Making Machinery Work In Late Summer

Tom Addlesborough has some warming thoughts

- Tom Addlesborough

The single tractor on a smallholding is more than a workhorse. It's an old friend. It's something that takes the back break out of every day work, that lets you help friends and neighbours and in the winter, it's where you can retire with a cup of something hot (or stronger) and a good radio progamme, to keep an eye on running repairs. But in the summer it comes into its own. Yes in the winter it can shift trailer loads of muck to waiting fields, it can run a log splitter and it can cart stuff about but the tractor really shines in the summer.

Take haymaking for example...

Well you take haymaking. I'd rather not. It is for our family, the most anxious time of the year and one of the most exhausting. If we have any surplus hay then I sell it. Sometimes people quibble at the price off the field or ask if it can be delivered for that money. I see my partner looking nervous at this as I launch into my “hay should be a tenner a small bale for the time, trouble and effort it takes” speech. Anyone who has ever made and carted their own hay in small bales with a 1970's tractor and no bale handler, will relate to this one.