A link to an interesting perspective on the Future Farmers of America

I have been amazed at the efforts of the Future Farmers of America to stay relevant in todays idiotic world. I was at the Willamette Valley Ag Show this week and was impressed at the number of FFA members who were involved with the show. Of course everything depends on your local advisor and some are incredible and some are completely worthless.

However, the National FFA organization seems to have understood that it is more than just "cows and plows," as the pathetic nerds at National Honor Society like to say, as they hug each other and frolic with rainbow flags.

And therein is the  issue. I suspect FFA has become a refuge for students who need to escape the bullshite of modern high school life.

There are two ways to look at that idea.

Mother Jones has found the last bastion of non doucheness left in America and they are exposing it...

CLICK here to see how the Future Farmers of America are a bunch of racist colonialist homophobes. (Thanks to my nameless buddy for texting me the link hoping to provoke an "intelligent discussion)

Also, if I were advising a young person of color... I would encourage them to join FFA. My observation is that you actually learn useful life skills. Skills which are not taught in public school. Like, how to run a business, public speaking, how to run a meeting, how to suffer in a dorky uniform in hot weather, how to talk to old people, how to put up with girls taking all the leadership positions, and if you are a kid with brown or black skin, how to win a place in society based on merit. 

But, what do I know? I am just a racist, inappropriate, insincere, and sarcastic old fart...

Also... I would really like to know why the percentage of farmers in the USA who are black went from something like 14% to a current rate of 2%. I can tell you the liberal bullshite interpretation of why this happened but I am betting there are correlations with declining farmer numbers in other areas. I am of course looking for support for my theory of megalomaniac family farming but do not want to give any support to other groups that I don't like. My world is a schizophrenic world, but at least I am never alone.

I go to an Agricultural Show

Yesterday my Brother and I went to the Willamette Valley Ag Expo. We needed pesticide credits so we went early in the day. Unfortunately we looked at the schedule wrong and the pesticide classes are today. I am not very excited about going back.

One of the highlights of the show is a hot lunch served cafeteria style. It is $12 with your admission ($5). This year it was chicken fried steak or lasagna. There was no steak left when we got there but there was iceberg lettuce. I do love iceberg lettuce and Ranch dressing. The lasagna stayed with me all day.

My brothers Wife and Son came up in the evening for a progressive type dinner that was supposed to feature Oregon grown delights. They were meeting with friends. 

My friend at the N&S Tractor booth gave me a ticket so I got to join the tour.

I think I was expecting something a little different. Perhaps more educational? It was supposed to feature Oregon grown items and I expected small portions with labels or maybe someone promoting products. Instead it was just dinner lines in each building with the main entree from a local meat producer. Also, Iceberg lettuce. I opted for the Italian dressing as I felt I needed to be more "cultured."

I also like meat. Not a huge fan of dead sheep but anything is good with salt and a little char.

You can't go wrong with meat! Mashed potatoes, boiled beans and Iceberg Lettuce!

Other than indigestion all day and much of the night, I was happy with the show. There were lots of free pens and key fobs this year. Lots of big ticket farming items. Four booths selling baler twine, (which I thought was a bit odd.)

The vendors were paying a lot of attention of the young people. Lots of kids were sporting new hats and had bags bursting with pens, cheap frisbees, writing pads, and candy. Lots of candy.

I have no idea what this says about the farm economy. There was almost nothing for small farmers. (IMHO) But there was a lot of equipment there.

I know the grass seed industry is not seeing much cash flow, commodity crops are crap, I think filberts are doing better, straw and hay are okay. 

Just my observations. The show seemed to have a lot more energy this year than in the past. There were very few empty booths. I saw two vendors I remembered from 20 years ago when we sold moisture testers at the Portland show.

I am sure this is a favorable result of the Booming Biden Economy!

How much I ended up charging to plant a hayfield/pasture

This is what it cost to plant a 12 acre pasture. This does not include the price of glyphosate or application of aforementioned evil poison...

100lbs Fawn Fescue $175
100lbs Orchardgrass $275
100lbs Climax Timothy $155
Recharge seed inoculant $116
129 gallons 10-34 liquid fertilizer $496.65
No-Till planting for 12 acres which was two directions at $30 per acre $660
(or I could have charged 5.5 hrs @ $120/hr which actually came out to the same price)

Total price was $1877.65

I think that is a lot of money for a 12 acre pasture. But I am not really making a lot of money on the job. I ended up getting the seed and fertilizer and it took forever. Plus, I paid for it all.

I was hesitant about charging for the second pass but it took a lot of time to do the first pass at an angle in this field. Second pass in a circle took a little over an hour. But the price I charge for planting reflects a high maintenance and expensive grain drill, a 180hp tractor, diesel, tires, and since it is a 1980's White tractor-the hydraulic oil I leak per acre.

I really feel that the cost in seed and fertilizer is pretty telling in relation to farming today. I know I am selling a service but I would have worked the ground. That would have doubled or tripled the farming cost but there would be a much better seed bed and better weed control.

Seed and fertilizer was $100 per acre and I assume Glyphosate was another $35 per acre.

Not a lot of room for error anymore...

I think it if fails I will replant for free or a substantial discount. Sort of feel guilty about charging so much...

Planting a pasture

Yesterday I planted a pasture. I avoid doing pastures as I have never had a lot of success. 

I live in Western Oregon. It seems to me that all the farming is done elsewhere. There are never good deals on tractors or research on alternative growing methods. The Rodale Institute is PA. When you look up farming information and get excited because the web address is "OSU." You soon find out that the research was done by Ohio State University, NOT Oregon State University.

It is pretty crazy when the catalogue from Great Plains MFG shows a set up just like mine replanting pasture but my experiences have mostly been failures.

