[pgkevet]

Some of you have flat and and some have steeper bits. I have a mix that goes from valley floor to slopes and woodland and some marshy bits too. Middlefield hill, farfield hill and fiona hill all need topping two or three times a year to keep the bracken controlled. They vary from around 30 degrees to soem steeper bist that are as much as 40 degrees and with the ocassional gulley and dip there's a matter of camber even if trying to go straight up. I;ve seen Mr farmer do it for me in the past... a huge John deere with a 12 foot topper whisling along unconcernedly horizontal across the slope at speeds my tractor can't manage on the flat. But then he's not using a 40HP jobbie with loader arms and tiny front wheels to do the job.
My first lesson when I brought this place was "farm machinery has one purpose in life - to kill you." I learned that to be true the first time I tried to top along the fence line of oaktree field. It's not that much of a slope perhaps just 20 degrees but when a little front wheel finds the only hole in the long grass and you suddenly find your face is rapidly approaching the turf while you crank the tractor horizontal with the loader arms then you know that buying a safety cab wasn't  a waste of money.
A cab is nice .. specially if one has aircon in this weather. It's a shame that the aircon never works. It's either some fancy electronics or a dud switch or this time it was supposed to be 'just a loose drive belt' and it worked on the way back from the agri engineers.. for that whole day. But stopped working as soon as i hit the slopes.
We all commune with nature. I know I'm very popular. Especially popular with horse flies. They sing songs to their young about the sweet taste of my body fluids and blood. They write poems about the succulent and rare flavours to be had from me. They write lyrics describing the best bits to take a feed from and how to sneak down the front of a loose t-shirt or up a flopping trouser leg. Deet is your friend if you layer enough on while holding your breath - before you get dressed 'cos those sneaky flies will find the spot you missed!
Technique is everything. Go up the slope in reverse. That way if everything goes wrong you get a wonderful view of your impeding doom as the tractor hurtles along with Mr Newton pushing from behind.
Get the PTO running, select the gear that poor tractor can mount the rise with - and it's going to be slow. Then set the hand throttle to max as you start the uphill run. Someow it doesn't look that steep going up backwards. It might be because of all the stuff you have to occupy yourself with. It's the half twist in the seat, one hand on the wheel, the other adjusting the topper height while somehow curling that arm around the seat-back to stop yourself sliding off. Your feet are also twisted in the confines of the cab ready to slip the clutch if necessary. And then it's that slow slow plod upslope.
Once you get to the top of that run and twist back forwards you realise quite how mucking steep the hill is. You also realise that two or three trips up and down with the necessary twisting in the seat has an unfortunate effect on underwear. You would think that a quarter turn to the right and a quarter turn back would leave stuff as it was. But no. Somehow underwear keeps rotating. Now ladies may not appreciate the problem here but those of us with dangly bits find they get caught up and a 360 degree twist of the scrotum is .. painful. And naturally that final crimp will only happen just when you lurch into a rut or camber and cannot spare a hand down the pants to unravel bits... grit your teeth an sit on them.
I finished farfield hill today. I did it over three days spending  90 minutes each session. Middle field hill took four similar days. Fiona is the toughie - the scariest of them all. It's twice the distance of farfield and never less than 35 degrees.....

[Fleecewife]

Waxing lyrical pgkevet?  Being of the female persuasion I don't suffer the underwear entanglement problem (although my PJs do something similar when I'm asleep) but I do sympathise, of course I do     


You don't have to be on a slope for the little front wheels to find a previously undiscovered hole and tip you off - flat as a pancake will do it too.


Take care - that machinery is truly out to get you - inanimate malevolence!

[pgkevet]

I love reading your posts... you're a great storyteller!

