The Fordson Tractor Pages Forum

Beautiful part of the world, Richard, made even more beautiful by your faultless ploughing.
Greetings from Blighty.
Best, Adrian.

Thanks for that, Adrian!
Faultless it ain't, but I am Very pleased you like it!

Rick,
I had more photos, but deleted all the URL stuff when pictures didn't show up. How do I attach them, or make them viewable as you did the last one?

(Bearing in mind I'm more 19th C than 21st....)

Thanks again!

One more try at pics;
https://preview.ibb.co/gCDfCp/DSCN1899.jpgrl
https://preview.ibb.co/jOimk9/DSCN1897.jpgurl

Wow, seems to be kind of working!
Last pic;
https://preview.ibb.co/je8xsp/DSCN1900.jpgurl

Richard, 'faultless' as a description may have been slightly hyperbolic (language Timothy!), but looking at your new images, I'm still looking for the faults!
Thanks again for posting the images. They are inspiring. I particularly like the frost.
Best, Adrian.

Adrian,

I'd give my eye teeth for a Ransomes plough for the FSM or Power Major!!

Again, pleased you enjoyed the pics!

This spring, my first time ploughing ever.
Hopefully I will continue in a month or so.
https://youtu.be/7hlhG1GpzSY

Thought you might like to see some 'ahem' real ploughing - does this fall into the high cut category ?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZTYc8yDRdo

The diesel on the plough is purely for hydraulics for steerage BTW

How many Majors hitched in front would shift this ?? (if they didn't break through the peat crust)

Bloody hell, Rick! They are going to a lot of trouble to bury the topsoil. Don't get it.
Great engines, though.
Best, Adrian.

Its heath reclamation Adrian, peat over sand so they are trying to mix it up rather than bury it, not wet peat like the fens where much is over clay, such a shame it is silent as they are high pressure duplex engines. not the compounds we are used to where the exhaust is much softer. I expect Ransomes shares and mouldboards would have been a bit less rustic, they are bound to have made something similar !

Ottomeyer had a set running until the 1970's which have been preserved along with the plough.

I've seen similar using 4 D8 / D9 crawlers (putting up much more black smoke) but not in Norfolk or Suffolk

Thanks for the info, Rick. Would this kind of soil lend itself to root crops the other side of this process?
Re the engines, does steam provide greater torque over diesel?
Best, Adrian.

Well, That looks some serious kit, the mouldboard looks like a converted battleship!
I'd like to have seen it "slipeing" better, (Turning over) but the furrow looks like a good drainage ditch so it is getting the job done.
You could certainly bury all your troubles with it!
Neighbour on farm in the North Riding ploughed his peat -land deep, and it did a good job, as underlying was sand, then a "cat muck" clay.
When mixed together it would grow most crops, but on its own it didn't like to.
Mind, he wasn't ploughing This deep!

I'm learning a lot here, Richard. Thanks so much.
Seems to me that light soils throw up as many challenges as clay.
All best, Adrian.

There are obviously lots of ploughing videos on YouTube, and this is one of the best I have seen - it's filmed by someone who is sowing [I would guess, wheat] with maybe a power-harrow/seed drill combination. It shows the frustration caused when your plough gets choked with weeds, or lumps of muck, or what looks here like wet un-baled straw. You can almost hear the expletives from here!
To me, the cameraman seems a little too close behind the plough, because every time he has to stop, there will be a little patch of land un-sown.. He should stop and have a sandwich

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_PpC5-Iyblc

Note how the ploughman tries to spread out the lumps of straw on the unploughed land, so that hopefully the plough can bury them on the next pass. The stuff would actually flow through the plough better if he could run a bit slower..

It's also worth mentioning the 'shuttle' transmissions of modern tractors, you can see how he goes from forward to reverse to forward without touching the brake or throttle.

Bob,
A set of spring-tined (pig -tail) harrows on a diagonal would have sorted that straw out.

Even if it was wet, a couple of passes would level it out a bit.
With my trailed plough straw like that would be murder!

Richard.

