Old farming men.

[Dry Rot]

On the fert bags and spreaders, I remember Dad had a 7cwt Vicon wagtail on the MF 165. He would put the 7 bags in and then put two on the top with a split in the side (we didn’t get Stan The Bag Man round our way!) so that they would empty themselves as he spread.

Still do that but with half a load in the Vicon behind the MF135 otherwise steering would be a problem! At least I now have the 390 to load from the 600kgs bags (used to be a bucket)!

 

[Cab-over Pete]

Made the mistake once of guesstimating where to slice open a half tonne fert bag to try and fill a small Vicon spreader.......

Once Nitram starts running it just won’t stop!

 

[Derrick Hughes]

Bit before my time but many old boys round here remember collecting those paper bags from their nearest train station.

Half a ton of Basic Slag and two ton of lime .then claim the Sub . That old slag was fantastic stuff

 

[Banana Bar]

I had terrible back pain while at college at one point. Had my first of three slip discs at 27. I passed out with pain while having a pee and hit my head on the bath I remember.
Last time I had it really bad was about six years ago in the dealers shop when I was literally brought to my knees right there.

It’s been ok for most of the time between boughts but funnily enough I’ve had twinges over Christmas.

Same here, had 7 ops in the last 15yrs. Been fairly good for last 3 yrs with regular swimming. Crook today though after too much sitting about over Xmas. Managed to get into the pool this morning which helped but shuffled about like an 80 yr old. Lying on the bed now.[emoji31]

 

[Cowabunga]

Same here, had 7 ops in the last 15yrs. Been fairly good for last 3 yrs with regular swimming. Crook today though after too much sitting about over Xmas. Managed to get into the pool this morning which helped but shuffled about like an 80 yr old. Lying on the bed now.[emoji31]

Ouch!
I've not needed an operation. Every time I get a really bad back it gets worse and worse for a week or two until I'm almost crippled and then gets steadily better over the next month or two.
The actual times I had a slipped disk were far worse though. Can't remember what happened in 1987 but I was in agony for many weeks with a mattress on the floor. I do remember the second time, as I was just throwing a light bin liner into the back of the pickup and as I twisted I felt something go pop in my back, and that was it, back to square one for a few months.

 

[Red Fred]

I know where a new house has just been built on the site of a small crematorium!

When they were building the big Waitrose in town, the archaeological society noticed a large area of buried lime right where the checkouts are now sited. turned out it was the town plague pits from the 17th century and they had put quicklime on the bodies.
As far as I know, they just got on and finished the building without delving any further.

 

[Roy_H]

Half a ton of Basic Slag and two ton of lime .then claim the Sub . That old slag was fantastic stuff

Fantastic stuff maybe but a sod to spread! Nothing but dust and you always went home afterwards with that horrible "Paraffin" like taste in your mouth.

 

[micthwic]

Its surprising what was taken for normal in farming/business families. Before I started swinging on the teats my families business was builders and funeral directors, a quite common combination, as if building was slack the chippies could knock up a few boxes. Anyway it was considered normal in the family to go to visit relatives in the firms van with a customer in a coffin as company, to drop off or pick up for a post mortem. Often my sister and myself would be given a lift to school in the same circumstances. We happily sat on the coffin in the back of the van,whilst accompanying friends cowered in a remote corner and were very quiet.
It would go viral these days with attached selfies.

 

[Owd Fred]

Just been reading down most of these posts and no one has mentioned Humber Fish muck, dries guts heads and anything not big enough to sell on a stall would be ground up into Fish muck.
Now that was stinky stuff to handle, came as a powder in bags from Liverpool, okay when fresh, dad put it through the Massy combine drill, that was okay until you had a foggy October morning drilling wheat, it would clog the feeding stars in the hopper and clog the down tubes. That was packed in 1cwt paper lined hessian sack, all was before they invented pellets

 

[Cab-over Pete]

I remember Dad having some kind of fish stuff but don’t remember it was particularly stinky.

