Groundwork Contracting in Buckinghamshire
The groundwork team have recently started a bigger project over near Winslow, Bucks.
There has been a lot going on at the site the last couple of months and there is a lot still to do. We have put in a new track and driveway and have also done the foundations for a concrete pad for a mobile home. We have excavated the ground, laid all the pipework, drainage and concreted the area, and also installed a new treatment plant. The mobile home is now situated and installed on the pad ready for use! At this site there is also a new steel framed cattle shed going up, the groundwork team have already prepared the ground for this and so we are now back in there digging the footings and laying the foundations.
After doing the track, ground preparation and concrete pad work on the job above the machinery was moved and the team headed over the Maidenhead. Using the dozer they have been digging out and preparing the ground for a new shed to be erected here. With the excess soil which has been removed Lee has been building up a soil bund to go around where the shed will be. At this site they have also been replacing some older tarmacked areas with new tarmac to improve the drive in high usage areas and we have laid 30 metres of granite kerb sets.
In between jobs we have finished off at Stokenchurch Dog Rescue in Bucks. We did the majority of the work earlier in the year and so all we had left was to do the landscaping and hedging to do now which is the optimal time to be planting bare root hedging. The hedging was made up of hawthorn, blackthorn, dogwood, and hornbeam; and we have supplied 17 trees which are a mixture of beech, red maple, silver birch, and rowan. Once these were all in place and stable, we covered over the area with bark chippings to try and prevent any unwanted weeds and protect what we had planted.
Farming
The farm has been quiet with not being able to get on the ground.
Will has been trying when we have had a dry spell but unfortunately the land here at Moorley’s Farm is very heavy and clay like, and so with the wet weather we have had, the ground is very saturated.
However we have managed to get the Soya Beans off, these were harvested the first weekend of October when we had a nice sunny dry spell in the weather. They unfortunately didn’t yield as well as we would have liked but it was definitely the year to try something a little different!
Grainstore
As you can imagine the grain store has quietened up a little with most of the stores being full.
At the beginning of October we had some soya beans in which where a little wet and dirty. The soya went through the cleaner first which cleaned the waste into a separate bin and then the cleaned crop went through the drier to bring in the moisture down before it went into the store.
There is a little more movement in the stores with some Linseed coming in and going out and some OSR going out too. We also have some Oats to colour sort, where we will be removing wheat from oats on behalf of a grain merchant.
Haulage
The two bulk lorries are still out on the road, they have had a busy harvest and couple of months collecting and delivering crops from the stores, mills and farms.
Just recently we have said goodbye to the older Volvo truck and trailer and have taken delivery of our new DAF XF 530 FTP truck and Fruehauf trailer. This is our first ever DAF truck and so were looking forward to seeing how it performs. We have had the truck and trailer installed with a camera system and an onboard weigher and it has been sign written which we think looks great. So far so good!