We are back to winter with snow and rain but the few days we got drilling onions last week was a welcome soft start to get us rolling.

We have a few new bodies on board since last season and it was great for them to get some time in the saddle with a few more experienced guys beside them training them in.

When the weather lifts for the next window, there will be no time for passengers.

New system

We have moved to an all triple-bed system covering 6m or three beds. Teaching the machines and teaching ourselves how to operate them effectively has been, and will be, interesting. The triple system will allow us more timely prep and drilling, hopefully improving the quality of what we are trying to achieve.

In keeping with trying to squeeze every last drop of efficiency from what we do, we have launched phase one of a precision farming project using John Deere GPS technology.

The accuracy that precision farming can bring to our business has immediate benefits in crop quality, uniformity and consistency

We were traditionally Trimble users with Trimble RTK in the two Fendts but with a Topcon GPS in the Bateman and John Deere system in the 6230r Deere, we made the decision to standardise the GPS supplier across all our machines.

With support from TFM Ballycallan team, we felt John Deere were the best option to roll out the project.

This season, we will have RTK GPS across all machines during planting along with implement steering on the Grimme destoners.

Phase two

Phase two over the course of this year and into next season will see the remaining non-John Deere systems changed, and implement guidance set up on the machines that are carried on three-point linkage or the harvesters.

Part of this will be adding telemetry functions that complement the Gatekeeper software we use. The intention is to move the whole farm management on to our cloud-based software which will allow real time and historical tracking of all the operations on the farm.

In time, we hope to bring our packhouse operations, packers and forklifts on to the same system.

Making the decision took some time but now that we are off and rolling, we are very happy with John Deere and what it can bring to the project.

Accuracy

The accuracy that precision farming can bring to our business has immediate benefits in crop quality, uniformity and consistency.

It won’t be long before the weather lifts again and we can see if all these green and gold domes keep us pointing in the same direction.

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