Green Acres is the place to be...

[85_Ranger4x4]

Really stoked, it is looking pretty plausable that I may some day own me an acreage. It is actually a tad 10 acres, about 4 or 5 are farmable (and tiled/terraced) That is going to be the funnest part, I have everything to do it aside from the planter and combine. Dad has a spare planter I can borrow and I know guys in the area that I could get to pick it.

My great-uncle (the executor of the estate the acreage is currently in) has a neat little tracked Gehl skid loader on sight and is really big into helping clean the place up. I am not really sure why he is so big into helping but I think he really enjoys pushing buildings and trees over... maybe a tad too much. We got a lot done today.

Nice little house, inside is stuck in the 70's, sewer needs updated and I think while the yard is a mess I might go ahead and hook it up to rural water as well. Kind of a bummer. The big shaggy bushes, scruffy tire planter are gone and the wishing well thing is gone tomorrow.



Right off the highway, not much gravel, 8 miles from work... perfect.



The doghouse, rabbit hutch and dangerously split mullberry tree are gone.



Really cool old barn, tinned on one side and half the roof. The original plan was to tin the whole thing but my great-uncle (different one) ran into health problem after health problem and never got to finish it.



I want to fix the white top board around the fence and the defuct pickup loading ramp (nobody hauls livestock in the back of a pickup anymore) I think it looks cool and is a throwback to the Ertl farm sets we had as kids.







The main supports for the barn, pretty old school and pretty darn cool. I would love to know when this thing was built. (the house sidewalk has 1917 scratched in it, and back then I doubt a house sidewalk was real high on their priority list vs a barn)





No hay mow but all the gear is there to open the door and bring in the bales.



Can't really get decent pictures but it is set up for milking on one side (probably six stalls) farrowing hogs on the far side (farrowing crates are worth scrap) with a couple large pens in the center. Probably the coolest thing on the place.

My great grandfather's pet turkey tracks, I know it is pets because they were all but extict when they would have been pouring pads for hogs. He loved birds, there were always various kind of chickens, ducks, geese an guinias roaming around the place when I was younger.



This shed is no more, stood for a very probable 100 years with just 6x6's sitting on dirt for a foundation. It fought pretty hard before it came down too.



This shed is also down, had a concrete floor in it. I am going to try to save the tin off the roof of this one and another one to build a pole building to store a tractor and my F-150 in.



Sure wish the Canadians would come and get their thistles... the place is full of the blessed things.



Bonus points if you know what this is.



The Rangers hopefull nest, concrete floor, electricity and opening windows... going to be very nice wrenching in there as opposed the dark dirt floored sauna it is in now.



The big machine shed, too bad it is this far gone it would have been nice to keep. A bunch of intact (so far) tin on it, we are still working out how to get the equipment out of the inside. The H rolled out (and with a set of points and plugs ran) and with a little work we got the manure spreader out. Still working out how to get the two nice wood box wagons and two row checkrow planter out of the back.



She's pretty well sprung...



My current tractor shed, it is an old corncrib that fell down before my time, not my tractor BTW. The roof is meh, I think (and hope) it has a couple more years in it until I get the pole building up. The sides are pretty weak but it is braced well along the center.



The "Killing Field" I am thinking about a food plot once I get he equipment out and a tree stand in one of the trees in the fencerow. I did kick up a big doe out there but didn't get a pic, she was down in the grass when it took.

[Mark_88]

Cool...looks like it will keep you busy for a while with upgrades and rework...but I'd love to have something like that myself...

I think the thistles are from Scotland...I had a whack of them in a garden and it took me a few weeks to get them out...the roots actually go down several feet and spread around for other plants...

And that clam shell thingy...I've seen one somewhere before...thought it was some sort of grain smasher or cruncher...could also be the rear end off a very funny vehicle...

[85_Ranger4x4]

Originally Posted by Mark_88

Cool...looks like it will keep you busy for a while with upgrades and rework...but I'd love to have something like that myself...