There were three problems with this planting job. 

First issue is it is too late in the year for me to have confidence in good seed germination. My experience is that the seed just sets there and rots. If it does come up then it frost heaves out of the ground.

Second problem is that this is an old Turf-type Fescue field. Turf fescue has Endophytes bred into the seed which help prevent disease but cause issues with animal health. It was sprayed with glyphosate a couple days ago but there will still be seed sprouting later on. Also, the fescue sod is hard to kill. If there is any sod that is still dormant from summer, it may still come back. (not likely but I have seen it) 

The final issue is that the fescue is planted in 15" rows. The fescue rows have sod which is taller than the bare dirt between the rows. The no-till drill doesn't track well on the ridges. You have a lot of depth control issues. I could compensate if I could plant at an angle to the rows. However, this is an odd shaped field and there are few straight lines.

I suggested several alternatives. First I could no-till Cayuse Oats which will do "okay," winter planted and have a pretty decent hay yield. Take the hay off in late May when the oats are in late bloom. It is a little late for Oats so it would be better to wait until our winter weather break at the beginning of February. This would give time to make sure the fescue was dead.

Second suggestion was to work the ground. This would insure a kill on the fescue and make a smooth field. Again, November is a little late as we are heading into the rainy season.

My customer decided he wanted the pasture planted now and if it didn't come up we would do it again in the spring and he would pay me again.

So I planted.

The field was supposed to be 10 acres. I opted to plant two directions because of the difficulty with the fescue rows. This was not real successful. I picked a good straight line but soon found I was turning around way too frequently. Then I discovered that the field was more like 12 acres.

I got 100lbs of Fawn Fescue, 100lbs of Orchardgrass, and 50lbs of Timothy. The recommendation was 10lbs two directions but I wanted to go a little heavier. The goal was 30lbs total. However, having two acres extra was a problem. I scrounged through my shop for left over part bags, buckets, coffee cans, of any sort of forage grass. I found 25lbs of Kentucky 31, some Kentucky bluegrass of unknown vintage, and 25lbs more lbs of Timothy. I have 25 acres on the counter.

The other issue was fertilizer. I rebuilt my fertilizer applicator system with mixed results. I thought I had a system that I could easily agitate my fertilizer. This is handy if you have crappy 10-34 from Valley Ag or if you are mixing 32 and 10-34 as they tend to separate overnight. I needed the agitation as I was adding a Compost Tea inoculant called Recharge. 

My friend has worked with these folks, CatalyistBioAmendments. They are in Colorado and seem less sketchy. I need to email them and see if they offer a similar seed starter. I had a picture showing how one side of the drill came up faster due to the inoculant but it doesn't show up well on a computer screen.

Compost tea additive is just a bit hard on the filters

My agitation comes from the bypass which is how I regulate fertilizer pressure. The servo valve directs flow back into the tank instead of the usual method of restricting flow to the boom. There is a three-way valve on the boom which was made by Texas Industrial. A TIR.2401 three-way valve. This valve is now discontinued and I can't find instructions or a parts breakdown. It used to direct flow back into the tank when the fertilizer boom was shut off. Now it mostly just sticks open so if I want agitation I have to slowly reduce speed so the bypass directs all the flow back into the tank. It is a bit frustrating. A new high quality valve is like $400.

But I digress...

I mixed the compost tea inoculant in with the 10-34 fertilizer as this puts the mixture right down with the seed and set the Micro-trak Spraymate II at 8 gallons per acre. Everything was calculated for 10 acres and I foolishly mixed up very close to the correct amount. After making the first pass I had to go back home and mix up a second batch to make sure I came out correctly at 24 acres.

Then it started to get dark...

It was impossible to see anything and the GPS didn't work as the field had multiple slopes. The second trip I put down my marker, put the 2-155 in fifth over and ran at 7 mph. It took me 3 hours to do the first pass and an hour to do the second pass.

Skip this post it is about Politics and hasn't been edited.

I am finding this election cycle very depressing. 

I never thought "they" would let Trump win. He is disruptive. He annoys establishment Republicans.

Now that Trump has won both the popular and the vote of the Electoral College the rationalization by both sides has began. I don't think anyone knows why the election turned out the way it did and so everyone is trying to figure out how the results agree with their perception of America.

I was talking to a friend who believes white people exist to oppress black people. He is sure the future is oppression of women and black people. He feels that the working class black folk who voted for Trump are colonialist apologists and kind of ignorant.

The Republicans are scrambling to kiss Trump arse and get jobs in the administration and still probably 70 percent of them want to screw him over. Mitch McConnell is pushing the election of a new speaker of the house to form a "loyal," opposition to Trump.

The is both good and bad. The problem with the Trump is that he surrounds himself with sycophantic idiots and you never know when they are going to claim there is secret plot to replace the senate with Reptilians or turn on Trump and claim he wants to put all women in jail. Both of those ideas are completely crazy as the Senate already is made of of Reptilians and... well I digress. My heart isn't really in a political discussion this morning.

A lot of people who tend to set out of elections voted for DT again this election cycle.  Why did they set out the last election? Why did they come back for this one?  At this time it sounds like there were a lot of male black and latino voters for DT. Also, quite a few women did not follow the gender line.

There are two distinct socio-economic classes in this country. There are the college educated people who work for government and company management. For example, you get a degree in environmental science and you intern with the local soil conservation district, and then you get a job in NRCS and you are making rules for farmers and you know nothing about farming plus your professors and peers claim farmers are colonialistic environmental abusers. Then you wonder why you are not getting cooperation.

Then there are the rest of us who work for our living...

