Hallo again! Sorry I've been off-line for a time. The reasons are nothing to do with your excellent company, being much more pragmatic and frankly tedious. So I won't bother to elaborate, but I have missed you all.
http://::)Like many, I suspect, I've been fascinated by the Victorian Farm programmes, and I eagerly look forward to every episode. I'm intrigued by the basic means to achieve things, often with minimal technology, just human effort. Or the sweat of a horse
http://:horse:. As keeping a horse isn't an option for me and I neither have the time, energy or stamina to do it all by my own effort, I'm stuck with machinery. OK, I also have a soft spot for things that rumble or rust, especially when they work well and make life easier....
http://Until recently I was the proud owner of two rotovators. The smaller one, a Mountfield M1, digs to about 6 inches, or 10 inches if you haul it backwards as it works, and allow it to sink in. It easily pulls itself out form that deep, as the cutters cut in the direction wheels would turn, if they were fitted. Holding it, and therefore using it, is itself hard work, and making it dig deep is eye-wateringly back-breaking. I sometimes thought it would be easier to double-dig the entire area by hand.... But it's excellent to turn and loosen soil prior to planting, and it makes short work of new weeds in ground that's been dug before.
There is a longstanding debate on whether rotovating is worthwhile, and I acknowledge that there is no better organic solution to weeds than to dig them out
http:// ???. Chopping them into small pieces with a machine merely creates thousands of small weeds in place of a few that were there before.... But working on ground that has been uncultivated for years is hard. Hand-digging solid, trampled, unworked ground is too much for me if it hasn't been loosened first by a machine.
That made me find a bigger machine. I was lucky to acquire a Howard Gem. It was old, neglected, and needed some work to make it run at all, but I saw that as a reasonable investment. People in the trade seem to regard the Gem as the archetype of the breed. It was solid, over-engineered, reliable, powerful, and effective. It easily digs to 10 inches, and can go deeper if needed. Having low-geared wheels moving it at a choice of three speeds, and a reverse gear to extricate it, it's perversely easier to use than the smaller machine. And despite its' age and patches of rust, many were apparently envious of my mechanical beast. That was until last week.
I won't bore you with all the minutiae, but suffice to say the machine was stolen
http://:'(. I went to service it and get it running for this season's digging, and found the garage empty. I should add that a lot of other property went the same way, so I'm making an insurance claim. Though much of what was taken was precious in its' own right, I could probably manage without some of it, so in reality I'm looking at investing more then the value of my Howard Gem in replacing it. Spoilt by the Gem, I don't want something puny.
I mentioned before, my partner and I have five allotment plots, just over 1/4 acre, and we're looking for some more land as well. Many of the machines I've looked at are less powerful and less robust, and don't seem up to the task. The amount of land and accessibility means a full sized tractor is silly
http://;D, so I looked into compact tractors like Kubota, Iseki, etc. But even those have a fair-sized 'footprint'. In their favour, they are multi-functional, and with standardised couplings and power-take-off they can do many more things than just rotovate. But the space needed to operate them reduces the space for growing, even if it is made easier....
After finding a spurious web-link that whetted my appetite I took special interest during our October holiday in Europe, and found two other possibilities. Both seem fairly common in Germany but amazingly rare anywhere else. One is a 'Vineyard tractor'. Imagine something even smaller than a 'compact tractor', and (usually) articulated in the middle, so they have a small 'footprint' and a tight turning circle. That means they waste less growing space. They also have standard couplings and PTO, like a compact, so they are just as versatile. The other possibility is a 'single axle tractor'. Like the engine end of a large rotovator, the machine can drive a rotovator, performing like a Howard Gem, but this machine can swap that for a range of other options. In their favour, they are even more manoeuverable than a vineyard tractor, having just one axle. But against that, the variety of other attachments have to be from the same stable, if not the same manufacturer. So, like the machines, the attachments are rare here. I don't have a problem travelling to Germany to get the basic machine, but I'd rather not have to go several times to collect attachments and spares.
So that's my dilemma. I could just buy another Gem. But this seems like a one-time opportunity to do something different, and get something that will dig, plough, rotovate, mow, and sundry other things. Has anyone any pearls of wisdom on the subject; good or bad experiences or sound advice? And does anyone know a place to get machines like these in the UK? Or, given that this forum is international, maybe someone in Europe can offer help or advice?
Another good outcome from the European holiday was the acquisition of some more grape-vines to add to the couple of dozen we already had. We're still creating the vineyard. Maybe the vines would feel more at home with a vineyard tractor to tend the land
http://;), but I don't want to buy a 'white elephant'! Unhappily, our ten cats thought we had left home by the time we came home from Germany in October
http://:D. They've just about forgiven us by now
http://:). That's animals for you
http://:cat:[flash=200,200] :cat:[flash=200,200] :cat:[/flash][/flash].
Happy times, John
Topic: Advice on machinery, please? (Read 7633 times)
