6. Farming 1977/79

I was in my early twenties when I started work at Sheriffs Court Farm and although I was working on farms in my teens, everything had changed during the years that I spent in the Army. There were still several old tractors, Fordson Majors, Ford 5000’s and David Browns, which were pretty easy to drive in respect of selecting the right gear for the job. There was a David Brown 1412 which had the usual two gears coming out of the floor between your legs but also had a lever under the steering wheel which let you select one of four different speeds in each gear. The biggest tractor was a Muir Hill, this had four big wheels back and front and articulated in the middle, at 110 horse power - a big machine then. In 1977 a new John Deere 3130 tractor arrived on the farm, and to my surprise, no one wanted to drive it except me. Percy the foreman was happy driving the Muir Hill, as it was the biggest tractor, he also drove the combine and did most of the maintenance, Bob had his old David Brown and did all of the spraying and Fred had the David Brown 1412.

As it was brand new and a completely new design, the John Deere 3130 was a 95hp machine. Up to this time, four wheel drive meant four big wheels of equal size back and front. This tractor had bigger than average back wheels, but the front wheels were about a third of the size of the back ones. This design was laughed at by a lot of the older experienced farm workers, but when put to the test, easily out-pulled the Muir Hill. Within a few years, nearly all 90-200hp four wheel drive tractors would be of this design.

The combine was a New Holland 1545, a reasonable size for that period, with a 15ft header but no cab on it. Like most combines of that time what they most lacked was reliability. It would seem that most combines would have some sort of a breakdown every three or four days or would suffer a blockage, sometimes several times a day. Some of the bigger farms would have several combines, Monkton Court and Sayers at Acol both had three machines but it was rare to see all three cutting at the same time. With the price of these machines going up by huge amounts the farmers demanded more reliability for their money, and as with tractors, big changes in combine design would soon appear.

Terry Marsh

Originally published in the Monkton News (February 2025).