Gerard Farrell

After finishing school, I started full time work for a local agricultural contractor, MJS Contractors. This company specialized in round baling, hedgecutting, dump trailer work and road sweeping for the local Co.Council. The main brands of equipment used were John Deere, New Holland and JCB.

During my time there my roles included:

• Wrapping silage bales (Mchale 991 Wrapper)
• Raking Silage (Lely hibiscus rake)
• Hauling round bales, (Wilson 6 bale, Keltic 8 bale trailers)
• Tedding silage (Lely Lotus tedder)
• Traffic management for hedgecutting
• General dump trailer work during winter for local Co.Council

In September 2019, I embarked on a trip to New Zealand to experience an agricultural contracting season. I originally intended on just doing 1 season but ended up completing 4 seasons. During my experience there I not only learnt a lot of new skills in the agricultural industry, but also many life skills due to the fact of being on my own on the other side of the world...during Covid!

John Austin LTD covers almost every job you can think of that your typical agricultural contractor would do. It is actually easier to list the things they don't cover which is Slurry and hedgecutting.

I really enjoyed my time there and had many roles such as:

• 2 & 4 rotor raking with CLAAS rakes
• Mowing with triple CLAAS mowers
• Completed 1 maize season with a Bergmann Silage trailer
• Roller Drilling (6m 4ag drill)
• Fertilizer Spreading (18m Bogballe spreader with tractor equipped with greenstar GPS)
• Muck Spreading (Bunning Spreader)
• Power Harrowing (6m Kuhn Powerharrow)
• Discing (6m Bednar Swifter discs
• Round Baling (Mchale fusion 3 & Kuhn 3135 Combi-baler
• 2 seasons of stacking (buckraking) (Fendt 824, Front 3m Albutt buckrake, 3.5 ton silage roller wheels on rear)
• General teleporter work, stacking round and square silage,hay and straw bales loading/unloading pallets, loading dung spreader etc... (Jcb telehandler)
• Carried out most of the servicing with the tractors from quick 500hr engine oil & filter changes to 1500hr/2000hr full services between almost 30 John Deere 30 series, R series & Fendt 700, 800, 900 series.
• Work with John Deere Greenstar GPS, setting up AB lines, adaptive curves, work with isobus etc...

Upon returning back from my experience of living and working in New Zealand, I returned to my previous job I had before leaving back in September 2019.

Having developed new skills during my time at John Austin LTD, I was given the opportunity to take on new roles at MJS.

Some of these included;

• Mowing (New Holland T7.200 equipped with SIP double mowers)
• Stacking round bales (John Deere 3215 teleporter)
• Wrapping & Stacking bales (JCB 412 loading shovel with Mchale W2020 front mounted wrapper)
• Hedgecutting (McConnell hedgecutter)
• General Diggerwork (Hitachi ZX 85 digger)
• Workshop work including servicing tractors,
• Road sweeping (Nc sweeper)