Neil Saunders, a farmer in the South Downs near Winchester, walks through his first season with the John Deere S770 combine. He covers the machine's ease of use, its technology features, and the dealer support that helped his family get up to speed on their arable farm.
I'm Neil Saunders. We're farming in the South Downs near Winchester, the main unit, but also up near Alton. We're a family partnership and we're all arable, growing wheat, barley, beans, oilseed, rape, all standard sort of crops, really. This is our first year with John Deere combines. We were already running John Deere tractors. Our old combine we were happy with, but we were tempted to go across and join John Deere for combines too, because we've got a great dealer. Moving from our old combine across to John Deere, we were slightly daunted about getting to grips with the new systems and controls and everything about the combine. But it went very smoothly. It found it very intuitive and caused us no issues at all. The header feeds the crop exceptionally well. It's easy to put on and off. The rake knife goes on in just seconds. It's extremely user friendly. So the cab is a very quiet, easy working environment for the operator. The controls are intuitive. It's a very relaxing place. The operator spend a long day. We're in the South Downs and we don't have a flat part on the farm hardly. We've got lots of gradients, lots of slopes. The active terrain adjust as being superb alongside the Hill Master, it's got everything covered. It keeps the sample clean going up and downhill, keeps the output going and it just gets on and does its job. We're using yield mapping and with the telemetry and JD link, my operations, everything gets sent back to the office for, you know, detailed analysis later on. And it's been very impressive how easy that works and it's going to be a great help to make decisions going forward. Chop and residue management is really important for us to start the season. We had a lot of green straw and it performed really well, gave us a very good chop. We've moved on to spring barley now, which is one of the most difficult crops to chop and spread well. But it's doing a fantastic job. Couldn't be happier. Our local dealers being exceptional, they've helped us every step of the way. We've had a whole team of people taking care of us. On mechanical side, the technology, the AMS systems, just the operational side of it. There's been a whole number of people supporting us every step of the way. So we're near the end of our first season with the John Deere combine and we're very happy. Everything's come together. The chop and residue management's exceptional. The Hill Master's been superb. It's performed well, the sample's great. The backup's good. No problems whatsoever. So, delighted, Sam.
