FARMING WITH AMY

Welcome to our new feature, starring local farmer, Amy 'Ginge' Wilkinson. Amy gives us an insight into life on her Southport farm and her honest opinion on the latest farming equipment.

So, when I was thinking about how to introduce myself, I thought of the two questions I get asked by the farmer every time I go contract baling. As there will hopefully be a lot of farmers reading this, and other people too, fingers crossed, I thought it’s a good way to start.

Question one – usually asked when I jump out the cab – probably because the last thing they expected was for a girl to appear. “Are you sure, you know what you are doing?” Driving a baler; yes, I do. Writing in a magazine however, I have no clue but here we are anyway. Question two. Being a red head, I can guarantee this question will always follow, “Does the temper match the hair?” The short answer is yes. Yes, it does. Now we have got that out of the way I can move on to the usual introduction stuff…

I am Amy Wilkinson and I farm with my Dad near Southport. We grow 285 Ha of arable crops and rear, through to finishing, around 550 beef cattle all bought in as dairy calves. We have been customers of Clarke & Pulman since they set up in 2003 and run Massey Ferguson’s and a JCB telehandler.

The reason I have the pleasure of being published in this magazine is because I have recently become a Clarke & Pulman ambassador. So you may see me on C&P social media testing out kit and giving my honest opinion. As well, you’ll see me supporting C&P customers’ businesses through our new feature, #C&Psupportlocal.

DEMONSTRATOR REVIEW

MASSEY FERGUSON 7360 COMBINE

I know harvest feels a long way away, but it will arrive faster than we all want it to.

The Massey Ferguson 7360 Combine is a newer version of what we already use on farm and we were lucky to use this demonstrator towards the end of September 2020. We found it to be everything we look for in a combine; efficient, well balanced, and compact enough to cause little compaction on our soils. One aspect we could not get over is how well this combine travels on wet ground. Harvest 2020, I think everyone can agree was a wash out, especially on our mossy Lancashire fields. But, this combine travelled on our wettest ground with little issue. I cannot do justice how wet these fields were and how astonished we were that this combine just kept going. It travelled better than our combine which we think travels well on our ground. The reason for this improved travel we thought was because the back wheels follow the drive wheels perfectly. Whereas on our model, the back wheels scuff on the ruts made by the drive wheels if it starts to sink, making it difficult to carrying on moving. A simple but effective change. The demonstrator combine came with a 20 ft header, however we found that using our 18ft header was a better fit. The bigger header made the combine feel front heavy and we also found the new automatic reel speed feature worked better on our smaller header. In terms of efficiency with the smaller header we could increase the speed meaning we covered the same amount of ground as we would have with the bigger header. With increasingly wetter summers becoming the norm, maybe it’s time to start switching to smaller, more compact combines that can travel in these conditions such as this Massey Ferguson 7360.