Gordon Stephen

Gordon Stephen

Gordon Stephen

Wagglehill croft, Aberdeenshire

Gordon Stephen and his wife Amanda raise Highland cattle which they sell direct to customers, alongside the running of an agricultural contracting business.

No stranger to creating equipment to make farming life easier, such as calf catchers, the couple’s recent development sees them focus on the challenges of weatherproofing round bales.

The weatherproofer was borne out of need, explains Gordon. Due to a lack of building space, he wanted to store round bales of hay and straw outside during winter and stack them to further save on space, which meant wrapping techniques such as a tube liner was not suitable.

Weatherproofing

A simple solution was to cover the circumference of the bale with wrap and leave the ends open but, unable to find any machine on the market that could do this without being too expensive, he decided to build my own.

The first one worked with a few modifications to get the wrap held and cut but then he started weatherproofing for customers and, as demand increased, he overhauled the machine.

Bales are now wrapped sitting vertically rather than horizontally, allowing wrap to be applied better.

Weatherproofing bales has now become Gordon’s main job for the harvest season, undertaking more than 13,500 bales last year and with an increase each year.

The machine fits to the front linkage of a tractor and bales are individually wrapped so can be either stacked up or left in rows.

Gordon says the first version was made in about a week then improved later, costing about £3,000-4,000.