The Cambridge Rolls.
Twelve point three metres of ring rolls. The cheapest thing to hire here and the one with the longest waiting list. £120 a day, machine only, collected from here.
The specification.
The machine
- Working width
- 12.3 mThree gangs, hydraulic fold
- Transport width
- 2.9 mLegal, just
- Tractor required
- 120 hpThey roll, they do not pull hard
- Linkage
- DrawbarOne single-acting spool for the fold
In work
- Ring type
- Cambridge, 55 cmBreaker rings, not plain
- Weight
- 4.9 tonnesWater ballast available and rarely needed here
- Output, realistic
- 8–11 ha/hourGenuinely, if the field is a sensible shape
- Speed
- 10–14 km/hFaster than that and it bounces, which does nothing
Figures are from the machine itself rather than from a brochure. Where the two disagree, the brochure is wrong.
What it fits.
Anything from about 120 hp with a drawbar and one spool. The most forgiving item on the list.
If you are not certain your tractor will do it, ring before you hitch up rather than after. We have had two people arrive with the wrong linkage category and one with no air brakes, and all three of those were avoidable phone calls.
Who has actually used it.
Named because a machine with a history is easier to trust than a machine with a specification. Where somebody broke something, it says so.
Four neighbouring farms
Every spring, in a queue that forms in February
A grassland farm at Sarsden
For rolling stone off silage ground, which is the other use
Gerald Cooper
Twice, and the second time he rolled a field nobody had asked him to roll
What it is bad at. Everybody wants them in the same nine days. Spring rolling happens when the ground is right, the ground is right at the same time for everybody within twenty miles, and the rolls can only be in one place. We have had two people fall out over them, which is more than any other item here. They are also useless on wet ground and worse than useless on stony ground going too fast, where they push flints into the surface rather than pressing them in.
When it is free.
Half days are two thirds of the day rate, because the loading, the walk round and the clean take the same time either way.
Tuesday8 September
Thursday10 September
Monday15 September
Pick a time and we will hold it for ten minutes. Hold that day
This is a demonstration build. Nothing here books anything, no deposit is taken and no card details are collected at any point. Prices are indicative and are published so the arithmetic can be argued with.
The terms, in four lines.
£120 a day
Machine only. No fuel, no operator.
Your insurance
Hired-in plant cover, shown before it leaves.
Owner keeps first call
If it is our weather, it comes home.
Back clean and full
Or it comes back with an invoice.
The other seven.
The 6m Tine Drill
Six metres of tine drill, bought in a fit of optimism in 2021 and used for about nine days a…
The 3m Topper
A three-metre flail topper for margins, paddocks and the parts of a field a combine is never going to see.
The Bale Wrapper
A trailed round-bale wrapper. Nobody hires this because they want to. They hire it because the forecast changed.
The Post Knocker
A tractor-mounted post driver. The single most useful item on this list and the one most likely to hurt somebody.
The Subsoiler
A three-leg low-disturbance subsoiler. The most misused machine in British arable farming and we have misused it ourselves.
The 16t Grain Trailer
Sixteen tonnes, sprung drawbar, commercial axles and a working tarpaulin, which is rarer than it should be.
The Hedge Cutter
A six-and-a-half metre reach flail hedge cutter. Legally unusable for six months of the year, which is the most important…
Before you hire anything.
Insurance, briefings, and the two things we will not hire out at all.