I think the thistles are from Scotland...I had a whack of them in a garden and it took me a few weeks to get them out...the roots actually go down several feet and spread around for other plants...

And that clam shell thingy...I've seen one somewhere before...thought it was some sort of grain smasher or cruncher...could also be the rear end off a very funny vehicle...

Yeah, thistles are from Europe but that type is commonly called "Canadian Thistles" around here although nobody really knows why. Major PITA because like you mention they send runners out and start satellite plants.

The cast iron thing is a hog oiler, they made a BUNCH of different styles of them over the years. A corn sheller (removes corn kernels from the cob) is somewhat similar but different.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hog_oiler

I really need to take more pics. After four days of attacking the place with the skid loader it wouldn't pass for the same place. All the sheds that were slated for demo are demoed, houseyard and garden fences are ripped out, a couple trees have been removed and a couple more roughed up with the skid loader... it looks much nicer. The tin survived pretty well and things are looking good for putting up a pole building where the crib roof is right now (probably next year)

We have a huge pile of fencing to iron out and we have a huge pile of junk machinery to iron out. There are a couple other things I want to advertise before it gets ironed out too.

First off I want to paint what I can see from the house, the cobhouse, garage and one side of the barn so it looks decent outside when I am stuck in the house during winter. Maybe fix the wooden fence between the barn and loading chute and maybe fix the chute as well. Then I need to fix A LOT of fence. I don't know how much of this will happen before winter, I doubt the fence will. It would be neat to rent barn/barnlot space out to 4H kids or maybe horse people and get some sheep to keep the weeds down elsewhere during the summer (buy in spring, sell in fall)

[cvar]

Mighty fine piece of real estate!!! Looks awesome! That'll keep you way too busy for trucking, but it'll be way more fun working your very own homestead. I predict www.mytractorforum.com becomes your new online home. Is the well water not drinkable? The barn appears in great shape, well constructed, and it has that track in the peak to haul in loose hay (not bales). Do you plan a weensy herd of dairy cattle on this fabulous hobby farm?

[85_Ranger4x4]

We slid the cover off the well, it is a roughly 3' brick shaft down to about 35' where the water is. We haven't checked it but I am really tempted to go ahead and have at least the house hooked up to rural water which practically goes right by the place.

I am hoping to rent the barn out to people that live in town with animals, I know a couple other guys do it and it seems to work out well. There is a ton of stipulations for milking commercially, I know nothing about it and I personally cannot stand to drink white milk (to the point it makes me gag ) milking a cow or three to make chocolate milk and cheese seems to be going about it the long way.

Growing up we had sheep, they are a lot easier to handle than cattle and eat grass and weeds like kids eat candy. We had 10-15 of them and they could keep the parents 4 acres at about 1" tall with a little rotating. I wouldn't mind getting a few of them to keep the weeds down around the machinery. Cattle is fun too, but they are outragously priced right now, not to mention they play a lot harder (one could be indirectly blamed for killing the last owner of this place actually), take a lot more feed and are pickier eaters.

I am 99% sure that hay loader thing could work for either small bales (round or square) or loose hay depending on what grapple you had.

I am on Yesterday's Tractors once in awhile, mainly just browsing classifieds.

[85_Ranger4x4]

House looks a little cleaner, the windmill will be coming back but I had to move it so it didn't get smooshed.



Yes, the porch roof slightly needs redone.



Houseyard fence is gone...

Before:



After:





The tools are in place to deal with the tall grass and small trees in the new houseyard (borrowed from dad)



Ripped out two dying apple trees:



Where the really bad machine shed used to be:





The shed and two small brooder houses, the steel shed roof came off politly and is in a pile so I can strip the steel sheeting off it:



The lower part of the field, it goes to the row of trees in the distance.



The small pile of trees we have accumulated, we are going to have another good pile from the trees growing around the field and off the terrace:



Cleared a bunch of brush out of the barn lot.



