A T Robertson & Sons in tune with a new Tenor

A T Robertson & Sons farm 611 acres in South West Norfolk. Archie Robertson and his sons Ian and Brian moved to the area from Fife when Shell acquired 5 local farms for a new petro-chemicals plant in 1978.

“Potato prices in Scotland were at a record high and influencing local land prices.
Norfolk farm prices relatively cheap at the time and so we moved lock, stock and barrel to Green Farm in Thompson” explains Ian Robertson. This was later supplemented by a further 300 acres with the purchase of Wick Farm, Watton. 575 acres are cropped, 110 with sugar beet, the rest with barley and some wheat.

In January they purchased their fourth Berthoud sprayer: a Tenor 35-37 with 3500 litre tank capacity and 24m Axiale boom to suit their established practises.

“Our previous two sprayers had been Racers, fantastic machines and the last one sold for a very good price after six years of service. So we were tempted to simply replace it with another one.  But after Boston Crop Sprayers, our Berthoud dealers sold the model they had in stock; we looked at the new Tenor trailed model and decided the time had come to move on. It was slightly more expensive but we liked the modern lines and knew if we bought this new Berthoud model it would be totally compliant with current regulations and standards”.

The Tenor’s first outings have been applying fungicides to winter barley and herbicides in wheat.

“As with all new machines, I was worried about the new controls but soon found they were easy to use”. Ian particularly likes the Nivomatic tank monitoring system. “You enter the volume you wish to fill and a horn sounds when it is reached”.  Ian was familiar with the D P Tronic in cab controls from the Racers. He also values the steering axle with the sprayer’s wheels turning into the tractor’s wheelings for tidier headlands. The Tenor also features a very small tank sump and short pipe runs to minimise residues and a unique Omega high efficiency, twin turbine centrifugal pump.

“We find that the excellent support we get from Boston Crop Sprayers more than makes up for the fact we are some distance from their depots. They maintain a good stock of parts and have some very good engineers”.

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