Ploughing, My first attempt

Now bare in mind I’m a town-ny that’s moved out into the North Lincolnshire countryside so I’ve never had anything to do with ploughing a field, let alone the setting up of a plough and the plough itself need refurbishment to work right, never the less I was going to have a go. The area that I chose to plough was about 20-yards by 20-yards, an area of the field that was un-even through heavy vehicles causing ruts with their wheels, maybe this was another obstacle that would affect the finished result.

So I reversed the tractor and plough up to the fence and lowered it all the way, with the tractor in 1st gear I set off. The plough started to cut into the ground but only slightly, just skimming the turf off and rolling it over. There was one small patch where I had crossed an old wheel rut where the plough didn’t even touch it and left the green grass showing at the bottom of the rut. As for the straightness of the two furrows, well they were about as straight as a banana. Having spent many years driving heavy earthmoving plant, I knew straight away the angle of attack of the plough was wrong so I shortened the top link on the couplings which made the points of the plough shares point down slightly more and off I went reversing to the fence with the right hand rear wheel in the previous furrow.

Off I went again but this time the plough dug in too deep and brought me to a standstill as the wheels struggled to grip. I lifted the plough on the hydraulics slightly and we soon started to move forwards cutting at a reasonable depth this time. Now it became apparent what the stop block was for on the hydraulic control lever was for, to ensure the hydraulics set their selves to the same position each time they were lowered. I noted the position of the control lever on the next pass and ploughed a few more furrows finding a technique for lowering at the beginning of the cut and raising the plough at the end of the cut. I also found the furrows were starting to look straighter which was pleasing to see.

I completed my 20 x 20-yard area, which was by no means perfect and I look forward to learning more about ploughing. The 2 miniature horses “Storm” and “Shadow” had started to show an interest in the ploughed area so I then repeated the process but ploughing across the furrows to break the earth up further. Then I dropped the plough off where I’d intended to put it in the first place. Next I coupled up to the weeder that I’d bought some months since believing it was a set of Ferguson grass harrows. After a few passes with the weeder the ground was much leveller and safe for the horses to run about on and an ideal patch for the Shetland “Ricky” to have a good roll and a proper muck bath.