spikeymikey

we run massey tractors at home ( all beuvais built ones) and they have a stepped pto start up so instead of engaging at full whack they gradually speed up to avoid stressing the implement or tractor. We have also got an old 135 on the straw chopper and that wont have it on the pto start up so you have to tear down the yard in land speed get the flywheel going and then knock it up into live drive and away she goes. If something is likely to stall I would gradually feed it in and out a few times to get it moving then away you go

I don't use the laser to get posts in line, I use it to get the right angles, it has a beam coming out the front and another at 90 degrees. you put a special reflective plate opposite the laser at the other end where you want it and line the beam up in the middle, then mark it with a peg. Take the reflective plate to the other corner and line it up again, giving you a perfect corner from which to work from. you have to set it up over your first corner peg with a red dot coming from the bottom. You then have 3 points and the rest you work out with a tape. Then I use a string line and a rotating level to get the heights the same all over. Can use Pythagoras theorem too but takes a bit longer

on a bit of a tangent, one thing that gets me a little bit is that the church are always pleading poverty and a lot of people do a lot for them for noting which is good and don't get me wrong im all for it. However they are the biggest and richest landowners in the country who don't think twice about screwing over the tenant farmer when strutt parker tell them that they should be charging over £200/ac and if the family who has been farming there for generations cant pay they have to get out! so I wouldn't be that worried about charging them decent rates!

I do a lot of riding arenas and use it all the time, trying to eye in posts over 60 metres isn't good for your eyes! and getting a string tight enough not to sag over that distance is impossible. I also use another laser for setting out the corners which is a lot quicker. you can get levels that will do slopes too, never used it for stock fencing though! use barb or plain wire tight as a line and that rides out all the harsh bumps for a nice flow

Heres one I refurbed earlier in the year. What you need is two concrete plinths either end and some good, big rsj's, this one had 5 set in the concrete. I ripped off the old ones with the tractor and laid the new ones as we went so we could drive across to keep dropping sleepers. They are bolted up from underneath and there are two long angle irons either side with holes to bolt each sleeper with 12mm coach screws. I then did a maize of 3.15mm wire all round it and stapled down to help hold all together. There are 50 sleepers on this bridge, they were grade 1 hardwood from mcveighs, paid £16.80 each + vat and they are good ones. Quite a nice little job really, I reckon this would take 10t easy

Its very good, very condensed material wise compared to using timber and very easy to go up. whether its that much quicker than conventional stock fencing in good conditions im not sure. You don't need many tools and as long as you can drive the strainers in the inters are easy. You will need a gripple tool though and I would specify the g-pac 4mm and not the 3mm that they come with as due to the way the strainers work there is a lot of pressure on them and I have had a couple break. I mentioned this to McVeigh advising they weren't man enough. Price wise its very comparible with hc4 timber but gets expensive when you have a lot of direction changes and need a lot of strainers (nearly £70 for a two way strainer). They say that the beefy posts are good enough for direction changes up to 30 degress but they are not and the fence will pull them in! I have found that gently curving the lines works better and spreading the bend across a few posts, not something I would do normally though. Try some and see how you get on!

Thanks Doobin! I had to use what the mod supplied, I was expecting chesnut for the whole job but it was all softwood apart from the struts, which were fresh out of their woods.

I find that box strainers generally work everywhere. If its boggy and wet then digging the strut in and using a wedge imo doesn't always work if the soil is not good enough to support it, then when its hard you can sometimes barely get your wedge in far without splitting it. I quite often use diagonal braces but will drive a full length post in at an angle like you would a wedge and wire it back to the bottom of the strainer so it cant be pushed through the ground. Also I mortice the struts in, cutting a notch is no good as the cattle can knock them out, don't use any nails at all. The best bit is though, you don't have to dig a hole evertime you want to strut! and as for sheep breaking two strands of 3.15ht wire, I would like to see them try!

They routinely spray cereal crops off prior to harvest to assist crop drying.

Yeah I do it every year on the rape as routine and sometimes in the wheat, barley or beans either to aid even ripening or to get rid of any rubbish (weeds) in the crop that slow combining down. your not supposed to spray when the grain is soft (30% mc or more) as the grain can absorb it at this stage. If not roundup sometimes use reglone which is a harvest aid and dries the crop out within days but is much more expensive and in crops such as osr it can make the pods too brittle and you will be getting pod shatter and losses 10ft in front of the combine. We couldn't farm like we do without glyphosate, a very different practise would be needed.

