Sam Osborne’s fruit sprayer

The 1ha (2.5 acres) of table top strawberries grown by Essex producer Sam Osborne are laid out in banks of four rows on a 6.5m grid with polytunnels over the top. He designed a sprayer that would spray all four rows in one pass. The machine runs on wide grass tyres. Booms and spray heads are all fully adjustable and can be opened or closed from an ATV. The frame holding the sprayer can be removed to allow the ATV to transport plastic trays (holding peat and plants) down the rows.

Peter Crudge’s 240 bale transporter

Small bales are generally a real pain to move about but Oxfordshire farmer Peter Crudge has come up with this rig that carries 240 at a time. It makes bale carting a simple one-man, drive-in, drive-out operation. Two rams and a gate secure the two trailer sides together at the rear. These are swung to one side when reversing up to the stack so that the frame slips neatly down either side. They are then secured around the back of the bales and squeeze up tight to grip the load. Peter reckons he can shift nearly 1000 bales an hour with it.
       

Alan Hocken’s field margin marker

Alan Hocken wanted a way of ensuring that he could accurately leave a 2m buffer zone alongside hedges and ditches to comply with single farm payment cross-compliance rules. His simple idea, which took just 45 minutes to make, was to fit a bar to the farm’s power harrow/drill combination that could be adjusted to give a gap of 1m, 1.5m or 2m, depending on whether he was working alongside a hedge or ditch. 

       

Mitchell Bros apple tree shaker

John and Robert Mitchell sent in this clever apple tree shaker designed to make life easier during the apple harvest. A rubber- clad pincher claw grabs the tree, then a hydraulic motor driving two off-centre weights makes the machine and tree shake until all the apples have fallen off. The chains suspending the shaker stop vibration getting back to the tractor and make the job much more pleasant. Being front-mounted, it gives good visibility and has reduced what was a three-man job to a one-man task.
       

Alistair White’s DIGGER adaptor plate

Alistair White’s carrier for fencing equipment is based on a farm-made adaptor plate that converts a digger blade into a three- point linkage. That means it can now carry a fence wire tensioning tool, pallet tines and a rabbit fencing plough. It was made from scrap metal already on the farm, he says, and allows them to continue fencing in winter months when the fields are too boggy for conventional wheeled tractors.

The Hitachi digger carries stakes around the field edge using pallet tines and knocks them in using the arm-mounted weight. The digger is then used to dispense and tension stock netting and barbed wire. 
       

David White’s silage pusher

Cumbrian farmer David White built this simple silage pusher (made from two wheels) that fits on his forage box’s drawbar. A ram lifts it and he says it saves a lot of time that would have been spent forking silage back.
       

Frank Henderson’s portable concrete mixer 

Chipping Norton farmer Frank Henderson made this neat concrete mixer from a 1m-wide sawn-off gas tank with the domed end welded inside a 28in tractor rear-wheel hub. A 1in chain is welded to one end to act as a rack and is engaged by a 13-tooth sprocket powered by a hydraulic motor. The whole lot rotates about a sawn-off axle hub and bearing from a truck. Cement and water go in first, then the unit is driven into the gravel pile. Anything more than about 48 shovels’ worth falls off as the mixing starts. The mix can then be placed where required.