Friendly Fox

After yesterdays marten chicken killing session, today a fox turned up at the stables. Well, actually a Fuchs, the German word for fox. It came in the form of a compact farm loader made by the local company "Ludwig Fuchs".

Farmer Franz had been around yesterday and we debated the still critical hay storage situation. Despite pumping out the cellar, the hay bales standing on wooden pallets, are still attracting moisture no doubt mainly from the salt that was spread and which fell on the concrete floor. I said I wanted to take out all the bales, lay down a large heavy-duty truck awning and then put them back on the pallets but lying down. Even though very tied up, Franz said he would come along today with his loader as, despite my vehement protests, he claimed my ancient John Deere wouldn't be up to the job.

So when the call came that he would be around in about an hour, I quickly started up the John Deere to make my point and with a bit of toing and froing got all 9 bales (and they are the biggest size round bales) out of the stables and neatly stacked about 50 yards away. Swept the floor and laid out the awning before he arrived. I think he was a bit surprised but also happy as he had little time. I then collected the bales again, he then spiked them on his machine and transported them back in.

I could, in fact, have done it all myself but it would have taken much longer and probably not as neatly placed in their new positions. The Fuchs 900 which he bought recently is his second such machine, the older one being a Weidemann or Schäfer (not sure) the market leaders. Fuchs is a small outfit and the price difference is enormous, nearly a five digit Euro number cheaper. While quite happy with the motor (Yanmar) and the lifting gear, he is very unhappy with the drive train. His is powered solely by oil pumps, the next model above with a prop shaft. He has noticed that to drive over a small obstacle, he has to rev up the motor and is a bit concerned the machine will not be good at driving into heavy loads of sand etc with the bucket. Being such a small company, Fuchs had no demonstrators to try out for a week or so.

However, the machine would be a dream for me. These articulated compact loaders are amazing at lifting very heavy loads and are incredibly manoeuvrable most being no more than 1m wide and will get into spaces no tractor could reach. If only they had a PTO  (power take off to drive things like mowers) on the rear, then I could do away with the tractor, well that is if I won on the lottery as well. The new prices are astronomic and the used ones even worse.

Franz did manage to quickly down a cup of coffee and a piece of cake with Angie's father, his wife, stepbrother, wife and lovely daughter Emily who were visiting for the day and enjoying chilling around and in the pool and little Emily was totally taken by all the animals.