The Massey 35 is fantastic, it’s light so doesn’t cut the fields up, plenty powerful, it even runs the New Holland 276 baler. However sometimes you need to pick things up, e.g. hen houses, pig arks and cord wood to name three. Even with a set of forks on the 3 point linkage it just doesn’t work.

The answer is a loader and ideally a loader with four wheel drive. I was struggling to justify buying a 4wd with a loader just to pick up a few bits of wood and the odd hen house.

I tried a 2wd Leyland(not my favourite tractor anyway) and with only a light pig ark on the loader the back wheels slipped.All the weight was over the front axle absolutely no use at all. It took me best part of 2 hours to get the Leyland back out and the field is full of ruts.

Back in April/May I found a Case IH 885 XL for reasonable money and in pretty good nick. The 885 is probably one of the last tractors to be built before everything went electric & computer crazy so I should be able to mend anything that breaks. The 885 has 4wd, the loader works, more than enough power and came with a grab so I can pick up the cord wood.