Ehhh

 

You cant eat anything that's been sprayed with roundup

Are you joking?? what about oilseed rape, wheat, peas, beans?? then there is the residue in the straw that the cattle will eat and it goes on! and the roundup is only the half of it!

I wouldn't say its weird that it has not been banned for farmers! not sure what I would do without roundup! grow some more blackgrass I expect. Glyphosate must be the most widely used ag chem, I would like to know exactly how much is used every year in the uk, it would be a lot!

A few pics of todays little job, 150m with two gates on some MOD ground

I have found the slack wires quite a problem if using cheap netting and you can tell as soon as you unroll it if its a bad one, if this is the case I just send it back. I wont use it now unless the customer (farmers!) supply it! I will use x fence where possible as by far the best netting to work with imo and pulls up lovely! If you use the 8-80-22 lamb friendly it is much the same price as another good quality ht net.

Agreed the gripple is a mighty fine invention, I went back to a job the other day which I did 4 years ago it was only 100m but I was a bit dissapointed to find the gripples had lost a bit of tension, its just a case of tightening them back up and tieing off the tails but still.

How much are the Gpaks to buy?

The last box I bought they were £4.50 each for the 4mm ones with a large gripple. Probably being lazy but so much easier than faffing around with ht wire on a spool and nearly poking your eyes out frequently. I am convinced the labour saving more than compensates for the extra cost!

Also has anyone been using the clipex fencing, I did my first bit a couple of weeks ago and its pretty good. We did 240m with just hand tools, there were two of us, started after 9 and we were done by 3. It was one run so pretty easy but still goes up quite fast. I think on really bendy runs the cost of strainers can kill it but on decent straight ish runs I can do it supply and erect for under a £5er/metre + vat. A lot of sheep farmers who rent ground like it as when their tenancy ceases they can pull it out and take it with them.

I have heard of the water and freezing issue but not sure if ive had this problem. They can slip on ht wire as it is that much harder and more difficult for the ceramic wheel to grip, this is why the g-pacs are good as I find it grips the wire rope well. I have been on to gripple several times about the problems I have had but the convenience still seems to outweigh the negatives!

Nice work there Aaron, just out of interest are you using medium gripple plus's on those box strainers? I did a load once with medium gripples and 3.15ht and nearly half of the box strainers failed because it pulled the gripples apart. I will only use jumbos now or put two mediums in line. Having said that I now mainly allow for g-pac 4's in the price as they are so quick and easy and never had one break.....yet!

You do have to be a bit careful with gripples as they are far from 100% reliable.

It could just be friends or family helping them out? weve all done a bit of that

It has to be pretty wet to get the drive wheels to slip inside the tracks and it usually only happens in reverse. If your that worried just snatch another tractor on the front of the challenger (no longer anything to do with Cat btw). As a farmer myself as its been said if it can be done cheaper it will! Im surprised he doesn't just do it himself one morning before they go off combining! Ive pulled some big old poplars over with a 220hp massey with a lash up of all the chains and cable I could find about the yard. All you need to remember is once your committed don't hesitate and back off, give it all shes got!

As well as my tracked knocker I have got an Atlas Copco hand held hydraulic post driver which can run off a power pack or anything with at least 30lpm flow. It works really well and will take up to a 4" round or a 5x3 square sawn. Its handy for getting in where you cant with a machine. Im not sure how the old parmiters manage to hold their money so much, as they are quite ok but modern ones are so much better. The proper parmiter contractors were all completely hydraulic with hydraulic legs, sliding head stock and the 250kg square weight. An orange one made £500 at a sale recently

McVeigh parker, £17.86 + vat for grade A reclaimed hardwood sleepers, good ones too.

Well that was only including one gate and we had to leave 3 bays and another gate out so that the lorrys could get in! the site was levelled off with a laser so it was pretty flat so all the posts went in the same height. This is the only time I really use it for fencing, although it is quite handy when you are doing dug in double gates as it makes it a lot easier. For most field post and rail it wouldn't be suitable as you have to follow the contours of the ground as you know. I use my stick and eye in from where the next post is going and work back from there if that makes sense.

Thanks Matthew, Yeah we drove them all in, 7ft posts and used the lazer lever to get it all the right height! we had all the posts knocked in and rails and boards up in a day with 4 of us, 2 knocking and 2 railing up. I find it much easier knocking them in than concreting.

Just a couple more

Thanks, yeah I used to always leave an inch but thought it looks a bit smoother with the rails flush. Makes for a good fence with those 4-5" 6' posts though, pretty solid.