The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Smallholding => Equipment => Topic started by: Justin on September 14, 2018, 12:01:35 pm
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As we progress in our little smallholding journey, we're now looking at turning some of a field into crop rotation. Some will be just to grow things like bee friendly flowers, some will be fodder crops for pigs/sheep and some will be to grow larger amounts of vegetables that won't fit in the allotment.
We have an old Massey 135 tractor which I use for topping, wood chipping, moving stuff around etc and I'm thinking that having a small plough to turn over strips of field occasionally would be useful. However, I have never done anything like that before and don't really know what sort of plough the masssey would be able to pull or if there are different types. I'm not going to be ploughing entire fields, just strips now and then.
Could anyone tell me what I'd need to look for please.
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Have a look on ebay ( 2 furrow plough ) quite a few for sale and will be videos on you tube . If you can get a friendly older farmer /farmworker to help examine it for missing /bent bits it would be ideal then he /she could set it up for you
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thank you, I'll do that.
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Have a look on ebay ( 2 furrow plough ) quite a few for sale and will be videos on you tube . If you can get a friendly older farmer /farmworker to help examine it for missing /bent bits it would be ideal then he /she could set it up for you
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I have used the services of retired farm workers / tractor enthusiasts for ploughing and reseeding help , instruction and advice, look for a tractor owners group . They may even know of a suitable pluogh.
Only one problem I must warn you of , you may have to fight them off your tractor ! Oh and sometimes they hang about out of sight waiting for you to go in for your tea and finish off a field for you. :)
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Does your Massey 135 have draft control? (I don't know spec's of M135s). If not, a depth control wheel on plough would be a good thing.
Also thinking that, for the odd bit of plot ploughing, a basic single-furrow plough shouldn't be sniffed at if the price is right.
I've been re-considering recently whether I need a small plough (or not) for much the same purpose as you Justin. Undecided, but I've been looking. Quite a few used single/2-furrow ploughs available (web searches), but not available anywhere near my neck of the woods. So I've looked at new offerings: I cannot vouch for, but machinerysales EU offerings (single or 2-furrow versions) are a very decent price and, from my untrained eye, probably quite good enough for most "small-holder" needs. (They could well be better than that, but I wouldn't know - what I do know is that I wouldn't want to pay more - new or used - for something I wouldn't use very often.)
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More farmers are going onto no till, do you really need a plough?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No-till_farming
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I have a 2 furrow plough.. not reversible so I have to keep driving back to the start for the next row. It's also more a case of picking the right time when soil it the best texture to be turned (too dry, too wet). it still needs rotorvating afterwards. If the same ground is going to be worked in subsequent years then after the initial loosening of an old neglected field then probably just the rotorvator would do.
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Take yourself to a vintage tractor ploughing match - you'll see examples of many set ups and you might be able to see what you need. Failing that - youtube is a great resource for all things vintage tractors. You might work out that it's cheaper and quicker to get someone in to do it for you. Ploughing, like haymaking, is a bit of a dark art!!
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKK-fD1wuoU (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKK-fD1wuoU)
Above is the kit you want ;D Note that it's not even leaving furrows.. 'cos the field is so well maintained and the soil nice and crumbly but an excellent job of 'burying the trash'. You won't do that your first year!
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKK-fD1wuoU (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKK-fD1wuoU)
Above is the kit you want ;D Note that it's not even leaving furrows.. 'cos the field is so well maintained and the soil nice and crumbly but an excellent job of 'burying the trash'. You won't do that your first year!
Oh yes! I can definitely see that pulled by an MF 135, :innocent: :roflanim:
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKK-fD1wuoU (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKK-fD1wuoU)
Above is the kit you want ;D Note that it's not even leaving furrows.. 'cos the field is so well maintained and the soil nice and crumbly but an excellent job of 'burying the trash'. You won't do that your first year!
Oh yes! I can definitely see that pulled by an MF 135, :innocent: :roflanim:
It's not so much as how big it is ,but how you use it, looking at the video its been set very high,all down to the soil condition as LRR says
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My tractor is pnly 43HP too.. and with small front wheels to permit the loader.. well pick a day when the soil's heavy and the front wheels do the ploughing...
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We looked at no-till and do no-dig in our allotment but for the heavy clay ground we have, you really need to turn over the turf to have much chance of planting anything new, it's been rough pasture for decades.
The massey has draft control so a simple 2 blade plough sounds ideal.
I can ask my neighbour to plough for me at the moment but he's 70 and just had cancer surgery so I'm helping him on his farm and I'm aware that eventually I'll need to be able to do this sort of stuff for myself if we're going to carry on being self-sufficient-ish. The amount we'd want doing doesn't really warrant having a contractor come in. Same as we're going to get a disc cutter and haybob to be able to cut our own hay when we start having our own sheep.
