It’s been a war of attrition for the last week with a de-stoner, and so far we are coming off second best.

It’s not like the machine was pulled out of a hedge and put to work. It spent the winter in a shed and then a week in the workshop being gone through before being put to work.

In the last week we have had four breakdowns serious enough to lose half a day on average each time. The clincher was late last night when I was piloting the cursed machine for a night shift. After settling in and starting to enjoy myself around 2am, a stone got caught in the web and split the web on one side. A disaster.

After spending an hour trying to free the web, to get it to line back up to see how bad the break was, I then realised that rejoining the web would mean removing two bars to get an even join across the web when new clamps were in. At about 4am, after moving the machine over to the mobile workshop, I retreated to the jeep to figure out a plan and get an hours sleep.

At 5am I had another go at pulling the webs together to see if there was the necessary length but it wasn’t going to happen. Only one thing for it, a new web.

It’s always tricky calling people when you have a problem at 6am. I decided a text would be best before 8am to see if Grimme Ireland would have the web in stock. Within minutes, I got a text back from Cecil to let me know it was in stock and after a quick call I was on the road to Ballyboughal.

I arrived before 8:30 and I was back on the M9 for Kilkenny before 9am. It felt like a victory after the disaster of a night that had gone before it. It’s a credit to the lads and Cecil that the machine was back rolling before 11am given how far away I am from Ballyboughal and the nature of the breakdown.

The ongoing war with the destoner aside, seeding is moving along as planned with 25% of the carrots in, 50% of the parsnips in and more to come after the weekend’s showers pass. The rain will be welcome for the weekend but will be unwelcome during next week. Ideally if we could keep the rain to Saturday and Sunday it means we have a chance of some union hours.