Well, this year’s harvest kicked off early with a couple of combine deliveries from the manufacturer very touch and go, but we got there. In making sure that these combines were delivered to our customers the casualty was our demonstrator, which arrived after all the customer combines and missed the first couple of weeks of action, so our apologies if we did not get to you.

At one stage it looked as if we could all be going on holiday in mid-August but it’s funny how nature has a way of squaring things up. The overall feeling seems pretty good, with better yields and better prices compared to last year – even with added drying costs. The balers have had a harder time with the straw being more of a challenge and few real drying days. The latest New Holland 1290 Plus balers went really well with good solid feedback on shape density and speed.

With the demise of New Holland at C&O Tractors we helped out a number of new customers who worked out we were their nearest dealer – and not as far away as they thought. As always the team all pulled together and went the extra mile to keep folks on the road. CNH helped by despatching parts overnight from all over the world, so to them and all our colleagues a big ‘thank you’. Here are a couple of photos from our combine demo – we also ran a harvest photo competition for our customers – results next month!

Pat Smith