A very busy morning as a stock farm takes advantage of the weather to harvest itself first cut round bale silage crop with a great mix of classic and modern machinery all playing important roles.
Rowing up at a nice steady pace was the farms 36-year old MF 390 and a Westmac JF- Stoll Drive 655AS rake. Not so many of these early black cab 300 series about now and although it says 390T on the bonnet it is in-fact a standard 390, not a turbo.
Following behind a local contractors NH T7.245 blue power edition was baling with a McHale Fusion 3 Plus integrated baler/wrapper which was a fascinating machine to watch working its way round the field.
Loading in the field was a lovely MF 390T and Trima 1490 front loader with the bale trailer carting team consisting of a MF 6460 and brand new MF 5S.145 (I enjoyed the cab ride) transporting the bales back to the farmyard where a little Merlo P27.6 Plus was making a grand job of unloading and neatly stacking the bales.
One thing that struck home especially in the case of the Massey Fergusons is how much tractor design has changed over the decades, even between the MF 6460 and new MF 5S.145 that even only are only 20 years apart but look very different in design to each other. Also the average size of stock farm tractor back in the late 80s to mid 90s was as like the MF 390/390T here around 80-90hp (with the farms back in the day big tractor typically a 100hp 6-cylinder, in Cumbria at least) but nowadays is more likely to be the 145hp of the MF5S.145 but the question is does a tractor of this size do the job any better? Your thoughts in the comments would be welcomed.
A lovely morning spent in the sunny fields of Cumbria, I have to say that all the machines were immaculate and it was a pleasure to watch them at work. The farmer took a chance on baling the silage and the risk paid off as typical of this last month or so a couple of hours after the field had been cleared it was back to consistent rain.
Filmed in Cumbria June 2024.

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