Andrew
No, there’s quite a busy road that runs through the middle of that farm. A very, very busy road with lots of sharp corners and I thought, if it was on the road and there was lots of traffic backed up, we could have other cars catching fire quite quickly. But fortunately it was out in the middle of a field. We’ve been down there, haven’t we, and had a look at it. Fortunately it’s all been salvaged now, it’s all been taken away, but there was nothing left on it.
Harry
No, I think there was one ram-fold section that survived at the end and, other than that, everything, it was, yeah, a crisp.
Andrew
So that has pretty much, that event has pretty much and obviously, sorry, just to go back, your sandwiches.
Harry
My sandwiches, yeah.
Andrew
Which ended up being toasties.
Harry
As I was walking away and getting a lift back with your dad, one of the firemen goes up to me, he goes, did you manage to get your lunchbox out? I said no, it’s still in there. He goes, what do you have for your sandwiches? I go, cheese and ham. He goes, well you’ve now got a toastie. I thought, that really rounds the day off.
Andrew
So that event has pretty much dictated a lot of what we’ve been up to over the last month, hasn’t it, because we were looking at changing that machine this autumn anyway. We weren’t sure what we were going to change it to. In my head there were sort of three contenders. There was a Horsch, a John Deere and a Bateman. I wasn’t, I haven’t ruled out going to a trailed machine. I think I was 60/40 in the self-propelled camp and at that point you said, what were you?
Harry
I was 80/20 when we first started using the Leeb.
Andrew
So Oliver’s very kindly hired us a Horsch Leeb trailed sprayer which has been really, really interesting. That’s been a great demo/hire and that’s kind of kept us going. So you’ve had quite a lot of spraying done on the farm over the last month, haven’t you, with the Horsch Leeb.
Harry
T2s, T0s on barley. So yeah, it’s been out a lot.
Andrew
It’s been out a lot and it is really, really impressive. Since having that are you still 80/20?
Harry
I’d say I’m 60/40. You go to a big open field, it is the best thing ever. You just, you can crack on, you can get way more done than a self-propelled with a larger tank. But we farm so much different ground, where we’ve got one farm that’s 700 acres with five 120-acre fields, then we’ve got another farm that’s 20 fields all averaging 25 acres with awkward corners.
Andrew
Different types, some ground you sink up to the axles in the winter, some is lovely chalky ground and then we’ve got flat ground. And this is, I doubt the camera will do it justice, but this is one of the steepest fields we’ve got, that bank at the top. And I was amazed, I drove up there when you were going across there with the Horsch Leeb.
Harry
It follows extremely well.
Andrew
It’s really clever how it follows. So the banks aren’t an issue. You did say you did this sort of 45-hectare block and you reckon it took you about another 45 minutes because of the extra time reversing.
Harry
In corners and messing around.
Andrew
But you’d get better at that.
Harry
You would. You would.
Andrew
We’ve got some funny lines in wheat at the moment, haven’t we?
Harry
Don’t say that.
Andrew
Some wiggly bits. But I think you would get better than that. The pluses for me would be the tank size.
Harry
Yes.
Andrew
But we farm around a thousand hectares of cereals and we only have two tractors at the moment. We take on an extra tractor, we take on a couple of extra people with their own self-driving tractors in the summer for the harvest and some of the autumn. So we get away with only having two tractors. So, if we were to go to a self-propelled, I think we’d need to go to three cabs or we would end up having so many hours we would be changing them quickly. The depreciation would be horrific.
So we’ve been around, we had a really good John Deere demo, didn’t we? The 340M, that was really impressive. Really impressive and very affordable. However, they’ve since announced they’re not going to produce them anymore and they’re shutting down the factory. And the biggest concern for me is: what’s the residual value in five or 10 years’ time? So, unfortunately, despite a good demo, the John Deere 340M was out of the equation because of the concerns around the residual value. Although you were impressed.
Harry
I liked it. The technology on it was good, especially going from the John Deere tractor, that was just hopping into another John Deere cab and it’s all there. You know what you’re doing. So it was a good machine.
Andrew
So then we go, do we go trailed? And, you know, the options would be Horsch Leeb or John Deere, but we’d need an extra cab, which has its advantages, but at the moment we don’t need one with the extra people around us that we sub in at harvest.
Harry
All the time we’ve got the contractors, we don’t need them.
Andrew
No. So we came to a decision last week, didn’t we? Which I think you’re happy with.
Harry
Oh, I’m very happy with.
Andrew
So we’ve ended up with, we’ve got an ex-demo Bateman coming hopefully in about a month’s time. So that’s the plan now. But it has been a really interesting exercise, hasn’t it? The trailed has been really impressive.
Harry
It has. It just, sadly, if we were farming a block farm with 2,000 acres, all big square fields, I think that trailed machine would be the perfect machine for us. But we have so much different ground, soil types, you can’t get away from a self-propelled.
Andrew
At the moment. Good. All right. Well done. Thank you very much, Harry.
Harry
No worries.
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