The Democrats continually insult our intelligence. They pushed Joe Biden when he was obviously mentally unfit, they pushed him into the presidential race for the second time when he couldn't complete a sentence. Then, they screwed him over for the Vice President who comes off as a total idiot, and claimed she was the most capable person available. 

There were bizarre campaign decisions like courting the Dick Cheney endorsement. They honestly tried to rehab Dick Cheney? Lefties wanted to prosecute Cheney for war crimes. It was hilarious. Plus, conservatives are still not happy about the Bush/Cheney war that lasted for ever and gained us nothing but hatred.

In the final weeks of the election the Democrats made insane claims about Trump executing Liz Cheny or prosecuting those you disagreed with him. The Democrats when over the top when they manufactured a Trump conviction. That conviction told us all that if we offended the wrong person we could go to jail for violating a whole lot of stupid rules that no one ever pays attention to.

Finally, there was illegal immigration, supporting the economy by printing money, and the Democrat instance on abortion up to actual birth.

People that I know want unrestricted immigration stopped. We believe several key points about current immigration policy. First, no control means that gangs, drugs, and criminals across the border. The cartels are obviously in charge. This brings in corruption with US government officials, it ruins the asylum process as the people you are escaping are following you in. It has given us new gang problems. 

It is diluting the worker pool. There are too many unskilled or non English speaking people and it disrupts local industry. Plus, there is now a demand for housing but most people can't afford to build or own.

Abortion is a problem that must be solved. I feel the Republicans will totally screw this one up. (There is too much money being made off of abortion (on both sides) to ever solve the problem.  Abortion should be available for up to 12 weeks, then restricted to heath of the mother, rape, incest, or being a Democrat. Most countries in the world are opposed to killing babies in the last month. It is insane we even debate it.

But now I am bored and want to talk about farm equipment. I wait with anticipation to see how the short pants RINO Republicans will totally screw this up. 

Maybe Joe, Mitch, and Nancy will get us in a shooting war. That is about the only thing left.

I ignore the obvious and waste several days on complicated solutions to a simple problem

I have been working on my under the sink water filter. I broke down and ordered a different on-demand 110v pump which I put in front of the water filter to pressurize the system. 

It was very noisy. It ran all day.

I decided the pump was not getting enough water so I drove in to Lowes to get fittings to go to 3/8" tubing instead of 1/4" tubing. 

A the stoplight to turn into Lowes I saw the hay customer I had forgotten about and I discovered I had left my cell phone at home. So I turned around.

After selling three bales of hay I returned to lowes.

This was an exercise in frustration as is every encounter I have experience at Lowes.

Everything is now push on and PEX fittings and nothing was right. Finally a very nice you man asked me if I needed help, and then kept trying to help me until I we actually found a brass t-fitting that should have worked. 

The problem is that I need a female to female ferrule type thread adapter. The t-fitting for the water filter has a female swivel on one end and male threads on the other and the center fitting goes to a valve and direct to 1/4" tubing and a different ferrule than I can find.

The replacement T-fitting had male 3/8 ferrule type threads on all three ends which required more adaptation. 

Then I discovered the fitting on the filter was no removable and that fitting was 1/4".  So I decided to cut some of the extra feed line off and at least fit things in better.

Which is when I made my most important discovery. I ofter wonder what is wrong with my mind. I can do in depth trouble shooting, but I often miss the obvious. I am probably getting dementia.

The feed line was plugged with sediment.

Of course I did not have a new ferrule for the valve end so I cut if off short, cleaned the line, spliced a clear 1/4" line to the filters. 

I could have done that two weeks ago...

This is what the inside of the 1/4" feed line looked like when I cut it open.

In other news...

Someone has been actually reading old posts from this blog. I can see it on the analytics page. It must be someone with a national service provider as I can't actually tell what city they are from. It could be someone in Ireland. It is actually kind of neat to see what they are reading. I used to post a lot more and I think I did more interesting things back in 2011. I think life was better back in 2011.

If you are reading old posts I want to say thanks and I hope you enjoy them!

I ramble about politics and don't have any good pictures.

Next week is going to be interesting. 

I wish I would have kept up with current events on this blog and made it more of a journal than a discussion of farm equipment and offensive commentary on my old job. 

My second favorite Democrat has taken to sending me links to news stories that are supposedly showing that DT is a racist, is in cognitive decline, does weird sex things.

Its funny because of well... Joe Biden...

But, I wish I would have written down what was going on five years ago. The evening I was listening to Ground Zero with Clyde Lewis and he said the only way Trump would not be elected was if there was a major pandemic, and three months later we got the WuFlu epidemic. 

Or noted the uproar when DT attempted the most basic measures in restricting flights from China. Or noted the obstruction by Democrats to all the efforts made by Trump in the early days of the "pandemic." I remember talking about it with my wife but I never saw the point in documenting it.

Looking back however, I think about George Bush's reaction to 911. I wonder now if his odd reaction when first told was more of a realization that Dick Cheney owned him and DT's reaction to the WuFlu was a realization that you can't fight the "Deep State."

But, I digress...

The crazy stuff that mainstream journalists are putting out at the last minute would be funny if DT had a chance in winning. It is crazy desperate propaganda and it works!

I saw the interview with Tucker and DT did not call for the execution of Liz Cheney...

People who keep sending me slightly edited videos that purport to show DT doing a "Monica" on a microphone and utterly miss the irony of how Kamala got to be in California politics amuse me but its sad to see they are really serious.

The idea that Joe Biden was a model of mental sharpness for the past six years but DT has early dementia is amazing in that I think the people are making a joke and I kind of laugh and then I realize they are serious. 