I do remember him having some Pectin Extracted Fruit delivered. For some reason he couldn’t get brewers grains and this load of brown gloop arrived. The cows loved it and it smelt of apple pie.

 

[Red Fred]

we used to get bags of fish-meal balancer for the dairy. I think it was 40% protein, and you mixed 4lbs (1.81kg ) of home grown barley with 1 lb of balancer to get the equivalent of dairy cake. BOCM used to do it in 1/2 cwt (25.4kg) sacks which were all stacked neatly off the lorry into the old buildings.

 

[chaffcutter]

We used it in the tmr for our high yielders, rocket fuel but if you overdo it you can get taint in the milk I was told

 

[David.]

I well remember Humber fertiliser, monkey s**t as it was known.
Gramp would put it down the spout through the fert hoppers on the front of the old Robot 3 row potato planter.
As above, it stunk to raise the dead, a sour miasma hung about the job; but the one we had was a slightly moist pellet formulation.
Add to this the Thimet applicators at head height trickling granules past your nose all day every day for about a fortnight, as you sat on the seats on the back, and it is a wonder any of us are still going.
Being the boy, my seat was of course the middle one to keep the outfit balanced, and I can remember sitting there showered in soil dust off the cage wheels, sore cracked fingers from handling dirty seed spuds and a headache from the Thimet.
Happy days.

 

[Red Fred]

We used it in the tmr for our high yielders, rocket fuel but if you overdo it you can get taint in the milk I was told

We used to bottle our own milk and sometimes customers said they could tell, but it was never too bad and they were more interested than anything.

 

[Red Fred]

I think I've mentioned it on here before, but i remember 1984 as the year of the great Silade strike, which was like the miners' strike on a slightly smaller scale. the foreman was the local union rep and he took exception to having to drive his 7710 on the silage chopper with a silade feed and no special protection.
All the drivers went out on strike so the gaffer made me drive the chopper as I was only a student and could be got rid of if I complained. Had I been a bit older, I would have been more principled and walked out too, but luckily the others didn't hold it against me and just saw it as another example of management oppression. I

 

[David.]

Presumably Silade was an acid and drivers objected to handling it?

 

[Red Fred]

Yes, it was a silage additive that came in big blue tubs. It made your eyes water and hurt if you were doing it all day, and I think it caused havoc to the panels on the machines. I don't suppose they still make it?

 

[Cowabunga]

we used to get bags of fish-meal balancer for the dairy. I think it was 40% protein, and you mixed 4lbs (1.81kg ) of home grown barley with 1 lb of balancer to get the equivalent of dairy cake. BOCM used to do it in 1/2 cwt (25.4kg) sacks which were all stacked neatly off the lorry into the old buildings.

Most of that stuff would not have been fishmeal at all but meat and bone meal. The stuff they rendered at specialist factories and with a changed process, caused untold losses in the form of mad cow disease.

 

[Cowabunga]

Yes, it was a silage additive that came in big blue tubs. It made your eyes water and hurt if you were doing it all day, and I think it caused havoc to the panels on the machines. I don't suppose they still make it?

Silade was different to other acids and was actually formaldehyde. A known carcinogen. A local farm, if not a few local farms one year, suffered the loss of many cows due to being poisoned by Silade in well preserved silage.
It didn't aid fermentation like other additives, it actually stopped fermentation. Its the same stuff used to pickle body parts in labs.
The same stuff you use in cow footbaths, well diluted.

 

[bobk]

Ouch!
I've not needed an operation. Every time I get a really bad back it gets worse and worse for a week or two until I'm almost crippled and then gets steadily better over the next month or two.
The actual times I had a slipped disk were far worse though. Can't remember what happened in 1987 but I was in agony for many weeks with a mattress on the floor. I do remember the second time, as I was just throwing a light bin liner into the back of the pickup and as I twisted I felt something go pop in my back, and that was it, back to square one for a few months.

Unless you play golf , bad backs are caused by bad technique