Billhook

S Someone suggested that it may have been shot at by one of the local trout farmers. Apparently legal to shoot them if they are taking fish from a business??

Heron looked to be asleep in the lane and looked soaked and unhappy in the heavy rain yesterday

The Track Marshall 90 was 90 Perkins hp, which is not much compared to the 170hp Cummins in the Fastrac. The 1174 had about 120hp and the 1474 about 160 hp. The TM had differential steering with levers which is the reason nobody has ever beaten me at arm wrestling! Now the D7 for all its size and weight has a beautiful hydraulic assisted pair of clutches and brakes to turn the machine on a sixpence. It only has 120 hp but it is 14 litres with a huge stroke in each of the 3.5 litre cylinders. Max revs is 900. A County 1474 short nose was just sold recently to a collector near here for £205,000! I still have an 1124 with roof crane for forestry. Even the Countys and Cat D7 would have gone down this wet spring hole but at least the Cat has the Hyster winch with over 30,000 lbs of pull to recover itself! The tyres on the !474 were only 18.4/34 compared to the Fastrac 540/65 R30. I would choose the Fastrac every time with electric hydraulics, proper draft control, aircon, and suspension that leaves you in better condition at the end of a 10 hour day than all the others! I was only doing the headlands which were messed up in all that rain we had a few years back. So they were very hard having not been cultivated for some time, full of ruts, sloping a lot and heavy hard dry clay , until of course I hit the spring! We are going to sow them with Miscanthus so that hopefully will be the last time they are ploughed

To be fair to the Fastrac, it is well balanced with that massive weight on the front, and I have ploughed the farm for the last fifty odd years with a variety of tractors starting with a two furrow reversible on a Massey 185, to a Track Marshall 90 with 4 furrow trailed, County 1174, 1184 and 1474, Caterpillar D7 with tool carrier. The Fastrac is the best so far with the Besson plough behind The problem here was a Spring hole and although I was able to drive the Fastrac and plough over the crust with the plough in the air, as soon as I started ploughing it broke through and then it is like trying to break out of a swimming pool as all the ground around is dry and rock hard. The heavy clay soon turned the new tyres into slicks. A few years ago in similar dry conditions a New Holland TF 46 put one wheel in one of these Spring holes and it still was stuck fast with two 150 hp Massey tractors chained together plus the combine wheel turning. The D7 did pull it out quite easily but it weighs twenty tons and has a shed load of torque. Anyway today it has pissed down so much I think that the tractor will be in the shed for the time being!

Needed to plough some poor land while it was so dry. So dry in fact that it broke the two shear bolts on the rear pair of shares, Big mistake! Matbro to the rescue but even it could not pull me out forwards so it had to be towed out backwards New tyres turned into slicks!

I am well aware of the problems of battery tools and rain after losing my Bosch cordless due to carelessness but in this case I had left the saw with a colleague as I had to do another job expecting him to put the saw and battery under cover after work but he did not, probably because it is so dry here over the last few weeks as we have had no rain

In fact any electric saw if left out in the rain. Has anybody had a problem? I knackered my Bosch Cordless drill after trying to use it after it had been caught out in just a small shower i wondered if Stihl had waterproofed the batteries somehow I will borrow my wife’s hair drier and give the battery a day or two before I next use it

Sorry RH, I did not see that you beat me to it!

Nah, it's restin'.

I used to be on about 12 cu meters, but then I became married and all of a sudden I am up to Trigger Andy's consumption!

It may be that electricity demand causes power cuts and gas limitations Has there ever been a gas cut or is that too dangerous?

Since over half our electricity is powered by gas and nuclear seems to not be a popular option, how are we going to heat ourselves economically if gas is to be phased out Capital cost is a major factor with Ground/air source or Stirling as I am lead to believe that a conventional radiator system would never deliver enough heat. All the floors would need to be ripped up and replaced with underfloor heating to be effective. We will have to wrap up well like our ancestors with lots of woolly sweaters. Oh no , I just remembered, sheep are being phased out as well, too inefficient and too much farting I am told!

CHP seems to be fired by gas , which I thought is to be phased out apart from being expensive Combined Heat and Power (CHP) | Cogeneration | Centrica Business Solutions WWW.CENTRICABUSINESSSOLUTIONS.COM Improve your resilience and reduce energy spend with Combined Heat and Power (CHP), also known as...

Not like a farmer to be optimistic but perhaps with the current hike in gas and electricity prices, coupled with the net zero initiative and the move to all electric cars, people may find it hard to pay the increases to keep warm. Keeping warm is the greatest cost. I see they had to fire up a coal power plant recently as the wind power had faded. Gas being phased out and the electric demand will no doubt cause power cuts what d’y’all think?

Swallows lining up ready for off today. They sit around for the last few weeks of North Wind and cloud and then decide to leave as soon as the sun comes out! Never did understand birds (of any variety!)

Was it something you said??

