Thanks to Exe Valley Plant hire for the hire of the digger.
For a number of years it has become evident that the land needs drainage. Land drains had been installed but they are probably blocked, this is shown by the wet/flooded areas in some of the fields.
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Here is a dung spreader stranded because the soil is too wet in the surface layer. The soil is compacted so rain can not drain through. |
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The soil is so compacted that the water just sits on top after heavy rain following a drought |
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This is an old clay drain, but a lot of these are blocked like this one, the clay pipes are not joined but just laid end to end and this one is not even laid on any pipe bedding stone. This one was probably laid just after World War 2. |
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To help drain the land we hired an 8 ton digger (a HitachiEX8) with a "V" bucket
to dig new ditches and clear out some old ones.This bucket, in the right soil conditions creates a V sided ditch in almost one pass.
Thanks to Exe Valley Plant hire for the hire of the digger.
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Some ditches we are going to leave open and some like the ones across gateways have to be covered, which requires plastic pipe bedded on 20mm stone and covered with more stone. |
GRASSLAND SHAKAERATOR
The McConnell Shakaerator was kindly lent by Devon Wildlife Trust through their machinery ring.
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The shakaerator breaks up compaction in the soil. Please see the McConnell website for the full details. They have a video of the shakaerator in action (with a great guitar sound track!) |
 I had to use my tractor a Ford 4610 4wd which is only 65hp and I had to fill the loader bucket with concrete blocks! |
The McConnell site recommends a 50Hp tractor for the 2 leg cultivator and 90Hp for the 3 leg model this was the model we used. Our Ford 4610 is about 65hp I used low range 2nd gear. This meant that the field speed was about 3 Miles Per Hour. In places it pulled the cultivator through the soil on tick over. So the design of the Shakaerator i.e. the bit that shakes does reduce the horse power needed. But this years (2013) soil conditions were quiet dry. |
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19 July 2013This is the first field done (Home Paddock). Its about a hectare. The ground was too dry - something I would not have imagined. We decided to roll it to get rid of the raised edges. The grass dies back from the slots especially in really dry weather but it soon recovers.
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27 October 2013You can just see the lines but only just and the land does seem a lot firmer than last year. So we believe that the shakaerator has made a big difference to the land. Before soil samples were taken ,but we will have to until June 2014 to carry out the post shakaerator soil analysis. |
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Every so often a flap of grass and earth gets pulled up, I think this is caused by the plough legs hitting a large stone and lifting the coulter wheels up so they don't cut the grass and soil cleanly. The coulter wheels must be set low enough to cut, the chisel tips of the plough have to be angled slightly (using the top link) so that the implement is pulled under to the right depth in our case 24cm (9inchs) the depth of the implement is set with the rear roller - which can be filled with water to increase its weight, we found it effective un-ballasted The shakaerator part which is driven by the PTO does make quite a difference because while driving in 2 wheel drive without the PTO on, the rear tractor wheels would sometimes slip as soon as the PTO was engaged the tractor moved forward again. 4 wheel drive was needed up hill.The grass has to be cut or grazed off otherwise the grass or plant matter can get wrapped around the legs |
 27 July 2013 |
 27 October 2013 |
| While these lines may look bad, within weeks they disappear.After a few months you can see where the shakaerator has been by the green stripes in the grass. |
 14 January 2014 |
More pictures and info to follow...
