April 4, 2022

I’ve pressed on through February – there is so little to do on my own farm and not a lot of jobs for other farmers either. The 1st was spent ploughing of a large field belonging to another neighbour. This time I was able to try out a Claas Axion 930 Terra Trac along with a Lemken Titan 18…

…It was an interesting comparison with the John Deere 8RT and Kverneland PW100 combination that I used on the previous post. I think I might mix and match when I get to that level of farming – the JD with the Lemken. Here’s the ploughing in progress with the village of Haut-Beyleron in the distance…

That job took the whole of Feb 1st (the equivalent of doing ploughing work for the first 9 days of a real month). But at least it looks like I was enjoying myself 😎…

Feb 2nd (middle 9 days) – I decided to spend some time preparing for sowing my own crop which I intend to do in the first week of March. I had hoped to convert the Randolph trailer that I own to flatbed but it isn’t possible (I guess that’s the price of the extra load-carrying capacity!). Time to talk again about Mods. When I go to the dealer in the village, I usually check what is on offer second hand. On this occasion I found a John Deere Gator 6×4 – available from the ModHub. At just under €8K I thought ‘Great – Just what I need for transporting things’ and bought it along with the container back. I also bought the seeds I needed and loaded them on board…

By the time I got back to the farm, the snow was settling and made for a nice winter scene as I unloaded…

The snow didn’t last and on a bright afternoon I spent the rest of the day sowing Cotton for another farmer using hired equipment and bringing in the seeds I’d bought with my own tractor to save some time🙄

That closed out the day so on the following morning I took on a couple of cultivating jobs…

Meanwhile, the Gator wasn’t a success for me. To cut a long story short, I hit a few minor problems while using it. The tipper function of the back didn’t always seem to be available. When I tried loading a big bag seed container, the game emptied loose seed into the back. Clearly some of the functionality wasn’t quite as I wanted it to be though whether that is the fault of the Mod design or me using it in ways that weren’t anticipated, I couldn’t say. So, sadly, I had go back to the dealer and sell it for a small loss. I may buy another later on – perhaps when I have things like Eggs to carry around? It was fun to whiz around in😉 I bought a second trailer instead and we’re back to doing things the traditional way 👍…