The Environment and Common Sense

Most farmers in Australia regard themselves as custodians and protectors of the countryside.

Yes, mistakes have been made in the past and nobody is suggesting that the farming community is perfect. However, given most farmers earn their living from the land they are not likely to treat it with extreme disrespect.

Over many years now though, both state and national governments have passed increasing numbers of environmental protection laws that appear to suggest that confidence in the farming community is less than total.  Some of these laws appear to make little or no sense and in some cases, even contradict each other.

At this stage, we’d like to shift the focus over to France.  Like Australia, many European countries over the last 20 years have passed increasingly aggressive environmental protection laws and some are arguing that these have gone too far.

We read of a situation recently where numbers of French villages are becoming completely overrun with weeds in their very centres because laws now state:

1. herbicides cannot be used under any circumstances, where said weeds are near any form of water course or drain system;

2. even if pulled manually, bonfires/incinerators can no longer be used to dispose of garden or agricultural waste;

For more details, please visit - https://www.whitestractors.com.au/blog/344-the-environment-and-common-sense.html

Sit-on Lawnmowers and Safety

As we’ve said many times before, lawnmowers are intrinsically safe devices – providing you use them in accordance with the manufacturer’s operating instructions and downright common sense.

Of course, any new or used farm machinery, including lawnmowers, can be dangerous if the user is determined to be careless.

Space here doesn’t allow us to go into a lot of detail and that will anyway all be contained within the manufacturer’s guide for the sit-on lawnmower you are using.

So instead, we’ll pick out a few absolute top-tips for the safe utilisation of sit-on lawnmowers:

Read the operating guide!  There’s no point it containing lots of great safety advice if it’s never read;

Comply with the guide.  There’s no point it containing safety information that the operator has read, if they then go out and do exactly the opposite when using their lawnmower;

Don’t let people, typically those that are younger and inexperienced, operate a sit-on lawnmower unless they have been fully trained.  Be careful also that younger and more exuberant people don’t think it’s a toy they can “horse around” on;

For more details, please visit - https://www.whitestractors.com.au/blog/343-sit-on-lawnmowers-and-safety.html

Garden Equipment - FAQs

A lot depends here upon the type of equipment you are speaking about.

For a start, anything that is electrically powered should be thoroughly checked out by someone qualified before you plug it in and start trying to use it.

The same is obviously true of anything powered by an internal combustion engine. If you buy something that is, to put it bluntly, in a mess, then you may spend a long time regretting it and writing out some hefty cheques to try and put things right.

In the case of manual tools, providing the price is right and they're in good condition, you should have no issues.

For anything more complicated, buying second-hand can be a good way of saving money but it might be prudent to only buy from an experienced and registered dealer in agricultural and garden equipment.

For more details, please visit - http://ezinearticles.com/?Garden-Equipment---FAQs&id=9890752

Kubota and Space

We are writing this blog just 24 hours after the massive TV coverage of Elon Musk’s huge rocket launch in the USA.

It’s impossible not to admire anyone who has their old sports car sent into deep space with a dummy strapped in the seat whilst David Bowie’s “Space Oddity is playing on an endless loop and “DON’T PANIC” (from The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy), is displayed on the radio’s screen in the dashboard. It’ll apparently orbit around the sun at the same distance as Mars, where it’s assumed it will remain for at least 300million years.

Showmanship? Yes - but impressive for all that

Whilst watching all this, I guess, we were struck by the millions of young people all over the world who were enthralled by the event and the sight of a big rocket lifting off.  That was rather strange for anyone much over the age of about 55, for whom the memories of the days when giant rockets were lifting off routinely on the way to the moon are probably very clear! Read more about....... Kubota and Space.

Beep – Press Button “A” to Purchase your Kubota Tractor

The Goulburn Post recently carried an article bemoaning the lack of human interaction in some sales environments.

This came about because the reporter concerned had been into a Canberra store and found that nobody was around to make the sale. Apparently all you had to do was pick the article up, wave your phone and its app around somehow in the air and the transaction was then complete. You just walked out without speaking to a soul.

So, are you likely to come and see us in Goulburn sometime soon looking for say, some Krone hay equipment, only to find that the team have all been replaced with permanently smiling robots serving coffee? All you’ll need to do is to enjoy it, then wave your phone around aimlessly in the air to make purchases?

For more details, please visit - https://www.whitestractors.com.au/blog/340-beep-press-button-a-to-purchase-your-kubota-tractor.html

Top Tips for Selecting Quality Agricultural Tools

If you’re in farming, then budgets are likely to be tight and you’ll often be looking for economies. That’s virtually “business as usual” in agriculture.

However, one area you might not want to cut spending corners in is that of your tools. There might be little point in purchasing prestige items like for example Krone hay equipment if you then put that at risk by trying to maintain it with cheap tools.

So, here are some top tips for selecting quality tools.

1. Look for recognised quality brands.  If they’ve been around a long time and have a reputation for quality, then they’re clearly doing something right. Be prepared to pay a little extra, if necessary, for that reassurance.

2.  Learn a bit about metal descriptions. For example, if terms such as “HSS” or “Chrome Vanadium” don’t mean much to you, you should research them and other such technical designators. That’s because tool producers often use such designations to describe the quality of the metallurgy they use. Note that metal hardness isn’t always necessarily the only criterion behind selection – read up on that too.

For more details, please visit - http://ezinearticles.com/?Top-Tips-for-Selecting-Quality-Agricultural-Tools&id=9831597

So, You Need a New Set of Tools?

During one of our recent chats with a visitor, they commented that they’d purchased a new socket set recently.

They also said just how cheap it had been and it all sounded really good. Their joy at their bargain lasted right up until about the third time they’d tried to use it when various parts of the set had started breaking under stress. Apparently, the ratchets gave up first then bits of the main metal parts started to shear or “round”.

Now you can probably see where we’re going with this because we’ve blogged on it before (socket sets in particular seem to arise commonly in this respect), albeit a long time back. Even so, we’ll offer our thoughts again.

Generally speaking – cheap tools are a bad idea! OK, if you’re able to buy a quality second-hand branded set at a bargain price then good luck to you. That’s different. Read more So, You Need a New Set of Tools?