I want to laugh that Kamala and DT are facing off for President because they are both rather poor communicators. DT has Adult Attention Deficit Disorder so bad it is hard to follow what he says and Kamala just strings words together and leaves the ending open so that her supporters can fill in what ever they wish she was saying. I mean really, Kamala was the vice president based on the fact that she was the only person that wouldn't upstage Joe and DT ran in the first place because Republicans were to incompetent to come up with a challenger to Hilary.  This race is absurd. The only person who can actually formulate a sentence that makes any sense at all is Vance.

Obviously us right-wing crazies have our own fake stories about the Democrats and I happily promote those stories as truth when ever I can piss someone off. It is scary when both sides actually believe their own propaganda.

I have come to realize that progressives are just really awful people. Anyone who has a Love equals Love sign in their yard is actually a very hateful person. It took a while for me to understand this.

In fact I voted for a "progressive," for a non-partisan position on the local county board of commissioners. I talked to him in person. He sounded very sensible. In fact he got me by stating that he got into politics because he was tired of the government telling him no on everything he wanted to do.  I didn't realize what he wanted to do was vastly different from what I wanted to do. 

I am watching the current commissioner race which has a Man-Bun progressive in a flannel shirt and short pants who has a pet raccoon go up against a slightly nutty conservative woman. The progressives are bitter and mean people who profess love and kindness but instantly go angry and snarky when anyone says, "wait a minute, you may not be entirely in the right on this issue..."

You just simply must realize that progressives are in the right and you are in the wrong. Politics are their religion and they are doing "god's" work and their god comes with pronouns and you better not misuse them..,.,

Random Farming picture

I change injectors on White 2-155 and try to fix stuff

I changed the injectors in my White 2-155. It has been smoking quite a bit at idle. I bought the two hole injectors for a LDS-465 Hercules Army Truck engine off of eBay. They were supposed to be tested and NOS.

It seems to run better, less smoke, but I get an occasional engine miss. I asked a couple young fellows who work on diesel engines a lot and they think it is the injector pump. They suspect Bio-Diesel. The suggestion was to fill the filters up with Automatic Transmission fluid and run it for a while. The high detergent oil will clean out the injector pump. I tried it and I really don't know.

LDS or LDT465 Hercules, I should check the engine tag. The LDS is the engine you want as it has the extra piston rings. I don't hear a miss in this video.

In other exciting farm news I am attempting to re-plumb the liquid fertilizer on my Great Plains 1500 drill. I have the Center Pivot Hitch and not the hitch with mounting spots for fertilizer tanks. I am limited to 200 gallons as that is all I can lift with 2200lbs of wheat in the drill box.

I am trying to get all the plumbing the same size at 1 1/2" for suction and pressure out. I thought my three way valve had 1 1/2" threads until I started putting everything together. It was 1 1/4" which is not a good size for finding hose. Common hose size is 1 1/2.

The main problem is I have made things complicated by wanting to be able to use the fertilizer pump to load and unload the tank. I should have just bought a cheap Harbor Freight trash pump and paid for a three year warrantee. Then bolted the pump to the drill frame so no one could borrow it.

Somehow there is a way to put this together in a neat and efficient manner!

I will be glad when this election is over. People are waiting to see how to compensate economically and are not spending money. I can see the propaganda stops being pulled just with the lie that Trump wants to execute Liz Cheney. I heard the interview myself and know what he said. I suspect she will win. Must continue the corruption. 

The wonders of under the sink water filter systems when they get to be ten years old.

It has been pouring down rain all day. 

I have been working on our water filtration system. This is better than putting farm equipment away in the rain.  Or blowing leaves in the. rain. 

We have a five stage filtration system by by iSpring. It has its own pressure tank and it's own faucet. Our water is full of mud and who knows what else as we have a not super deep well located in a flood plain. The tank is not filling properly. I suspect a lack of pressure.

The lack of pressure is cause by two things. First we have smaller pipes in our house and share a well with the rest of the farm. Secondly, the primary filter keeps plugging. When I take it out it is covered in red clayish mud.

So I bought a pump to pressurize the filtration system. Of course I bought the wrong one. My plan was sound. I will spend a little more on quiet and shielded pump that has a pressure regulator and will activate the water shut off when the tank is full. It is also supposed to shut off if I loose water pressure. It cost $110.

I should have just bought a 110v diaphragm, on demand, RV pump for $65 delivered though Amazon. That just gets plumbed in before the filter system and when the pressure hits 45lbs it shuts off. I suspect that is what I am going to have to buy anyway.

I actually drove in to Lowe's mega hardware store to buy that very pump as I saw the it was listed on the Lowe's Website. It was not actually in stock. I couldn't read the fine print.

I really just need to buy a large single filter to get out the mud. One with an easy to find filter and a lot of capacity. However, water filter systems are one of the most popular scams in the book. I think they are all similar to the iSpring system but just have different labels and accordingly different prices based on the company who applies the labels and their particular scam.

This is nothing against iSpring. This is the system we have and the system works very well and was not crazy expensive when we purchased ours. I do think the reverse osmosis and charcoal filtered water does taste better.  I do wish I would have spent the extra $100 on a pump because of our lack of water pressure. Also because they have a very nicely put together system and I am terrible at doing neat and tidy plumbing or electrical jobs.

I just need to figure out a really big prefilter and write the filter number on the outside with a Sharpie so I can remember which filter to buy. This would save a lot as the best iSpring deal is on a bundle of five filters and the only filter that actually makes a difference in pressure is filter number one. I think I could easily cut my filter changes in half. 

Edit: I looked up the iSpring pump setup. They are also taking the water for the pump out of the primary filters so that wouldn't work any better than the set up I have. Mine has a gauge and pressure regulator.

Also, the booster pump came from Express Water Systems and I see that they are cheaper than iSpring and I think the filter system looks identical. Go figure...

The Birdsfoot Trefoil actually came up

I am always amazed when what I planted comes up. I may be conditioned to farming failures. 

