Contractor Geoff Taylor

Geoff Taylor’s Estate & Field Management business, operating from premises on the outskirts of Tonbridge, provides a complete package of rural services for private and commercial landowners to maintain or improve the amenity and environment value of their properties. 

He and his team of six full-time staff, together with the five or six seasonal employees taken on to cope with the summer workload, will tackle anything from mowing big areas of formal lawns and all manner of spraying jobs to fencing, ditching, planting trees and dredging silted ponds. 

“We’re constantly changing from turf to traction tyres, so it helps that our busiest tractors, the two Mistrals, are the same,” he says. “Also, they’re quick on the road, which is important when the work frequently involves moving from one location to another.” The tractors have a good hydraulics system, he adds, with three spool valves to supply implement functions and decent linkage lift capacity.

During the course of the year, the tractors operate flail mowers for cutting orchards and other rough-grass areas, toppers and harrows for paddock maintenance, and specialist tool for managing amenity areas, such as a pair of scarifyer-collectors, which are used for conditioning lawns, collecting grass cuttings and removing daffodils; and a pto-driven blower for removing leaves after the autumn fall.

Top dressing and spreading fertiliser, spraying, harrowing, rolling, stone burying and subsoiling are also handled by the Mistral tractors, along with log splitting and many handling and transport tasks. Little wonder they regularly clock up 600-800hrs a year each. 

“With that sort of workload, the brakes take a hammering and it’s hard on the clutch, so the tractors have to be regularly maintained,” says Geoff Taylor. “They cope remarkably well with the different jobs they’re asked to perform.”