That's very kind and inspires me to add part two:
Mr farmer used to top my slopes for me after he'd taken the hay although I try to do it myself 'cos he often leaves a while before doing the slopes and I like to get everything tidy.
I have a guy "from't village" that sometimes drives for me too and helps with logging and tidying the hedges because there really is a couple of miles of them.
The first year after Mr farmer had doe his bit I decided to top tight around the edges and around my swamp. I striped my way closer and closer to the swamp edge gauging how soggy it might be when suddenly tractor broke through the crust and sank cab floor deep. I walked back to the house for a phone "Er, Mr Farmer, Sir. Sorry Sir but I'm stuck. Any chance of a tow out?"
The next year I was way more cautious. I'd noted how close I'd got before the distaster and vowed to stay clear. That must have been a wetter year 'cos i wasn't anywhere near as far in. "Er, Mr Farmer, Sir. I've done it again, Sir...."
The year after that was quite dry. My chappie was about and offered to do the tidy up. I warned him about the swamp and he disdainfully pointed out that i was the amateur. "Er, Mr Farmer, please Sir it wasn't me this time..."
The next year Mr Farmer tidied it up himself with some huge behemoth that floated on low pressure tyres and happily criss-crossed the whole swamp and topped it all. "It's quicker than pulling you out."

[Perris]

so funny! 

[SallyintNorth]

I like part 2 even better than part 1

[pgkevet]

Another tow out.
Kevin's wife next door used to keep horses stabled. Now Kevin is one of those OCD folk when it comes to tidy. If a sycamore seed falls on his yard .. it's gone in seconds. I once dropped him off a wagon-load of green chip I'd salvaged from some arborists who kindly shot it into my wagon for me.  I just backed onto his yard and tipped it. I went back half an hour later and there wasn't a sign of it.. not a shredded leaf. It was all evenly spread over his raised veggie plots.

So it's no suprise that Kevin had cleaned out the stables every day and rather than have any odour near the house he'd carted it all down to the bottom of his 10 acre. He'd been doing that since the jurassic period and the heap down there looked like one of those turfed-over resevoirs - a long low wide pile of very aged horse waste.
When i found out about it I asked if there was any chance? Now Kevin didn't like anything mucky like that so i was welcome. A pile like that that had been maturing for decades turned out to be interesting. I'd maaged to slice of some of the top for my first wagon-load (about a cubic metre) and was there for soe more. The juices from this pile must have been soaking into the ground all that time and the first few runs with tractor had done a good job of stirring it up. I got stuck again. And this time even getting out of the cab put me beyond wellieboot depth into the soggy stuff. Not quite what we meant by 'fill your boots' when i was a leenager. It was a slow squelch out while reaching back to pull the boots from the quagmire.
Bless Kevin. He did try to pull me out - first with his mule which had no chance and then with a landie which did little apart from risk joining me in the mire. Yes, it was one of those calls to Mr Farmer.
It so happened he was passing but even the big tractor he had struggled to unstick me from the suction this time. When clear I made a sad noise about what a shame all that lovely muck I couldn't get at.
Mr Farmer gave me one of his long-suffering raised eyebrows but later that evening he rocked up at my place with a massive telehandler he'd used to bucket the stuff from a  safe distance and the wagon he'd loaded it into. Yes, another of his big-boy toys and some 10 or 12 or 15 cubic metres of the stuff which he unceremoniously dumped in one massive pile right in the middle of my veggie patch to be. It would have been churlish to suggest afterwards that it'd have been nice if he'd tipped it on the move instead of one pile.

Three days it took me with shovel and wheelbarrow to spread that around. Wheelbarrow load next to wheelbarrow load. The technique was basic..sidle up to the heap keeping a close eye on it and start shovelling from the edge. Of course that edge kept slipping closer. Wherever you took a shovelful  it reshaped itself like a bowl of soggy porridge threatening and succeeding) in overcoming wellie-boot tops at every opportunity. I gave up wearing socks after Mrs bluntly informed me not to come anywhere near her with them and burn them.
That was one heck of a growing season. I've never had weeds that strong and fast growing