This fall I planted Timothy grass for hay and I also added Birdsfoot Trefoil as an experiment.

The Trefoil, (or lotus major) is a legume which adapts well to lower pH soils, fixes Nitrogen, and is not supposed to cause bloat like alfalfa can do. Although, this will never be a pasture so I don't think this matters. 

I planted Trefoil mostly because my friend that owns the 3.5 acre field wanted to plant it years ago and only three plants made it though the summer.

I planted this a couple weeks ago somewhat against the recommendations of the seed salesman. I probably should have listened to the seed guy a fifty pound bag cost me almost $300.

Yesterday I checked on the field and I saw little broadleaf sprouts in with the Timothy. 

This was a no-tilled field so I may have trouble with frost heave if there is a lot of freezing nights. But, we shall see what we shall see.

Trefoil is the broadleaf in the center of the furrow. You can see little Timothy sprouts if you look closely. I am choosing to believe that the more mature grass plants are Timothy plants left over from the first planting.  Sprouts between the rows are no what I planted...

I prepared this field in the spring. It was disked twice and the harrowed and rolled four times. I then waited for a sprout and applied Glyphosate. After the sprout died I used my no-till drill to plant Timothy seed at 1/4" deep. There was a good rain afterwards and I think a lot of seed sprouted. However, it never rained for the next three months. 

I controlled summer annuals (sort of) by mowing so I will very likely have a lot of late summer weeds next year.

I replanted in late October into a damp seed bed. I planted the Timothy at 10lbs per acre and the Trefoil at five pounds per acre on every other row. (Although if you look at my photo you will see Trefoil on every row so it appears my plugs were leaking.)

My planting depth was supposed to be 1/4." The Great Plains 1500 with the CPH hitch is hard to set to a shallow depth. I put the Trefoil in the main box and the Timothy was in the smalls seeds box. The Trefoil was a coated seed so it was about the size of clover seed. Timothy is much smaller and lighter.

The small seed set up on by GP 1500 drops the seed behind the V-opener and right in front of the press wheel. Generally this means that the small seed plants in about a one inch wide band a little more shallow than what goes through the main seed box and out though the openers. The small seeds are covered by the action of the press wheels. 

There is also a floating harrow but I raised the harrow up. I wanted to leave a trench which holds moisture in dry weather.

I applied 6 gallons per acre of 10-34 liquid fertilizer which is banded in the row with the seed. This should help the plant grow through the cold wet winter.

This is the back of the Great Plains 1500. It is a rather poor view but I suppose you get the idea of how it works.

The Fescue is coming up, Timothy is coming up, Annual Ryegrass is up, Orchard grass is not, rows are crooked and I am lazy.

Global warming, or is it climate change, or is it man-made global cooling, or is it just the crazy cycles of nature, has resulted in a warm wet two weeks. 

The Great Plains 1500 is a really nice drill. It has liquid fertilizer, row monitors, and 15 foot is a good size. But... It is a constant battle to not bury the seed three inches deep when planting into worked ground. I think I am going to buy a new set of down pressure springs and then cut an inch or two off of the old springs and use the shorter springs for worked ground. It is kind of a pain to change the springs but I very rarely do the sort of no-till where you are drilling Wheat seed into ground that is as hard as concrete. (Which is what I used to do every fall)  I have thought about mounting air shocks on the openers so I could easily change the pressure but that would be a lot of work. I think it could be done with mounting brackets from Great Plains. Of course there would be buying 24 air shocks and mounting an air compressor....

My grass seed plantings are coming up. Checking them every day makes them come up faster. There was zero difference in the side of the drill that had the fancy seed inoculant. (See Realgrowers, Recharge inoculant) 

I am really disappointed that I cannot tell which side of the drill had the special treatment. It all seemed like a great idea. The seed is putting down roots really well but I can't see that one side of the drill has better roots than the other. I guess I should have planted an isolated test strip and flagged it off.

I am also disappointed in my driving. I cannot seem to drive straight with this Great Plains CPH-15 hitch.  The PFH-15 that I had on my original Great Plains 1500 was a much better design. It had a rock shaft for lifting the drill and the lift wheels stayed in alignment much better. There was also a better lock system for locking the center pivot when doing long straight rows in loose soil. 

This CPH-15 hitch has always wandered and every twitch of the steering wheel transmits back though the drill. I do wish I could afford auto-steer.

Or better yet, a new drill, a White 195 Workhorse, and Autosteer. 

I was talking about needed farm equipment with my nephew yesterday. He is pretty frustrated with the lack of a loader tractor grapple set up for loading hay. I was trying to get him to have his brother look for White 2-105 or 2-85 or 2-110 tractors where he is teaching school in Colorado. I see those on Tractorhouse with front end loaders fairly ofter for under $10,000. 

The Nephew is determined to put proper beds on three trucks. He has one almost done and is ready to start on the second. 

I was noting the list of tractors to repair this winter... Hesston 4690 baler with a bad engine, White 2-135 with a major water leak under the turbo and three speed issues, Minneapolis-Moline G-1355 with three speed issues, White 2-150 with injector pump issues, Minneapolis-Moline G-706 with engine swap and transmission issues, IH 656 hydro with PTO out and hydraulics issues, MM M-670 super with engine problems, Mercury-Pettibone Hay Squeeze engine swap, Mercury-Pittibone Hay Squeeze with bad mast lift cylinder and bent clamp, and an 806 IH that needs an engine rebuild....

Plus, his uncle is lazy...

The government is not there to help you, moving a friend, planting rye

Yesterday I helped a friend move some toolboxes. Every time I go down his driveway I get pissed at government and it makes me want to vote trump just out of spite. Not that Trump will actually fire the local head of NRCS or probably even have an affect on funding. Just because I want to see government plunged into Chaos.

