Page 41 - The Farming Years proof

JUST BARLEY
During the previous 3 years we had gradually drained all the ara- ble land and had nished this year. This gives a better yield, ren- ders the land well drained and easy to work on and we applied and received the 37% subsidy towards the cost. At the same time, we removed hedges and ditches to give a ow for farming machin- ery. We ended with 56 tons of barley from the original land, sold at £91 a ton – £5096 total plus 2 tons for the horses.
1982
The main event this year is that we bought a new second-hand combine harvester – a new Holland M133 with a 10 ft xed cut- ter-bar. A much younger machine than the M80 and bigger. We bought it through Wards, the dealers, and they delivered it on a low-loader trailer and took the old M80 away in part exchange.
Understandably, the concave was a bit worn and to make it fully effective we used an industrial vacuum cleaner to vacuum out the thrashing drum and concave to get rid of the accumulated straw. This was done daily when harvesting to ensure 100% thrashing. It cost £1,250 with a £100 allowance on the old M80. Hopefully, the depreciation in the accounts had written the M80 down to this gure.
The year’s yield was 85.6 tons of barley at £101 a ton making a total of £8,652 with 2 tons kept back for the horses.
1983
At this time I did a study of waste disposal costs for the company. Probably with a thought of alternative bene t. I found I could justify buying a heavily discounted Ford 7000 tractor and two twin wheeled 7 ton trailers for waste disposal to the local tip as a cheap- er alternative to sub-contracting the service. Jim managed to run this in with his daily closing room delivery service.
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