Mechanised Farming.

Well, it's a first. I've successfully attach a piece of rotating farm machinery with specific purpose to the back of my tractor and used it for that purpose of which the machine is intended....

The extra few inches I needed were readily available at rediculous expense from our local farm machinery shop in the form of a power-take-off extension, and look like this...

and not really surprisingly attach here

So that you can connect up the drive shaft between the PTO and the Potato harvester like this.

That was the easy bit. It took a little while to work out which levers I needed to put where, how to keep it at the right depth (the grounds not exactly level so there's a fair amount of adjustment under way) but after a little practice on a row I had already dug I set to work on a half dug row, with considerable success as you can see.

As I have previously stated the harvest is a little on the low side due to complete lack of care and weeding during the growing season but after a bit of to-ing and fro-ing I manage to harvest the rest of the short (double) row that I had already started digging.

The other rows are longer and slightly flatter so I hope with a little adjustment and better technique it will go better and faster and there'll be a tick on the jobs board before you know it..

If only I had another couple of inches....

What a difference a couple of inches on you shaft makes (OK, I'l stop it now, but it's sooo tempting)....


But anyway, if it was a couple of inches longer then, maybe just maybe, I'd have harvested the rest of the potato crop by now. We've been eating our own spuds since we got back from the Sert. The meals per plant rate is a little dissapointing, but given the neglect and the amount of weeds it's not surprising.

This particularly old and evil looking piece of equipment is an old fanshioned potato harvester, and it's been lying around in the barn ever since we moved in.


Not surprisingly it would appear it's only ever been used on the David Brown, which regular readers will know has been seized solid ever since we got it (with the property) and is in bits.

I've filed it with oil, greased it, got it moving freely and as you can see, managed to hitch it up to the Zetor but the drive shaft is too short.

I hope to be able to find a not too permenant solution for this, as I hope to get the David brown working before next summer, and it fits best on that.

I really would like to try this now, if it works, it will impact future plans for the layout of the veg garden....