My friend (who shall remain nameless at this point) sold his farm (in good faith) to the local soil conservation district and they screwed him. It took a decade. It took until there was a new head of the district. It took until the apparent the contact high that comes from spending your life with a pretty decent pothead farmer husband wore off for the chairman of the county board, but it happened.

You can tell from the sign. Look at that No-Trespassing sign. It is not "your/our" property, it is theirs. 

The county only took the best and cleanest ground to turn into the fabled Oak Savannah. They are letting the rest of the acres become over-run with teasel, thistle, blackberries. And of COURSE, they restrict access.

I came home and no-tilled Rye into Barley ground. This is not that great an idea as you can't control the volunteer Barley other than winter kill. However, our neighbor really wanted five acres of Rye for his whiskey project and so we did it. 

I planted 600lbs and the counter read 7 acres when I stopped. I was hoping for 600lb to 4 acres ratio as I wanted a higher crop density. Unfortunately, I went by the chart under the grain drill lid instead of measuring the drill output like I should have done.

Haste makes was every time. After spending an hour or so cleaning and setting up the drill it would seem I could have taken an extra ten minutes to check the seed rate. But, it was cold, and it started to shower, and I am a Lazy Farmer...

It was my 26 year anniversary and I was supposed to have started a fire and turned on the porch light for my wife who was working late.

I am a bad husband. 

I decided not to give her this chainsaw and tell her I purchased it for her as an anniversary gift. No sense adding insult to injury...

My friend explained that it had been setting for years since he got a heat pump mini-split and didn't burn wood anymore. Plus, it is a bugger to start as all newer Stihl saws tend to be. So I had to try it when I got home. Rosco is not completely impressed. He was strongly suggesting a pickup ride and did not give a rat's bottom about chainsaws. It did not start on the first pull.

Sunday Farming Foibles

Sunday did not go as well as I was expecting yesterday when I wrote my blog.

I quit Saturday night out of frustration with my driving I could not drive straight. I could see quite a ways down the field in the dark with headlights and a bright moon but my driving and the GPS did not agree. I was always making corrections.

When I got to the field I could immediately see the damages. The GPS was deflecting around trees and low spots in the field. I think this is due to the extreme angles of satellites being low on the horizon. The field is a long 30 acre rectangle that runs East/West and I have had problems years ago when I first started using GPS. 

Just a bit off, plus a lot of driver corrections. I suspect $8,000 and full autosteer would solve this issue....

I had to drive home to get fertilizer. I am mixing a special fertilizer with 10-34. It contains humic and soil enzymes. The people at the Co-Op swear it will make the seed pop out of the ground. I know everyone should laugh at me for spending money on a product that no one can tell me what is made of when really I just need to boost fertilizer rates and add lime. But, it came with glowing reviews from people who are really skeptical. 

The kid that loaded me spilled the beans, "this smells like shit..." he said.

I am pretty sure it is a humanure product. It has that stench. I don't think I will use it again. However, Saturday's planting will provide a great test. When I went to check my seed depth and look for plugged fertilizer tubes I realized there was a problem.

I am planting Orchard grass on 15" rows at 8lbs per acre. I am putting on a fertilizer mix of 5 gallons 10-34, 3 gallons of mystery additive, and two gallons of water per acre for a total of ten gallons. However I soon realized I had more acres than fertilizer so I reduced my application rate to 6 gallons per acre.

But what went wrong...

The drill has 7.5" spacing with fertilizer on every row. To get to 15" spacing I block off ever other row of seed and turn off fertilizer to every other row. It is really easy to get the fertilizer and the seed rows mismatched. Somewhere around row 6 I turned off two rows next to each other and continued that way until row 16. So on rows 6-16 the fertilizer is on the blank row and not on the seed row. I guess that is my test plot.

Once I got going and fixed the wandering rows I noticed the path painted on my computer screen showed that my fertilizer rates were going crazy. The Farmer GPS program interfaces with my MicroTrak Spraymate II and changes paint color in relation to the amount of fertilizer applied. It is also programed to offset the drill when planting with every other row so you can plant back and forth. 

So imagine row one is turned off and row twenty four is turned on. Going one direction you have two row one rows next to each other and the other way you have two row 24's next to each other. So with the row 1's you have 7.5" spacing and row 24's you have 30" skip. (If I drive perfectly, which I don't)

But, I digress...

The fertilizer pump was acting like the impeller was plugged or spun off the shaft or the hydraulic drive was skipping. So I had to change pumps.

I am expecting incredible yield from this one spot!

In the mean time I was sent a zoom link to see my Nephew preach. It was pretty funny to hear the moderator say, "I see Uncle "Bud" has logged in.  Nephew is teaching at an Accelerated Christian Education school in Colorado hay and horse country. This will be an excellent adventure for him.

I left the phone in the pickup and used headphones so no one could hear me swear and installed the spare pump, made sure all the fertilizer tubes were working and soon I was planting. I finished around 5 p.m. and had 50 acres on the counter. Thirty acres of worked ground and I emptied the drill on 15-20 acres of no-till.

I woke up to rain and like 60 degree temps this morning. Seems like good growing weather to me.

Have a nice day!

A foggy Sunday morning and the reflections that follow

 I woke up in the dark this morning. I looked out the window at 6 am and there was no sun. There was also no rain. My wife is away with the ladies so I didn't havre anyone to remind me that last night I said I was only working till 9 p.m. because I wanted to get an early start.

So I fell back into the semi awake state that happens when you are too stinking lazy to get out of bed. 

