Our Blog

THURSDAY 5TH FEBRUARY 2010

Some very sad news broke today with the announcement in the press of the decision by Bird's Eye to cease growing peas in Norfolk and Suffolk with immeditate effesct despite the fact that many growers already had the seed ready to begin planting this years crop within the next couple of weeks. For some 68 years peas have been grown on farms in a two and a half mile radius of the Suffolk town of Lowestoft and been brought in to, originally Bird's Eye's own factory and then in later years, to the Salvesons factory for freezing. The announcement has come as a great shock to all those invovled in the harvesting operation run by Anglian Pea Growers who operate a fleet of seven PMC harvesters and also had one brand new machine on order for the coming season. The pea harvest has been part of the farming scene in this area for well over half a decade and it was also our favourite harvesting operation by far and in fact was the very reason for Jonathan's interest in tractors and farm machinery when he saw two Muir-Hill 101 tractors and Mather & Platt trailed viners harvesting the crop when he was very young. Over the years the pea operation in Lowestoft has shrunk with first Mortons and then the Co-op finishing their own involvement in the crop, but the biggest acreage has always been that of Bird's Eye who were instrumental in helping develop many FMC pea harvesters over the years in the Lowestoft area and had continued doing so in recent years with the sophiticated PMC 979CT viners. It is indeed a sad day and without doubt the end of an era.

THE DOE SHOW

Despite a very wet first day the 50th Doe Show held by dealers Ernest Doe & Son at Ulting in Essex was once again a great success and we managed to film and photograph all the action during the course of two days. The main highlights included the Doe Triple D, 130 and 150 working together along with a very rare six cylinder Doe D5100 tractor as well as the brand new New Holland T7070 and T6090 being put through their paces with Lemken ploughs together with a Case IH Puma 155 and 225. Static exhibits included a hydrogen powered New Holland concept machine and a specially painted Case IH Maxxum 140 that was being auctioned off to raise money for cancer charity Myeloma UK.

SATURDAY 30TH JANUARY 2010

We are happy to report that our next DVD 'Modern Tractors 2' is now back from the replicators and ready for sale, packed full of modern tractor action and completeing the story begun in Part One.

Today though we were concentrating on our next project which has already been in the editing process since the beginning of the year. Unfortunately the weather intervened and we could not film the introduction and other links due to the very bad weather. But time has been moving on and so we decided that we would film these pieces to camera for the Leyland Tractors DVD this weekend whatever the weather - which is why on a very cold, frosty, icy and snowy morning we could be found getting reluctant batteries to start reluctant diesel engines so that we could manouver our tractor fleet into position for filming!

All went well though and we were rewarded with a day full of brilliant sunshine - what more could you ask for!