N.Z. Ploughmen In Scotland

Press, Volume C, Issue 29480, 5 April 1961, Page 10

N.Z. Ploughmen In Scotland

<London Correspondent o{ "The Press") LONDON, March 28. Two young New Zealanders recently finished the spring ploughing on two Scottish farms as part of a marathon tractor demonstration. They are Mr Rex Dodson and Mr Ross Orr, who are touring in Scotland on a Young Farmers' Club exchange visit They were invited to Burnbrae Farm, owned by Mr John Suttie, and Mr David Russell’s Maw Hill Farm, Kinross. Mr Orr is from a 200-acre dairy farm at Cambridge and Mr Dodson from a beef

and sheep farm at Blenheim and they have just spent the first of their six months in Britain. Their ploughing effort came at the end of a demonstration conducted by the tractor division of the Ford Motor Company designed to show the work that two of their Dexta tractors could handle. The trial began on the neighbouring farms on a Monday morning and continued day and night for 96 ' hours with only stops for I service checks and fuelling. By then, all of the 2CO acres of medium loam had been i ploughed at a rate of just i over an acre an hour for each 1 Factor.

i There were four drivers B and a relief working in pans i for eight hour shifts on each tractor. At the end. when the 9 New Zealand visitors had i driven the machines for the - last hour and over the flnish- - ing line, the Ford statisticians e announced that during the s four days and nights the two tractors bad travelled more e than the road distance bea tween Lands End and John • O’Groats and raised and low--6 ered their ploughs about 8000 r times to turn over close on a quarter ef a million tons of s soil. a The picture shows, left tq t right, Mr Russell and Mi 3 Suttie, Mr Dodson (on tractor) and Mr Orr.