This is my 21st year of min-till, but there’s no need to have a party, as I think this autumn is best forgotten. We have, of course, ploughed many different fields over this period – it hasn’t been exclusively min-till.

I’d guess, taking the 21 years as a whole, that it’s been about 70% min-till and 30% ploughing. But that in itself is a big saving in minutes, metal and money, and our soils are the better for it.

However, the system becomes difficult in wet autumns. I reluctantly revert to the plough-and-power harrow/seed drill combination, but neither is this a panacea for all ills.

Through this autumn, we haven’t ploughed anything for winter cereals and we have sown (by min-till) maybe three quarters of the planned area.

But with the rain that’s fallen since, it wasn’t a good idea. I’d have been better off going AWOL in the Burren – or hanging out of the back of a bin lorry. Patchy crops don’t yield.

When you have to get seed in, the plough and the combination unit (or one-pass) is unrivalled.

In an autumn like this, successful establishment is more likely, but it’s not so much about the system you use, but rather the soil’s ability to take the deluge that followed sowing.

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We’ve had a 4M Kuhn/Accord combination since 1988 when the technique was becoming popular. However, the first outfit I saw working was my German friend Harro’s.

In 1985, he brought a mighty Fendt 615 LSA with a 4M Amazon combination and a heavy 4M front press to Ireland, which turned a few heads around here.

“He’ll bury that yoke in a boghole in Balrath and it’ll never be seen again,” the old boys said.

I’d have been better off going AWOL in the Burren – or hanging out of the back of a bin lorry. Patchy crops don't yield

Balrath was the beautiful large farm Harro had bought and, in good old 1970s fashion, a lot of the smaller fields (some black) were bulldozed into a prairie by the previous owner – but with a few wet holes as a result.

While Harro’s was the first mounted power harrow/drill combination I saw, it wasn’t the first combination.

Pioneering tillage farmer, the late Gay Harris, had uniquely assembled an outfit with a mounted Lely power harrow, coupled via a bridging drawbar to a trailed Massey Ferguson seed drill.

This was the start of the revolution whereby one man and one tractor could till and sow in one pass (hence the name). I remember seeing the Harris outfit in the early 1980s.

Recently, I heard of what was certainly the very first combination unit in Ireland, if not in these islands. This worked all over the plains of Meath, but the creative man behind it was a very entrepreneurial tillage farmer from – above all places – Co Cavan.

He had an Mercedes Benz Unimog with a mounted power harrow and a bridge-linked trailed seed drill back in the mid-1970s, while everybody else was doing four passes with a Triple K harrow on a Ford 5000, and a 4000 on a Bamford drill.

And not only that, the speedy 50mph Unimog allowed him to farm land far and wide.

When you have to get seed in, the plough and the combination unit (or one-pass) is unrivalled

This was in an era when a Leyland or its forebear, the Nuffield, was the fastest tractor on the road at a glacial 19.34mph.

The story is told that this enterprising man farmed so extensively that he forgot to combine a field, but I’m assured this is not true. It might have been true of Meath farmers back then, like the Pottertons, Conlons or Rickards, but certainly not a Cavan man. They don’t forget.

And if he was still farming today, I suspect he’d be attracted to money-saving min-till. But he’d be all speedily sown up weeks ago. No messing there.