Old Pond publishing days

Five new DVDs from Rural Heritage magazine

Based in Tennessee, America, Rural Heritage magazine is dedicated to preserving the use of horses, mules and oxen as draft animals.

We are distributing five of their titles in the UK and elsewhere outside N. America. They are now in stock.

Brabant Horses: built for work, Karen Gruner. Conformation, features, uses and working of one of the most docile of working horses. Deals with the breed's relationship with the American Belgian.  More ...

Driving Draft Horses, Brandt Ainsworth. Attaching and handling driving lines for comfort and safety, driving with one hand or both, use of line and voice commands, and driving a team or single horse.  More ...

Horse Progress Days 2005. An extensive array of horse-drawn implements is presented with a clear commentary and shown working at the 12th annual Horse Progress Days in Pennsylvania. More ...

Low-Impact Forestry Workshop, The Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association. Filmed during a workshop teaching sustainable woodland management: laying out trails, building a log brow, harnessing the working animals, felling a tree. Safety and environmental issues emphasised throughout.  More ...

Training Oxen, Tim Huppe and Drew Conroy. Choosing a suitable calf, pre-yoke training, yoking, hitching and working the team. 'Makes you wish you had an ox to hand' as one blurb-writer put it. More ...

Two rare JCBs

For nearly two years, on and off, we've been recording JCB backhoe loaders for a programme to show the story of the machine's development. This October we were the guests of contractors and enthusiasts J C Balls & Sons who have two very special models. The photographs are by Dave Scott. See blog 24 August 2008.

Where it all started - the Mark 1, dating back to 1954. Based on a Scandinavian idea, this was the machine that was to do away with the hand labour of digging trenches.

The driver of this restored model is Kevin Balls.

One of perhaps thirty built in an edition to be limited to sixty, the sixtieth anniversary 3CX, complete with all the modifications.

Great Mistakes Airlines

In September we were in Wyoming and Maryland filming excavation machinery in open-cast coalmines. Our first base was Gillette, Wyoming. 'Great Mistakes Airlines' was the epithet that our cameraman bestowed on Great Lakes Airlines, the company that transported us from Denver to Gillette on Labor Day.

We loaded our luggage at Denver, eight bags for the three of us flying. At Gillette the tripod case was missing. This was a big item, maybe four feet long, and quite heavy.

What soon became apparent was that Great Lakes had no tracking system for luggage. They simply had no idea where it was. The staff were friendly, they worked hard (I wouldn't want my daughter hefting baggage the way these young women have to), and they earnestly wanted to help. But with no system they were lost - as were we.

It cost us a day without a tripod to film on; a day for me personally while I was sorting out a hired tripod; and excess on insurance. The tripod has never turned up and we've never received an apology, apart from those given by the harassed counter staff.

I understand that Gt Lakes has a code-sharing agreement with United Airlines. Well, my personal bag went missing on the UA flight we took later in the week from Denver to Pittsburgh. The treatment we received was totally different. The bag was immediately traced as delayed; we were offered compensatory flight vouchers and apologies; the bag was sent by courier to my hotel a couple of hours' drive away. Spot on.

The hired tripod at Belle Ayr mine, Wyoming. From the left, Keith Haddock (scriptwriter), Ken Kelly (Belle Ayr mines), Jonathan Theobald (director), Roger Wiltshire (cameraman and coiner of the epithet 'Great Mistakes Airlines').

One of the stars of the programme is in the background: P & H 4100 XPB shovel.

The world's largest terrestrial moving machine

We're just back from Garzweiler, near Dusseldorf, Germany, where we were filming bucketwheel excavators and other open-cast coal-mining activities. Our hosts were RWE, providers of 30% of Germany's electrical energy. Our guide was Thomas Saus from their public relations department.

The Garzweiler site is some 20 square kilometres, in a C-shape as it bends around a rocky outcrop. That's one thing we learned about the bucketwheel excavator system: it works fine with soft deposits such as sand and lignite (brown coal) but doesn't work with any sizeable rock deposits.

This is number 285 at Garzweiler, so it's not the very largest machine. It can handle 200,000 cu metres of material a day. The bucketwheel on the right-hand side of the picture rotates to collect overburden (the sand on top of the coal deposits).

The soil is conveyed to the centre of the machine, then down to the linked conveyor extending to the left. From there it joins another conveyor system which takes the material to the central conveyor junction, a kilometre or two away.

The right-hand boom moves up and down. The central tower turns 360 degrees horizontally. Beneath the tower is a set of tracks on which the whole machine moves forwards and backwards. The conveyor on the left is on a similar set of tracks. The linked machines have an operator each.

A view of the business-end of 288, the size of bucketwheel excavator that is the largest in the world. Capacity: 240,000 cu metres a day.

We recorded the excavators for a programme we are making with Keith Haddock the Canadian writer on mining and its machinery. Keith is a retired mining engineer.

If you double-click on the third photograph you should find a clearer image which will give you a better idea of the scale of this machine.

It has come to a halt because it has uncovered a small rocky outcrop. The buckets can lift rocks, but the thick rubber conveyors will be damaged and blocked by them. The engineers were getting ready to have a Cat D8 make a path down from the level above to rip the rocks out.

I was really impressed by the conveyor system. The overburden and coal are brought in by conveyors from the mining area to the left-hand side of the picture, each excavator having its own line. The material can be transferred at this junction to any of the conveyors going out on the right-hand side of the picture.

They exit to about four spreaders or two or three conveyors going to the coal bunkers, depending on the material excavated and requirements. This is all controlled by computer.

At the very end of one of the conveyors, maybe 3 kilometres from where the soil was extracted, a spreader is depositing overburden. This is moved by a Cat D8.

McCormick International in Cambridgeshire

Yesterday, a brilliant, sunny day, we were near Wisbech in Cambridgeshire recording four IH McCormick tractors. Our hosts were Michael Mills and his nephew Scott Greensmith of M & E Wright & Sons (farms). This is for a new DVD to be scripted by Stuart Gibbard.

Michael's uncle bought his B250 in 1961 for £350. It was in regular use loading sugar beet until the 1990s.

Unrestored, with many original features, the B-450 spent many years carting gravel from a local pit. Then it put in service with a tractor-mounted forklift. Although they've got a JCB, Michael and Scott like to use the McConnel S12 digger for delicate work such as digging water mains on contract. The digger's farm use was for earthing up what are known in Lincolnshire as potato graves. In Suffolk we call them clamps.

Although it was manufactured in Doncaster, England, in 1951, Michael's Farmall M has a distinctly American look to it. It's pulling a Bettinson drag that has usually been coupled with a crawler for day-to-day use on the 150-acre arable farm.

In low, late afternoon sun, Michael was using his International 474 to shift beet haulm. His uncle bought the tractor in 1974 for £2,500.