Marsh Farm has been operating a 6.0m power harrow drill combination, rather than a more in-vogue trailed cultivator drill, across its 810ha of cropped land around Much Wenlock. But, with quality labour becoming harder to find, this Shropshire estate hasn’t stood still in its tillage thinking. Far from it. Over that time the business has continued to hone its establishment regime, to the extent that two seasons ago the farm bought a Claas Xerion systems tractor so that it could add the drill’s previously front-mounted hopper to the Xerion’s rear platform, freeing up the tractor’s front linkage for a cultivator press. “In the past we needed to have a tractor and cultivator working the ground ahead of me. Otherwise I could be down to 3km/ hr to allow the power harrow to break down the farm’s heavier soil,” says drill operator Trevor Plant. “Our Fendt 926 had completed 11 seasons, and we knew we could do with more horsepower, so we looked at several options. Our local dealer Morris Corfield mentioned the Xerion and, after seeing a picture of one with the hopper on the tractor’s rear platform, we got to thinking that we could adapt our current combi unit. Next we started on the number crunching to see if the project would stack up.”