Farm and Garden

[rumblecloud]

On another note, my son in-law dropped this off for me the other day. I know it's for discing, but that's about it. It's in rough shape, but thought I'd give it a go to try and level out about a half acre to putz with.

 

[scotts90ranger]

@rumblecloud Looks like a Massey Furguson model 25 like mine but probably older. They work pretty good, it's nice being able to adjust the front and rear gangs independently from the tractor seat... Adjust the top link so it's roughly level sitting on top of the ground and fine tune as you use it to try to get both sets of gangs to about the same depth... the front will do the main work, the rear mostly pulls the dirt back to the center. Leveling is what I was doing in the bottom pic last year about this time, I did that first to break the sod, go one direction then perpendicular then at 45 degrees to get stuff all broke up. I mixed in a tiller since I have one then took the box scraper and drug the stuff around into piles since I was mainly getting rid of high spots... I later did that whole area that is in the first picture, that was way more work with my little tractor but it did it...

 

[rumblecloud]

THANK YOU Scott!
That's what I was hoping to do!
Love your little tractor -- it's pretty sweet.

 

[85_Ranger4x4]

There's a local farm corporation in our area that does a few thousand acres..al in smaller tracts that they rent and I imagine, a lot of their own. It looks like there's going to be a lot of corn this year. It's tough, time consuming work and mother nature can be unreasonable.

Like for this step most guys just spray... actually a lot hire the co-op to just spray it for them.

Like when this equipment was new you would have used the rotary hoe once when the corn was just out of the ground, cultivated 2-3 times and in between that you would have had to pull the cultivator off and cut/rake/bale hay for your livestock as well. Oh yeah, all this as calving season winds down. 80 acres +/- was a good sized farm for one family to run.

Now 1000 acres owned by one guy paying an army to run leased equipment is the norm. Most just plant and harvest, not many have livestock anymore.

 

[scotts90ranger]

Yeah, no kidding... Doing my part to keep my brother going with all the old stuff with his "no spray" organic farm, has like 80 acres of farmable land and water rights and without buying a bank hard to just jump in so he's going in all old used stuff and learning... that goes along with a lot of equipment failures but sometimes you win... I think all of his discs have issues and several tractors need to be split to be at 100%... The 14' wide disc needs a bearing on one of the gangs, I think the 8' wide disc works currently, the 8' cover crop disc needs some structural work since someone did some real bad welding... The Ford 9000 needs a clutch, one of his Ford 4000's needs a transmission rebuild, the 4100 has a slipping clutch but it isn't too slippy . He could use some implements fabricated to do cultivating and such and a smaller size tractor like the size of mine would fit in good... He's getting into small bale hay to use up some land and fill in some $$ which is a whole other ting figuring out 50 year old hay equipment...

That's all aside from keeping my property functioning and everything moving and all my garbage working

 

[lil_Blue_Ford]

I'm dreading the labor involved... but I'm probably going to run electrical out to the shed. Will be much nicer then the 100 extension cord I have run out there now. I figure it will also help on resale of the property when the time comes.

Rent a ditch witch to run a trench and run 3/4” minimum (larger depending on how much power you want to run out there) PVC electrical conduit. Best way to run electric for stuff like that.

 

[racsan]

Really hot today so made the chickens a frozen treat, canned corn in a ice cube tray, frozen overnight.

 

[tw205]

Hay Day.

 

[tw205]

Put up 187 round bales for our first cut. Gotta keep the pigs fat and happy.

or they will talk smack about you at the water cooler

 

[tw205]

Next gen are here.

All our pig are pasture raised. They never see the inside of the barn.

 

[racsan]

Got the first batch of beans off last night, today we were out at rural king & a few varieties of chicks were on sale for 1.50/each. I guess when they get to a certain size/age they clearance them. Normally most breeds go for $4/bird. I got 5 cinnamon queens which are a crossbreed of a silver laced wyandot & rhode island red. They have racing stripes for now, this makes 15 total chickens now.

 

[scotts90ranger]

No pics but I did a few hours of brush hoging with the tractor which actually worked fine, got the back flat area done then started tractor wheeling a bit around the pond before I just ran out of go (and adult beverages) so stopped while I was ahead, getting further on the pond it should really be dry, not really comfortable trying to climb that steep of a hill with even a few inches of water at the bottom breaking traction and possibly getting stuck...

 

[racsan]

My newest chickens are getting bigger, one doesn’t look like the others anymore, they are supposed to be “cinnamon queen”s but that odd one is possibly a speckled sussex. Still a brown egg layer (unless it aint a hen) at the end of this month I think I can let them be with the others.

 

[sgtsandman]

I got some more work done on the garden and fire pit area. Mainly, just finishing the pillars for the fire pit area and getting moving again on the retaining wall for the garden. The weed barrier I had laid down before is shredded pretty badly. So I ripped that out and will lay new material before I lay the final course of block. The block will hold the top and the dirt will hold the bottom. There has also been some twisting of the wood benches. That was not unexpected but was more severe than I thought it would be. Hopefully, the weight of the block in the pillars will straighten the wood out some. Otherwise, some creative cutting and shimming may be required so that the benches are solidly planted and the block sits flat.

 

[racsan]

Good morning campers! its 5-ish am as I got this picture, took down the small cage from the inside of the chicken house so all the birds are fully together now, The new chickens seem little again. 15 birds total now, I think thats plenty, after all when its colder & the egg production backs off I still gotta feed & clean up after 15 now. The newest ones still have a month or a little more before they start laying eggs. They’ve yet to venture outside to the run. Funny how they were wanting out so bad but pretty much stay in the area of the building they were confined to.