Many Swallows this year, more than I have ever seen , but not a single House Martin A few Swifts, about average

We had an Osprey visit our little lake for about seven years in succession. The lake is full of little silver Rudd and I think he treated it a bit like a motorway services on his cruise round from Rutland Water. They are about the same size as a Buzzard but have narrower wider wings which are cranked when gliding. They are far better fliers than the clumsy Buzzards. We have about three pairs of Buzzards here and I have never seen them catch anything on the move, just carrion. They did take offence at the presence of the Osprey and I have an analogue video of two of them swooping down at the Osprey. The Osprey hardly seemed to move its wings but put a good distance between the diving buzzard which ended up in an untidy mess before recovering to have another go After the third attack the Osprey had clearly had enough and rolled over onto its back in mid flight and showed the Buzzard its talons! That seemed to work! I slept one night down at the log cabin and managed to take a short clip of it picking up a Silver Rudd with one talon but again it is on analogue so I must have it digitalised to put up on here. The clip is not that impressive as the camera cannot decide what to focus on The diving buzzards is a better clip.

Our Swallows seem to have done particularly well this year in spite of a very late start. The was a gathering of maybe fifty or more around the yard and many were lining up on the electric wire as they would normally do in September. Have not seen a House Martin. IMG_1617.MOV

Number one photo with the clean looking sprocket is his 391 Number two with the worn sprocket is my old 340 Then his oiler working followed by the obvious difference between the saws on the same bit of wood His still produced quite big chips but is struggling with the same bit of sycamore I think his engine is poorly tuned which adds to the problems IMG_1604.MOV IMG_1605.MOV IMG_1606.MOV

Buggery bollocks, the old cock pheasant has rumbled my anti squirrel electric shock system and has invented a “Nut raining system” ! IMG_1593.MOV

The correct Sherlock Holmes quote! “Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.” - Sherlock Homes”

Well he came back yesterday but had not had time to go to the local saw doctor, so I fished around in my mass of junk in the stores and found an identical set of spikes. Fitted them and attacked the nearest big log which was a twenty inch diameter bit of lime. It cut through it straight and had nice big chips, but was reluctant to go easily and made relatively hard work compared to the 340 on the same log. His bar was too hot for the back of my hand after one cut from cold whereas mine was only just warm on the 340 Anyway that rules out spikes as the main problem and so we are now looking for something that is not immediately obvious There is nothing visibly wrong with the studs and the cover slides on easily. Nothing seems to be wrong with the sprocket though I need more advice on how to check that So could the whole saw body be distorted somehow with no evidence of plastic cracking or other damage? He seems to think that the 340 has always pulled a lot better even though it is 56cc and his is 64 cc. He uses my saw now and it cuts fine so it is not the operator As he says the 340 just wants to go to work whereas his does not. ( a bit like me some days!) So we have ruled out the bars and chains which are identical, bought at the same time, swapped them over and the 340 drives his bar and chain exactly the same as my bar His oiler visibly is working with the bar off and makes a nice line with the bar on against a board. We both use Stihl oil As Holmes would say “ When you have ruled out all possibilities, then the conclusion, however improbable, has to be the answer”

You may well be right Rob. But we carefully checked the oiler both bar off and with chain running against a board showing a line of oil being thrown out in the conventional test. And yes it did heat up quickly. It did not seem to want to go into the log in the same way as the 340 . When it did cut, there were nice big chips coming off, but then it stopped cutting and heated up I suspect because he was trying to force it a bit into the log to make it cut which twisted the saw enough to cause the friction, the twist being caused by the bent teeth. You would have thought that the log damage when it fell on the saw would be more apparent in either damage to the, sprocket, the cover or making the cover difficult to fit if the studs had been tweaked. It is one thing at a time at the moment and he hopefully is coming back to work on Wednesday with a new spike fitted ready for the test. At the moment the spike is the only visible damage but I agree that I could be distracted by my theory and have missed something more obvious.

Think I am becoming a Canada goose whisperer! They certainly communicate very well. Now I see in the first video where the female gosling takes her first short flight and lands in a heap, her three brothers are definitely scolding her Downwind checks “Brakes, undercarriage, mixture rich, harnesses and hatches, fuel sufficient for overshoot” In the second video there is definite praise for a perfect waterski landing. She has done three more water landings and there is no praise any more, done that , once is enough! The young males have not flown yet so all credit to the little girl leading by example! The other amazing bit of communication was when they were all around me feeding out of my hand. The gander will take it from my hand but is still fairly wild. This time he was keeping watch about five yards away and gave a couple of low grunts and as one all six of them rushed down to the water’s edge, not going in the water and all staring at something away from me and towards the hedge and the field beyond about a hundred yards away I looked hard but could see nothing, but they seemed insistent so whether it was a fox or another predator they had seen or maybe heard I do not know. I think that one of the reasons they tolerate my presence is that they feel safer from their enemies. But it was the way they all rushed together as though it had been rehearsed that impressed , perhaps it was just instinct.