At 7 a.m. the room was lighter and I ventured a glance out the window.  The fog had rolled in and moitsure was dripping off of every surface. Nice weather to load the drill, I thought and I rolled over and pulled a pillow over my head.

Then I heard the geese and realized that summer was over and I still have a lot to do...

Motivation has become a serious issue. I can't keep blaming a broken leg or a crappy job for my laziness. I can blame getting sick the other day. I am still super tired and cough all the time. But, I am walking it off.

My buddy who wishes to not be named in my blog told me (as he does every other day) that my problem is guilt for the white race oppressing everyone else under the sun. I told him that he was absolutely correct and his insight had changed my life. He said I was a sarcastic arsehole and he would have fired me too.

Which brings me to the anniversary of my blog being discovered by Linfield University. Which is somewhere around this date last year. It is pretty disappointing to note that being outed has made no difference in my stats.

I am not sure what they accomplished by getting rid of me as they did not use me as any sort of example and I can now say all sorts of negative things if I really cared. Surprisingly, I am still in the loop.

Linfield funnies, Reshmi is still a troll, Jessica Rabbit Christina Hendricks is highly self motivated and has taken over her department and has been accused of being a bully. This is funny because I ended up defending her. Of course she is doing well, she is one of the very few that is actually qualified.

Meanwhile roofs are leaking, waterlines breaking, there is no mechanic, but the payroll guy got himself a hefty raise for setting around all day and playing with PayCom. I suspect he gets extra points for adopting a 30 year old Haitian and getting him free tuition.

One day the texts with the laugh emojis detailing hilarious mismanagements will stop. I am much less interested now. It is not my college. Then I will see the practice field and its five different kinds of invasive grass patches and feel sadness at wasting eight years of my life on idiots. I should have taken the job at George Fox.

But, I digress... 

I think it is time to plant!

I replace bushings on my Great Plains 1500

 I am back and work and full of optimism. This lasted for an hour. It is cold and foggy and I am replacing a "few" opener bushings on my Great Plains 1500 no-till drill.

The GP1500 uses the Straight Arm 00 openers which are hooked to the 4" tool bar in an offset manner. They use the same mounting. bracket but turn the hinge point opposite directions for alternating openers.  So half the opener arms are easy to get to and half are a pain in the butt.

If i was smart. I would just remove the easy openers and set them aside for later. Then I would replace the bushings on the remaining openers and go plant my orchard grass. As it is on 15" spacing.

But, that means I would disable the drill for wheat and I expect a call any time to plant some crazy hillside because a neighbor is behind.

Also, because of the design of the hinge on the 00 straight arm opener, the pivot bolts must be cut between the opener and the bracket with a cutoff wheel. The design uses a carriage bolt though a steel bushing. The opener arm has plastic bushings with shoulders. They pivot around the stationary steel tube. Over time the tube and carriage bolt actually rust solid and must be cut at each end to remove the opener.

When I reassemble the opener pivot I coat the carriage bolt with anti-seize or sticky grease. I also tried painting the inside of the tube and hoping this will help also.

Of course everything is super easy to get at to work on 

It should be a winter job, but I broke my leg last winter and didn't get around to it the winter before.

It got me a little depressed thinking about my previous post on how to make money farming the low budget way. 

You have to work every moment to survive, this is fine if farming is also your hobby. But if I could figure out how to work for micro managers and enjoy it, that would be a good life. NO thinking at work. Come home and live!

Friends Don't Let Friends become farmers but if you really want my advice, I don't think it is a bad idea

My lovely and gracious wife has imposed a quarantine. My ribs and back ache from coughing. However, I think I am well as I am worried about getting my work done.

I have ordered a lot of parts for the grain drill and I must install them. I don't have much work lined up but it needs to be ready to go.

This worry is a good thing. Not to belabor a long dead horse but... But after spending eight years at a dead end job, it is nice to have "performance" anxiety. Plus, my unemployment just ran out so I really am on my own time!

I have been on my phone a lot while propped in a chair trying not to cough. There are lot of earnest young farmer videos on my Boomerbook and instagram feeds.  It is always the same jaw. High prices for materials and land, low commodities prices, high intrest, rates, high rent, old guys not turning loose, and now there is just a hint of resentment towards megafarms.

Many modern farmers secretly love megafarmers as we all think we have the special key to farming better than anyone else. We don't... 

It seems to me that nerve, cleverness, luck, and just being willing to start over from nothing multiple times is really the key to anything.  Every potential farmer should memorize this advice from my favorite disillusioned colonialist. (Yes, you can be a woman farmer and apply this universal advice)

There is also this poem which I feel has relevance to any of my nephews who may stumble across this blog.

He wandered down the mountain grade

    Beyond the speed assigned—
A youth whom Justice often stayed
    And generally fined.

He went alone, that none might know
    If he could drive or steer.
Now he is in the ditch, and Oh!
    The differential gear!

But I digress..

My problem as a farmer is that I never intended to be a farmer. I just came back to the farm one summer and never left...

I was like many of kids I met working at the College, I didn't know what to do with my life and my parents thought going to college would raise my status. I caught the beginning of the modern Disneyesque fallacy of "follow your dreams," and didn't listen to my parents advice to pick a good career.

Follow your dreams is an excellent idea/goal if you have a solid background to build from. If you do not really know what you like, if you are interested in lots of different things, but are not especially talented at one thing, being told to follow your dreams is failure. 

I should have become a teacher or professor.

I grew up when people thought college would change your life and when people believed you could do anything you wanted with a classic liberal arts education. This was true for some of my friends who went to Colleges where they could change their social caste or build ongoing relationships. I went to George Fox University and Rosedale Bible College. I have no interest in bland modern interpretations of Christianity, I don't like modern worship music, I did not become a member of the Friends Church, or a "politically conservative, theologically challenged," Mennonite, or a douchey white Liberal. 

