Monday 26th July 2010

The car and trailer with plough on board was still sat outside the cottage this morning so while Wendy went to feed the horses, I got the Brasso out to polish the brass plate on the plough and get some information. The plough is a Massey Ferguson, which I knew from sale and it is a type 794, serial number R 001523, which I didn’t know. About an hour later and after a very helpful phone conversation with Graham Pressman, a Ferguson plough manual was ordered and on it’s way to me.

Later, I took the plough up to the field to off load it. It was quite easy to lift with my engine lifter then just drive the trailer out from underneath the plough and once on the ground, I could have a good look around it and take some more pictures of it and consider how I’m going to restore it. I think the forged items will just need a heavy wire brushing but the steel plate parts will need to be shot blasted. The cutting edges of the plough will need replacing if I can get them.

With the plough un-loaded and sat in the middle of the field, I really couldn’t leave it there for fear of the horses stumbling over it in the middle of the night and where I wanted to put it was inaccessible with the car and trailer and almost impossible to get even ground for the engine lifter to be safe, so I started the tractor up to move it further up the field. I coupled the plough to the tractor and the hydraulics lifted it with ease although when I came to drive away, the sharpness of the clutch did lift the front wheels a little. This made me wonder if the plough was a little too big for Susie May, my little grey Fergie. So I decided to have a go at a bit of ploughing!!!