As our fruit and vineyard customers are busy on the farm, we take a special look at some of the latest, most-loved and essential equipment we supply.
Stevens Farm, Hawkhurst
Father and son team David and Richard Budd currently farm around 2,800 acres of top fruit and arable across the Weald of Kent. Since Richard returned to the farm 12 years ago, operations have increased considerably in size.
The family’s main holding, Stevens Farm, Hawkhurst, comprises around 275 acres of arable with 140 acres of Bramley, Worcester, Red Windsor, Cox, Gala, Cameo, and Braeburn. Rented ground, located in 20mile radius, is home to a further 2,000 acres of arable, with an additional 160 acres of orchards, in Marden and Goudhurst, planted with Bramley, Gala, Braeburn, and Robyn. The sites acquired over the last few years have been restructured, replanted and expanded, with modern growing systems adopted, to increase productivity.
As well as running a fully automated drying facility for the arable side of the business, the Budds also have their own pack house and are part of their own PO, Arnold, Boucher, Budd (ABB). Suppliers to Sainsbury’s and Lidl, ABB has two other pack houses, located at Peter Kedge’s Victoria Farm, Tonbridge, and Hugh Boucher’s Newlands Farm, Teynham.
“Our diverse range of apple varieties stems from the need to supply the supermarkets throughout the season,” said Richard, who had a busy career as a wine buyer and broker before returning to agriculture. “We also pack for other members of ABB and as a PO too, if we have space within our programme then we will take fruit from other local growers, but that’s very much on a case by case, season by season basis.”
Traditionally an “exclusively Massey” farm, when an AGCO dealership moved to the area around 10 years ago, Richard and David purchased a Challenger, row crop sprayer and crawler to meet the needs of the extensive and expanding arable operation.
“We were able to see a few demonstrations of the Fendt tractors,” said Richard. “In 2013, we bought our first 724, the 240 hp model, just as the business was starting to increase and subsequently, because of how big the farm was getting, I bought another two 724s.”
Up until a few years ago the Budds had always been Massey on the fruit tractor side too. However, impressed with the arable tractors’ performance, Richard invited Sam Barnes from NP Seymour to demo the manufacturer’s fruit models.
“We had numerous reliability issues with the 3600 Massey series and when we sat down to look at the figures we realised that they had cost us a lot of money in terms of breakdowns and downtime over the five or six years we’d had them,” said Richard. “By this point we were confident in the Fendt range and we had a relationship with NP Seymour too as they supply our pack house’s Aweta grader and Burg bin handler and flotation system.
“When Sam turned up with the demo we just couldn’t get our workers off it. We thought it was going to cost a fortune but when we sat down and looked at the figures, including the depreciation value, we decided that we’d better have three of them. We bought two 207s and a 210. My father thought it was a lot of money at the time but if you ask him now he will tell you that it’s one of the best things we ever did.”
The tractors are just over two years old now, they have done about 6,000 hours between them, and apart from routine servicing, the Budds “haven’t had a spanner on any of them”.
“That for us is key, because particularly if you want to be out spraying, you don’t have time for breakdowns, and with the prices and running costs of machinery nowadays it’s not affordable to keep a spare tractor at the back of the shed. We need machinery to be reliable and well backed up and the Fendts have been all of that,” said Richard.
As well as noting the tractors’ ability to hold good resale values, and cheaper running costs when not having to fork out for endless repairs, Richard also highlighted the system’s Vario transmission as one of the reasons they are so popular with operators.
When it comes to the apple harvest, the Fendt fruit tractors will also be kitted out withTecnoagri tractor mounted forklifts, also supplied by NP Seymour. These are available with lift heights from 1.8 metres to 2.2 metres and have a 1500 kg lift capacity.
“We have always used tractor mounted forklifts because we are still very traditional in the way we pick our fruit,” said Richard. “We don’t have picking trains, partly due to our terrain; in autumn you wouldn’t get up or down our banks and having pickers pick into bins, the forklifts move these to the headland, and a self-loading trailer come and collect them is a much slicker and quicker operation.”
Having looked at other tractor mounted forklifts, Richard found the Tecnoagri to be the most straightforward and cost effective. Other makes he has had in the past have come with hydroelectric valves which not only “makes the purchase price more expensive” but because of the specification on the Fendt tractors, it is possible to have “the same level of control by plugging straight into the hydraulics on the back of the tractor” thus making it “a lot cheaper to buy in the first place” with “an awful lot less to go wrong”.
“If we did have any problems, I know we can phone the office and someone will be out asap,” said Richard. “NP Seymour is a well-run family business and there’s a reason they’ve been there for such a long time. The level of service is very good and while we haven’t had any issues at all with the tractors, if we did I know they would be straight out or able to fix smaller issues over the telephone.”