Days 38 & 39

I don't know if these really count as Nuffield travels, but I will scribble about them anyway. If nothing else, the locations were incredibly exotic.These visits were only quick stops, to look at some machinery - two drills to be exact. The first, in Leicestershire, is a John Deere, and the second a Pillar Laser.These are both interesting tools, with strong North American roots. The John Deere uses their standard single disc openers, the same that you can buy on a standard UK 750a. The difference is that JD only make machines up to 6m wide - if you want them to fit on our little European sized roads. In the rest of the world they make much bigger versions, but they are all 4m+ wide when folded.When this drill was born in the US, it was 40ft (12m) wide. Last year it was imported to the UK by a guy called Steve Heard, who then spent all winter in the workshop (he claims to not know how long) cutting, welding and modifying. A bit later it popped out, having been reduced to 9m, and the fold had been changed to make it legal on our roads. One key point is that there is a separate tank for fertiliser; something the official UK machines do not offer.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zzlsjKeHi-oWatch in HD for best effectSo what's it like? Well, the openers are well known and well proven; there's nothing new here apart from custom made closing wheels, that seem to work well. It looks like a brilliantly engineered solution, but one that would be beyond most peoples' capability to make on farm. One potential question is how much weight can it put on to the discs? A 750a can manage ~200kg per opener (when the seed tank is empty). This drill can take a lot of weight off the seed tank wheels - so much so that when I visited two of the rams were bent from doing just that, and were awaiting repair. My suspicion is that there is not enough weight as is, but adding more to the frame as needed should be trivial because there is plenty of space to do it. Overall it's a great idea, and done to a level that looks as if it came straight from the JD factory - very impressive.My second visit was in Dorset, and it was to see a Pillar Laser in action. You will of course remember that I almost went to the factory in Canada back on Day 30, but I did visit a farmer who was a user. This drill is the only one in the UK (possibly Europe too?) so I was very keen to actually see it in action.The first thing to greet me was a great looking field of rapeseed. It had been drilled on August 28th and looked excellent - certainly the best crop I have seen this year. The drill must be alright to be able to do this, but to be fair there had been quite a lot of starter fertiliser (100kg of placed DAP) and chicken muck in the spring too. It also doesn't look like flea beetle is a problem in the part of Dorset.The Laser has two main selling points. The main one is that it combines the lower disturbance of a disc drill with the ability of a tine (or hoe as they say in Canada) to place seed into clean soil. The second is that the seed and fertiliser are separated, both vertically and horizontally. The fertiliser is dropped down directly in the shadow of the disc, and the seed onto a little ledge created by the small winged tine. The photo above shows it pretty clearly (this seed had been blown out when stationary, it would not normally be left on top of the ground).You have to be dedicated to buy one of these drills to use here. Pillar do not make machines that fold to UK sizes (sound familiar?) so it will always be necessary to get your own frame made up, and then attach the openers afterwards. One benefit of the design is that because the discs have a double angle, which can be seen in the photo four up from here, they pull themselves into the ground. This means that weight is not needed for penetration, unlike the JD (or a Cross Slot). Hence the frame can be much simpler, and the seed cart can be a separate unit. This could be a plus or a minus depending on your point of view!http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjRWV7u8pm4Watch in HD for best effectI've gone through the positives of this design, but I do feel there are some drawbacks too. Primarily there is a bit too much disturbance for what I am looking for. Admittedly it is less than a standard tine drill, but it could not be described as ULD (Ultra Low Disturbance). It is possible that agronomically this is actually a good thing, but right now I think as little as possible is desirable. The second point is that there is a potential issue with trash clearance, as can be seen in the video. The problem is that there is not a great deal of distance between the ground and the main disc bearing. I think it was exacerbated in these conditions as there was plenty of loose fluffy material right on the surface (raked cattle muck and OSR stubble), and going into a firmly rooted cover crop or untouched stubble would probably be fine. But it is still a bit of a concern.All drills have compromises (unfortunately), but does this one have less than the others? I'm not sure: maybe if an off-the-shelf product was available, but I don't think I am convinced enough to consider going through the hassle of having a machine custom made.Next stop... Australia.