‘Gyrotillers’ of which I am enclosing some photographs,
are diesel powered rotary cultivators of rather large size. They
were manufactured in fairly large numbers in the early 1930’s
by John Fowler and Co., Ltd., of Leeds England and for a time found
much favour with the owners of large estates and for con. tract
work.
They were too large an item for the smaller farmers to purchase.
Although they had their good points and could work to a depth
approaching three feel, their disadvantages told in the end and
these were too great a weight, heavy . repair bills and the fact
that whereas the plough leaves furrows for the water to get away,
these leave the earth stirred up and instead of assisting drainage
as was calculated, the soil is left ‘soggy’.
Farmers found that very good results could be obtained with a
crop of sugar beet on a field so treated but when it came to the
point where carts had to be taken onto the field to load and cart
away the beet, they suck at once up to their axles. A few remain in
use here in the county of Suffolk and possibly elsewhere but they
only find favour for reclaiming scrub land breaking up the roots
and brining these to the top where they rot or are raked up and
burned and I also have seen them making a good job of uprooting
boundary hedges, (a feature of our agricultural land hereabouts)
and so running two or three fields into one bigger one.
