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Farmers Weekly's new soutri-western Barometer farm runs two secondhand harvesting machines - one four years old, the other 64.
The latter is a Foster reed comber/thresher used to handle the Maris Widgeon wheat and Purdy triticale grown for their thatching straw at North Farm, Horton, near Wimborne, Dorset.
The second is a 25ft cut Claas Lexion 560 which 28-year-old manager Peter Snell bought to replace a John Deere 1075 after the expansion of the arable enterprise.
Thatching straw offers a much better gross margin than the mainstream crops on the 283ha (700 acre) unit, but its labour requirements for stooking and carting rule out much more trian the 20ha (50 acres) or so grown each year, explains Mr Snell.
He manages the farm for the North Farm Partnership. He also oversees stubble-to-stubble contracts on about 80ha (200 acres).
Until four years ago, when he took over after gaining a degree at Seale-Hayne, the farm had a 220-cow dairy. But this was dropped for economic reasons, leaving an all-arable business.
SIMPLE SYSTEM
He aims to maximise output under a simplified, mainly two-man system allowing time to explore other opportunities to boost income....