If you know anybody with one of these be nice to them, they could do a lot of damage with somebody with a grudge in the seat:



The chicken house. I noticed this place has a large number of ticks... which irritates me. I was looking up how to pull off an attached one and noticed they mentined guineas were good at getting rid of them, like two birds can clear a couple acres of ticks in a year... so that is maybe why they always had a herd of them on patrol.



Cleared a bunch of brush, trash and junk from around the garage, kinda neat I can see the field behind it now.





The cement stock tank has been around for awhile...



HNA was proud of his work, he marked that on both sides of the tank:



The "cobhouse" looks a little cleaner too, we found three shot tractor tires and a 30gal drum of magic in a can fuel additive:



This little feller followed me over one day, going to use it to pick up sticks in the tall yardgrass before we mow it. It is going to be the big gun on the ranch I am going to farm with.



The two hog houses in a pile:





The steel roofed shed pretty much dropped where it set and I need to salvage the tin off it too.



Nice view of a nearby town:

[85_Ranger4x4]

The house is pretty much gutted, we pulled a wagon under one of the upstairs windows and pitched crap into it today. Surprisingly the hoist worked perfect to dump the junk out. Most everything that is in the house is sorted by who wants what.

[4.0B2]

that's awesome! i'd love to have a place like that (with time/money to work on it)

[85_Ranger4x4]

The well test came back bad (really high nitrates, some Ecolli and too much of some other bacteria) so rural water is in. While not required for a sale among family members the bank wants a current sewer or they will double the interest rate (3 something to 6 something) The sucky part is the house although not very big is legally a 4 bedroom house because every room upstairs has a closet... so it has to have a freaking massive sewer system.

Looks like the farm part of it may be pushed out of my price range, dad said he would buy it and I could buy it back later which sounds good... I would really like to do it all at once though.

[85_Ranger4x4]

It has been really, really dry here, no rain at all in July. Dad had and agreement with my great-unlce for the hay off the field for this year. T

he clover came on really strong for some reason so we decided rather than pay the usual baler guy $50/bale (what grass hay is worth) we would break out the old Vermeer and give it a whirl ourselves. It is more of a goof off experiment than anything, it is so dry if you look at it wrong the leaves fall of so there isn't much quality potential there anyway.

I chug-a-lugged the old B over (IMO the best raking tractor known to man without a cab) and pulled out the old IH hay rake that goes with the place, greased it and after we got the clutch freed up it worked great.





Dad's goofed up conjoined twin bale. The clover is dry, spotty and short, that doesn't bode well with one of the first commercially produced large round balers. It looks like it started a bale and then started another bale when it got another bite of a windrow and then it ended up wrapping around both started bales. Dad kicked it out before it broke something, one perk is it won't roll away. He called it a night after that, I raked more of it this morning but he hasn't made it back over to try it again.



The Beast, it was 95* when I quit for lunch and with a little breeze under that umbrella it was still pretty nice.



This thing worked surprisingly well for having sat for over 20 years. It likes 2nd gear best which at first I thought was odd because the John Deere rake it normally pulls doesn't miss a beat in third. Then I put together that third gear on my B is probably like road gear on the typical F-20 (which I am guessing is what this rake was meant to be pulled by)





I took those pics before I raked, the camera battery promtly died after that last pic.

It is really too bad we didn't get the mower going sooner, I think my great uncle would have like to have seen his rake used. There would have been a lot of "stupid John Deere" slams though

[det107]

Originally Posted by 85_Ranger4x4

It has been really, really dry here, no rain at all in July.

Sucks to hear that the drought is affecting your area. Nice pixs-

[85_Ranger4x4]

Originally Posted by det107

Sucks to hear that the drought is affecting your area. Nice pixs-

There are places worse hit, if we didn't snag a shower in late June it would be really bad... most soybeans didn't do anything (as in sprout) until then.

It is amazing just how tough crops are.