Fall planting annual ryegrass

The days are shorter and the nights are colder and we have rain. 

Over the years I have had two main goals. First is to move to Florida or Costa Rica and ditch this stressful life. But, that involves buying lottery tickets and I am too cheap, My other goal has been to have all out annual ryegrass planted before October first.

I had come to believe that the former would occur before the latter.

But, with the collapse of the three-tie straw market, no silage to chop, and me not having a real job, we are getting closer. 

We worked ground pretty much right behind the straw baler. I was able to get my daughter a job raking the straw for the big baler while she was home. I ended up finishing that myself.

Then I went right to farming. Or at least the Nephews did. I farted around with a straw sale that I have yet to see money for.

We worked 120 or so acres and packed it down and waiting for rain so we could plant into moisture. Two weeks ago we got two inches in an evening. So we got the sprout. I of course jumped the gun and started working ground before the sprout was out of the ground and so it wasn't a perfect kill.

Next we reclaimed a 40 acre corn field which we had been subleasing as our landlord wanted corn patches for his goose hunting. This year he didn't ask for corn patches so we planted annual ryegrass. Annual seed is not a good price right now but it is generally a quick sale. It is much cheaper to grow than anything else and grass seed in general is in the crapper.

My Nephew was pretty determined to get it farmed so that was a big plus in the decision. The ground was pretty wet so the trucks left ruts. We disked it twice with a drag harrow behind the disk and then used the Forest City Machineworks Do-All to take out the remaining corn stalks and do more leveling. The Do-All is a field cultivator with a stalk chopper and a harrow in one implement. It works amazingly well for minimum tillage. I really wish ours was 16foot wide.

I used the no-till drill for the final pass. The Great Plains 1500 cuts through corn stalks and wet clods like butter. Should be a good seedbed unless it rains another two inches and the loose soil covering the seed trench turns to concrete.

I planted 130 acres in three days. The Nephew did another 40+ with the M670 Super and conventional drill. I think we did a good job this fall. Now we wait...

Now I have to work on crap I have been putting off all summer. Like cleaning my shop. Putting skirting around my house, fixing the bathroom floor, making 6 ton of oat/alfalfa pellets at 400lbs an hour, and other stuff I have been avoiding for the past decade.

1967 M670 Super and unmentionable named grain drill. We really need to get a big Minneapolis-Moline drill. Or a new Great Plains conventional drill or an International or anything but this Green and Lemon-Yellow abomination.

2-155 number two with the Forest Machineworks Du-All and a sprocket roller. It did a nice job of leveling and knocking down remaining stalks.

Now I have to work on crap I have been putting off all summer. Like cleaning my shop. Putting skirting around my house, fixing the bathroom floor, making 6 ton of oat/alfalfa pellets at 400lbs an hour, and other stuff I have been avoiding for the past decade.Getting a reasonably early start. The Great Plains works pretty good for final tillage.

The A/C drain tube plugged and dripped water out of the cab climate control box. This is not coffee. It also doesn't smell that great!

This was a 100 percent FarmerGPS job. I could not see a change in color in the dirt. If I got out I could see a difference in clod size and texture but in the cab it all looked the same. Mechanical markers didn't help either. Might be an interesting pattern later.

End of the summer

The Month of September never seems to be a good month. 

It is the end of the summer, back to school, end of freedom, rain and depression follows.

Unless, the corn crop is good and there will be two weeks of corn silage.

But, I digress...

I got a call from one of my few remaining liberal friends. Of course he wanted to talk about Charlie Kirk. I already knew that there would be the usual talking points. He would note that I am white and subscribe to the same racist/colonialist/hypocritical enactment of Christianity. I was not wrong. 

He started out with the observation that I liked CK due to sharing the same ideology, I tried to appeal to the idea that colleges are elitist gatekeepers of information and only released information that supported their gourpthink. I suggested that Kirk was challenging that lock on belief by allowing students to argue without fear of retribution by grade or shame. He countered by asking me if I would appreciate him teaching people how to shoot guns and ride motorcycles. I was going to counter with sarcasm relating to the qualifications of people with PHD degrees but fortunately I was saved by a neighbor who stopped to talk. 

This September depression started with the Catholic School Shooting, deepened with the Girl on the Bus getting knifed, and the CK (initials as I am avoiding search engines) assassination.

What really affected me was the young people who feel it is their duty to commit these crimes.

I think about the news reports and what they say about the parents. The parents are completely stunned. This is the other tragedy and this is the pain experienced by parents every day.

