In his twenty-one years of maize harvesting, Suffolk contractor Robert Self has seen all sorts of seasons from the very dry to the impossibly wet. Film-maker Chris Lockwood captured the vagaries of Robert's final campaign, 2008. This proved to be a reasonable year but even so the contractor had to deal with a variety of crop conditions, as Chris shows in the programme. He starts with an introduction to Robert Self's enterprise and his machines. Then he focuses on the clamp, with a JCB Farm Master loader and footage of tractors rolling the clamp. Later in the DVD we see another method for storing silage using an Ag-Bagging machine. There is some grass work at the beginning of the season and some late maize drilling followed by the harvesting of a tall maize crop located on hills close to the river Orwell. In the workshop a continuous programme of maintenance is required, and Chris has also included footage of the necessary setting up and sharpening that takes place on each day of the maize season. We see how Robert opens up a field and works at night foraging and clamping.
There are details of road transport with custom-made trailers and a look at the history of John Deere foragers. Robert's own model is a 500hp JD 7400. The year concludes with the contractor's last-ever field, a late crop planted as the second crop off the field after a previous cut of grass.