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Well, I’ve almost convinced myself to buy a 2 furrow (2f) plough & I’m using Justin’s thread to throw out a few thoughts and seek any words of wisdom from old hands (or new hands)!
Budget is limited and it won’t be used greatly so it will be a fairly low-price “basic” new one or an old one.
I like the idea of owning an old, but ready to work, Fergy 2f plough: they look very usable (& quite cool !!!). I’m still searching for a good one within reasonable go-see distance (although there is one presently on radar – pic attached), but not many sellers can be bothered to arrange for courier delivery from their end = hassle.
So I’ve also re-done searches for new 2f ploughs and I keep coming back to this one (couple of pics attached and spec’s say 200mm max’ furrow depth and overall ploughing width of 400mm: no skim blades or coulter discs and mouldboard profile is not going to give (I seem to think) a really tidy furrow profile, but I’m not too worried about that as long as I can produce a good turn-over.
Pics attached of one nice-looking 2f Fergy for sale and of the new one I’m thinking about.
Any thoughts/advice anyone ?? I’m not worried about how the ploughing looks - I’m not about to enter ploughing competitions – I just want to achieve max’ turn-over/burying of meadow-grass/weeds.
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The expert in this family has said that the new plough will not have rusted bolts and should be straight whilst the old plough may be out of true and too set in its ways to adjust.
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The expert in this family has said that the new plough will not have rusted bolts and should be straight whilst the old plough may be out of true and too set in its ways to adjust.
Good advice, gratefully received. Affirms my thoughts about being within inspection-distance of any 2nd-hand plough (with tape-measures and rigid rules in hand).
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Much time spent ont' web past few days gleaning info about matching tractor/plough and set-up etc. I believe (hope) I've cracked it and calculate that the new plough I've been considering could be an almost perfect match for my tractor (without need to alter tractor wheel spacings). Taking forum advice into account (re old v new), I'm 90% certain I will place order.
I'm awaiting telecon with supplier to explain a few settings (as the manual will be in Polish !!), but I expect I will be satisfied with his explanations and will commit myself to the necessary £s.
(It won't be so well engineered/adjustable as, for example, a Fergy 2f plough, but heh!)
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Have had a good chat with plough supplier (machinerysalesEU) & the deed is done: new Polish-manufactured 2-furrow plough is on order @ £450 inc VAT & delivery.
I also ordered 1x spare plough-share at £24 VATin, thinking I'm bound to come across a "stone" large enough to take a chunk out of one of the shares before long. (While the old pastures have already been turned and trawled for rocks there will almost certainly be some still lurking !)
When I received invoice, supplier had included 2x spare plough-shares and then discounted them (= free). Now, how nice is that !? :) :)
I'm looking forward to receiving my new plough.
[Yeah yeah, I know; you only get what you pay for and £450 is a soft price for a bit a kit that is going to be put to very hard work. I'm quite optimistic though. Obviously I will report idc: lots of other things to do right now, so any report/verdict on my new plough will be a few weeks off.]
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Plough arrived yesterday: I just couldn't resist sticking the shares into the ground just for the hell of it (without much consideration regarding adjustments). :)
Well, that produced a right mess :D :D , which I was fully expecting, especially as I hadn't cleared (flailed) long top-growth in preparation for the quick test, but, on the up-side, Anika (my tractor) hardly noticed she had a 2-furrow plough attached. Overall ploughing width of 400mm (~16") is quite narrow, but still ... v happy tractor can draw easily without wheel weights etc!
On the down-side, I think I might need to widen Anika's wheel-track afterall - darn it !
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5 hrs today playing at ploughing and still working through settings by close of play ! (Would have been easier if not grassland I'm sure, but that's all I have to practice on.) Definitely getting closer though: the last run was looking half decent (well maybe that should be 1/3 decent :) ). Starting to realise that quite subtle tweaks can make a large difference to the way the plough runs.
Now re-reading Kverneland's Ploughing Guide (by Alan Jones) with today's experiences in mind and the primary reason for this post is to say (for any other ploughing novices) that Kverneland's guide is definitely worth downloading.
[Very lucky that the plough skipped over, rather than snagged on, the newly found 3x2' "moor-stone". Had expected that the contract-ploughing couple years ago would have found such big ones, but continuing caution will obviously be required. A bit of trial crow-barring suggests it will come out easily enough when I have a few more bodies to help: the "beer-buddy" work-party I'm organising thinks it will just be laying weed-membrane!! ;) ]