All about timing

Timeliness is critical for John Dorey, which is one of the main reasons he upgraded his combine to an ex-demo Fendt 5255L PL in 2019. While the annual 200ha annual workload may well raise the eyebrows of some growers in the east of England drylands, in County Meath the Irish weather can be anything but certain … apart from the fact that you're likely to get rained off several times during harvest.

Proving the point, when John demoed the five-walker combine late in the 2018 season it was in some tough conditions — a crop of oats that had been flattened by those old foes, wind and rain. And while the combine was tested by the conditions, they did show exactly what the Italian-built combine was capable of.

In the following months, John priced up other makes, but he finally hammered out