You may joke about Battleships, Richard, the one time I lost my composure professionally was with the chief engineer of a German fish factory who's production guys had managed to break the upright part of the frame of a 50 ton hydraulic fish press, stainless (403 IIRC) inch thick plates 4 off on each side, in a clearly visible area and they had worked it until 3 of the four plates had fractured ! His guys veed it out and welded it up again, lasted a shift so they veed it out welded it and then welded a couple of plates over the weld, that lasted a week (and his guys were good welders) THEN he rang me for advice, well we had seen the same elsewhere and our design guys had come up with a cover plate with two 6" circular holes like a figure 8 so you welded these either side of the break, faxed drawings had a few conversations and they decided they would send it out so their efforts could be milled off. Had a phone call the following week, my German is poor, his is excellent, conversation went 'we are running again, we had it controlled (repaired) at the weekend with Hamburgers' that was the point at which I lost it, so much so a colleague took over the call until I could stop laughing, when back in some sort of control I picked up with him and obviously he wanted to know what was so funny (unlike many in his position he was a really nice chap and we got on well) so I explained the mental image and it was his turn to have a fit of hysterics, turns out they had subbed the job to Blohm & Voss, I asked if that was the shipyard which built the Bismark amongst much else and the reply was "yes and we think they may have used some old plates left over from the Bismark for our repair' I saw it a couple of months later and it looked rough old plate but it was stainless, the welding was faultless and last I heard it had clocked up twice the hours it had run before the repair.

The plant was on the edge of Luneberg Heath where Ottomeyers made their reputations for heath land reclaimation and I had numerous coffees in his office overlooking some nice agricultural land and wishing I'd been there in the days of steam ploughing

Why press fish ? It comes ashore from factory ships in international standard 7.5Kg deep frozen blocks, there are only so many rectangular or square portion dimensions which can be sawn out without wastage and one fish finger looks much like another, Stick a frozen fish in a sculpted die and hit it with 50 tons it comes out looking like a fillet, novelty shape, nuggets or run it through twice and you can create a cavity which can be filled with a flavoured butter or sauce and a lid can be formed on top = Kievs - batter and breadcrumb, flash fry and consumers cannot tell the difference from a real fillet, they are all the same size and weight so packing & cooking times can be standardised.

A bit off topic from ploughing (sorry Adrian) but a tenuous link

Off topic a bit, but interesting and made me smile Rick!

Speaking of the Bismark, I have an Uncle still on HMS Hood. Petty Officer Cyril Warf. ("Don't worry Mam!...It's unsinkable!" he said.)

Heading back into the direction of the original topic;
When our farm near Ormesby was taken for building, we moved to a farm near Scarborough. (N. Yorks) The previous owner was a submarine commander in the war, and His father broke up large sections of the Russian Steppes after the revolution......................With Steam ploughing. (There, we Are back!)

I had a good friend who survived the Hood and carried the guilt of not remaining with it like your uncle Richard, until his passing a few years back he packed a lot into his years and once told me he was trying to live on behalf of those denied the chance. RIP Roy & Cyril.

Before the advent of multi share tractor ploughs the area of ground 5 - 8 furrow steam tackle could work in a day must have seemed like magic to the old boys who had spent their lives plodding after a hoss, barely scratching an acre a day.

Something which surprised me when first riding a steam plough that I'd never thought of on a tractor was, without engine noise the varying sounds of the ground rubbing past the shares was quite pronounced and stony, sandy or clayey patches could be clearly heard and felt.

Automatic horseradish sauce , bale rolling in suffolk , david browns on a fordson site i dont know what the worlds coming to. As for buzzards we have them up here big enough to take small children. Just returned from a week in bogside on bure in the caravan, made enquiries to the location of oehrick but to no avail. I believe he is a robot

Thanks for the informative contribution.

Hi Scarecrow

You should have posted here that you were caravaning in B on B and I'd have broached a bottle of horserubbish whine to welcome a fellow forumite (Brian is the horseradish sauce expert) it seems likely that you may have asked a visitor as all the residents and even some of the second homers would have put you right, plus the 'Fordson Major Owner lives here' sign on the workshop, E1A wheel and tyre in the yard and as of yesterday entire E1A in the yard are a pretty heavy hint.

As for being a robot, DOES NOT COMPUTE....DOES NOT COMPUTE....DOES NOT COMPUTE....DOES NOT COMPUTE....DOES NOT COMPUTE....DOES NOT COMPUTE....

Apologies if I missed a running joke here. Shouldn't have been po-faced!
Best, Adrian.

No not a long running joke Adrian, but scarecrow is a fairly infrequent poster with a similar sense of humour

The Selene did it without problem. Really funny.
https://youtu.be/CeR1X_wTL0Q

Nice - coming off there like rashers of bacon