Your whole goal in life is to raise a child to be able to live the best life possible. You want them grounded emotionally and spiritually. You may actually think that you have done so,

But, there is always that one teacher, trusted relative, bad relationship, or just that one person who gives them advice to "be their own person," follow your dream, and the dream is not a good dream.

Then there is the world of the computer. Relationships developed through online gaming are strangely intense. There is no real world context and no conscience online. It isn't real so you can be what ever you imagine. You don't have to deal with what has been given you, instead you can create your own reality.

Us old people have no idea.

Suddenly, your child has different beliefs it may be spiritual or sexual identity, but society and every liberal boomer idiot tells the young person that their parents are evil controlling christians who want to ruin your life and who are full of hate.

In reality the parent wants to save the child from a world of pain.

In short, the internet, the educational establishment, and much of the religious world is trying to turn your child against you and there is not a lot you can do about it... Such a shame, such a waste.

In other news...

My wife took me to the coast for the weekend. It was nice...

It was amazing how the tension has now returned. 

At least I no longer have a soul sucking job

 

Feeding the mill

Not all my ideas are successful...

Or perhaps it is that I do not make my ideas successful as there is a neighbor who is actually making money selling feed. Same concept as mine but with more success.

My nephews said that, "at least I keep trying." 

I got an order for Chicken feed at 18 percent protein. I priced it before I found out how much I needed to pay for peas. I may have misjudged my pricing.

I set up my pellet mill with a feed conveyer that I got from the scrapper and then added a hydraulic speed control so I can slow down. The idea is to feed the mill as to just cover the rollers. This increases production.

It worked.

And I sold out of Chicken feed. Or at least in theory. I haven't been paid and the feed hasn't all been picked up but I am a firm believer in probably...

The sound of a Minneapolis-Moline 585 diesel cutting hay

The Nephews have been fixing tractors. 

There is a backlog of  favorite tractors which need minor repairs and were parked and never fixed.

The first one to receive attention was my Minneapolis-Moline G1355. This is the first tractor I really bought on my own. It cost $4500 in the 1990's and had a few hours on it then. It has chopped silage, plowed (no three point), baled thousands of acres, cut a lot of hay, pulled the Great Plains 1500 no-till dril. 

We quit running it because of a clutch problem and the three speed wasn't shifting. The clutch issue was due to the throwout bearing assembly locking up to the the PTO shaft. This was due to the tube the throwout bearing assembly coming out of the three speed and binding to the PTO shaft. I have no idea why this happens, but it also happened on the White 2-135.

The three speed was missing the bolt that keeps the counter shaft indexed, the big nut came loose on the over drive clutch pack, and there was a tiny o ring missing on the tail assembly.

I cut hay with the 1355 last week. Unfortunately, one of the Titan Goodyear Radials 18.4x38 has now failed and the sidewalls are so bad I don't think we can put a new tube in it. Sounds like a $1400 repair.

I put this video on YouTube ten days ago and it already has 5,000 views. Must have hit a key word there somehow. Maybe lots of searches for 585 diesel.

Making hay when there is no sunshine.

The weather is impossible to predict. I look at two weather apps. I have started using CoPilot to help predict. It is still just a guess.

At the beginning of last week I cut 5 acres of Teff and 12 acres of Alfalfa. I had a good ten day forecast. Tuesday afternoon the forecast suddenly charged. There was rain scheduled for Saturday.

I fluffed the hay fields every day. I was able to bale Teff  on Friday. I finished up at 8 pm but didn't stack it as the forecast for rain had been changed to Monday. 

It rained early Saturday morning. 

The only thing hurt was my ego. Never leave hay in the field over night

I am having problems with my BC5070 baler. It is making hump bales. No sending enough hay to the far side of the chamber. Sometimes it looks like there is a little bite out of the bale on the knife side. I have checked the hay dogs and springs. I have adjust the sweep arm. I have also adjusted the sweep arm to plunger timing. I must have not adjusted it correctly. There is an issue.

Above you can see teff bales in the rain.

Sunday t was baling alfalfa and the Goodyear Blimp went over. That was pretty random.

CoPilot AI has given me a chart for this week. Today and yesterday there were showers. It told me to cut anyway. I didn't as last weeks prediction was problematic.

I baled the Alfalfa Sunday. It needed one more day. Some of the bales have gone up to 22-24 percent moisture. I used Conklin ProServe lactobacillus based hay preservative which is supposed to result in fermentation/curing and not mold. We shall see.