Tractor Tuesday - Amazone HDG

The implements belong to tractors like hops to beer so despite having Bliped a few tractors, I thought this might be more interesting.

On the way for our walk in Ottobeuren we witnessed a race between two of the huge Fendt tractors from the large organic farm at Dennenberg just up the road from the house. In the extra photos, the slurry tank overtaking a trailer ´load of dried grass bales. I will Blip the grass drying unit at Sontheim another day but in brief, they usually make grass (in autumn maize) pellets from ordinary grass at any time during the season, sun or rain. They can also make bales. You get the pellets/bales back from your own grass.

Then on the walk, we saw a Renault teddying before we came across the Bliped machine on the site of a field shed which has been demolished over the last months. Not sure what it's destiny holds, almost feel obliged to find the owner and offer it a new home but it's in pretty bad shape.

It's an Amazone HDG Fertiliser machine, a revolution in its time as it allowed the less well-off farmers an economical way of moving on from hand strewn fertilising. The outbreak of WWI brought difficulties to the Amazone company - workers gone and little raw material. In 1915 they came up with the idea of this machine although it didn't go into production until 1920. Up until then, chain driven mechanical fertilisers had been heavy and expensive. The Amazone system based on rollers and worms, made for a light cheap unit that could deal with dry and moist fertilisers. Named "Michel" to start with, it eventually became known as "HDG" (Heinrich Dreyer Gaste). From 1925 it became very popular, available in widths of 1.4m  - 4.0m, initially to be pulled by horses (see Extra Photo), later with rubber tyres and a tractor tow bar. I suspect this one was adapted at some point.

This type of machine stayed in production until 1990 but from the 1960's the centrifugal fertiliser we see today gradually took over.

Amazone started in the agricultural machinery business at the end of the 18thC and is still going very strong as a family run business in northern Germany. I have an Amazone Grasshopper, a very large lawnmower with a bucket for the clippings, used on golf courses and municipal parks.

Perhaps someone will give it a home.

In the evening collected Angie from the station and drove over with the dogs to Memmingen where Flash was treated to his first ever Dog Beauty Parlour visit. Poor chap, he must have been so embarrassed but Angie went in with him to hold his paw. I popped up the road to Memmingen International Airport for a walk alongside the runway dodging the large number of muck heaps on the edges of the fields. In the hour we walked, one single commercial plane landed, a Ryanair Boeing 737-800 from Faro, Portugal (Extra Photo for Mathew). One executive turboprop and a sports two-seater also took off in that time. Difficult to see how the noise opponents have an argument in the debate about expansion. The Ryanair made less noise landing than MrB's tractor driving down the tarmac road.

Then picked up Flash. He actually looks OK despite losing his lions mane. Sure he will be much more comfortable in the hot days we will certainly have in August when I visit Memmingen Airport to collect the grandchildren from their Ryanair Dublin flight. Daughter Kate had suggested a very good comb which did an amazing job on the thick undercoat but Angie had already made the appointment and wanted to see what the outcome would be. For his sake, maybe we will go for a walk tomorrow where only Phoebe's, poodles and such breeds that need regular trimming, go. We will keep away from the working dogs! Sorry Flash for the Extra Photo - just for the record, no one will look at it.

PS That's Ottobeuren Basilica in the background