I somehow accidentally became a grumpy farmer...

But that was a lot of rambling to set up a background so I can say that if I was a young person who wanted to farm in todays world, this is what I would do.

There are three paths to intentionally starting out as a farmer. 

You can work your butt off for your parents and neighbors and build up your farm as you are able. If you get a job with a successful farmer a lot of times they will help you get started. 

You can get a job out of high school and get a retirement account started early, save up money, build credit, learn a trade or skill which you supplement your farm income.

Go to college...

Going to college is the long route. If you go to a trade school, you can start making good money and start a retirement account. You might also look for jobs in the agriculture sector. For example if you are a carpenter, diesel mechanic, welder and work with farmers you will build relationships and get opportunities to pick up ground from an insider perspective. 

If you get a four year degree, for the love of Pete, get something useful. Focus on Accounting, Science, learn how to write grants, study crop science, biology. If you can put up with the BS, try environmental science or forestry. (Of course there are always exceptions. I knew a student who majored in archaeology that was essentially recruited out of college and has a great government job where she gets to travel and gets paid well) 

I also know of young people who got two year Agricultural Science degrees from the Community College, or four year degrees from Oregon State and got jobs in ag related industries and used that to leverage into farming.

When you decided to farm you have to make some essentially philosophical decisions. Are you going to follow the "go big or go home," path or do you want to build slowly.  

Either way you have the advantage of the USDA young farmer program where you can get low interest loans and other help. (This is where I went wrong. I did not take advantage of this program and expand when I needed to do so.)

I am not going to elaborate on the "Go Big Or Go Home," concept as I am not a plunger. I am going to use more what I wish I would have done.

(Also, don't ditch your first job to go to Costa Rica and then just screw around for several years. This is a bad plan...)

When you really start thinking about farming you have to look at where you can fit in to make extra cash. 

When you plant a crop, you may have one or two years before you see a return. When you find ground that you can afford to farm you will soon see reason why it was cheap. It may be wet, have 4.1 pH, have serious weed issues, be on a 10 percent slope, or just be a lot of small odd shaped field. This is fine, if you have to do it you have to do it.

But, you have to have cash flow and you will have to have a skill that you can rent out to other farmers. Truck driving is an excellent option as a Farm Endorsement is easy to get, but if you have a CDL then you can have more options. Although, I would recommend staying in the Ag community as they best way to get ahead is though relationships that you build. Welding, electrical, accounting, carpentry, are all good side gigs.

Don't fall into the new equipment trap but don't hold on to junk. 

You will have to finance key pieces of equipment, especially if you are doing custom work.

When I started doing custom no-till planting I financed the drill.  However, I rented it the first year and figured out a business plan. I lined up twice as many acres as I needed to make the payment. I used a Minneapolis-Moline G1355 that I paid $4,000 for several years previously. 

I soon discovered that I needed front wheel assist. I then bought a 1984 White 2-155 with 6,000 hours and nice paint for $17,500 and that was probably a mistake due to my lack of nerve. I should have gone one step further and bought the 1990 185 White for $25,000 as I still have that 2-155 and have put two engines and another like 8,000 hours on it.

1972 White 2-60 cost $2500. New Holland BC5070 was financed at $12,000 ten years ago and it is time to be replaced. Purchased baler because I had a deal to supply 10,000 bales a year to a feed store at $2.25 a bale. Paid for the baler. (20% down and 5%, paid for it over 3 years)

I just looked at this baler to replace my old one. It is newer and has a heavier frame and better hydraulics. Price per bale is now $4.50 to feedstore but can probably only sell 3,000 bales per year.  I passed on the purchase price of $25,000 (10% down and 7 percent on 5 years)

Previous century White tractors with cold a/c and a lot of hydraulics. This year I rebuilt one powershift and replaced a front axle, have another front axle to work on, another powershift to rebuild, a lot of electrical issues, hydraulic leaks, really wish I could upgrade to a Case/IH 7250 or a White 4-270 (and a 2-110 FWA or a decent condition 105 for the mower and baler)

The only thing I have ever found that made money reliably and I am sorry to see it end. This 2-155 has seen two Great Plains 1500 no-till drills. I really need to update the drill but out of my  original customers three are dead, two have retired, two bought their own drills, plus the government payments have changed, and chemicals are so expensive you might as well work the ground.

But I digress...

What I want to say is you have to realize what makes money. Your tractor must be reliable but there is no shame in pulling a $20,000 baler with a $2500 White 2-60 with no cab and air conditioning as long as you have the sales to make the payment.

Focus on fertility and pay attention to trends. Right now the new buzzword is Regenerative Agriculture. It is a pretty broad term but if it means more sales of Buckwheat and Annual Ryegrass and more grant opportunities, I am interested. If I am still sick, or if I am driving in circles I am going to attend these webinars.

Interact with other farmers. I tend not to. Friend networks are so important. Small farmers need to work with people they can trust. I can't tell you how many times I have hired neighbors to haul hay or unload trucks or asked for advice, only to lose my customer or lose ground.

Don't hold a grudge, but don't be a pushover. Its great to be nice and helpful and carry people who can't pay but some people will use you for self financing. Don't let it happen twice. But, don't be mad for more that one season.

Finally, that USDA beginning farmer loan program.  Use it.... If I would have had the balls to buy a farm with it 30 years ago I would be a millionaire right now. Or two balers and a stacker, or rented good ground. It is there to be used. Also, I realize I only have ten readers a week but if you are female or not a White Male, the USDA desperately wants to give you money. Take advantage of it!

The best advice I was ever given.

Know who your friends are, No one cares about your money like you do, Some people just like to talk... They are NOT your friends.

Have a happy day!