The title should be: The Oddball Farmer

So, I went to this AgShow yesterday. I wanted to see the new Great Plains drill my neighbor was telling me about. It turns out to be nothing but a three point 1500 with parallel bar linkage openers (like a corn planter) and no-till coulter mounted right in front of the openers, kind of like corn planter row units. It looks like it would take a pretty big tractor to lift it. They have a tongue setup to make it into a pull type. I would really like to have the series 10 parallel bar openers on on my drill, But it does look like more moving points to wear out.
The Great Plains rep recognized me.
I had to think back to when the New Holland salesman brought him out to see my "new" drill. The NH guy was trying to sell me a stacker which was a total POS. The Great Plains regional rep was just riding along. I sometimes I have a pretty happy group of employees. We are a bit odd. Sometimes we break into song. This is my fault. I have all these old country and rock songs stuck in my head. If someone says something that reminds me of a song sometimes I reply with the words of the song. This is funny if the other person knows the song. Otherwise it is just kind of strange.
So...Some one asked for a hammer and they started singing, "if I had a hammer." The Great Plains fellow was looking at my new drill. Someone who will remain nameless had backed a grain trailer into it the week before and bent the drill box badly.  People really gave me a lot of crap about that.
And then the regional Great Plains guy comes to see it.  And here I am with my two helpers working on a the tractor and baler under a tree. The drill is setting right there as I had a planting job nearby.
And there is singing. The whole thing struck me as memoriable in perhaps a strange way.
He did remember me. I hope it was in a good way... We had quite a discussion about Great plains drills.
What is really funny is that he seems to take me seriously!

Latest No-till effort

Planted oats into wheat stubble Saturday. I was never so happy to hear the low population alarm go off in my life. Actually that is not usually a really happy experience as it mostly means something is wrong. Finished up at 9:35 in a light rain. Was very happy for my FarmerGPS program. Lets me run guidance on a $60 ebay special, Fujitsu 3400 tablet computer. Oh and how I do hate Windows... but that is another story, one full of violence and broken screen digitizers...and need for self help books on tape!
Anyway here are some photos and them I'm going to bed. It poured down rain today. Think we got like an inch or so in last two days. It is unbelievable how much I have to do and how little I am getting done. Can't sleep at night and can't get out of bed in the morning.
Farming is getting more interesting. Fundumental shifts locally. Grass seed is not moving and farmers are quickly moving to commodity crops, wheat, oats, perhaps barley. Price is terrible. We are going to grow some. Have some very wet ground and I plant on planting the barley when soil temp gets close to 50 degrees. Not sure if I will no-till or not. Hope to get some radish contracts. This would work good in a no-till rotation. Goal is, grass (for hay or seed), wheat or oats, or barley, then radish, then back to grass, or might be able to plant clover with the radish. This is what I would do if we didn't have all wet riverbottom ground.
So back to the no-till. Planted oats into wheat stubble. Did two fields 10 miles apart. First was prennial ryegrass, lots of sprout and very green still, just sprayed out. Planted spring wheat, don't know variety. Next was Montezuma oats into wheat stubble. Fairly tall, some a foot hight. Very wet heavy clay ground. Kind of iffy. Was in a hurry to beat the rain so planted at 7 mph. Looks like it was disked. Hope the heavy rain does not uncover the seed. Applied 10 gallons of 10-34 fertilizer per acre. Goal was 1 inch depth for oats. 120lbs per acre or 1.1-1.4 million seeds per acre. (according to monitor don't know how this applies to actual seed per bushel/lb count)
Have had wide variation in population count with oats. So if you have really heavy oats and you go by lbs per acre you actually have a lower population than if you have little light oats. What does this mean? Obviously you have a lower plant population from what one would think of as better seed. I don't know, I have a liberal arts degree...
Ok, photos are all mixed up. First pictures with the green field are of wheat into recently sprayed prennial ryegrass. Planted 3/4 to 1" deep. Pretty good sod, didn't work the ground very much. More of a silty clay soil. Should have paid more attention. Rate was 120lbs seed, 10 gallons fert. Fertilzer was mix of 10-34 plus some 32. Not sure exact mix used. Was in a hurry must take better notes. Planted at 6.5 mph. Does a pretty good job at that speed.
Photo in the cab is planting oats into wheat stubble 10 miles down the road. Did 75 acres Saturday. Not too bad a production rate for having to drive a long ways to fill the drill, with 50lb bags. Usually 28 bags to the fill. I didn't push it much past the point when the low bin alarm goes off. Have a couple more acres after that but running out sometimes leaves a pattern.
Planting at 8 mph pretty much worked the ground. I really, really hope it comes up good. Could be a lot of problems with this field, too wet, too cold, too many slugs, mice, probably low pH. Time will tell. Good night.

Long Live The Family Farm

Here are some family farm photos for you. So there are still some poor suckers using AGCO orphans!


(Note: Photo's are not from 1980...)





AGCO wants to connect with farmers. They have a shill on the NewAgTalk website. Oh, and they have a blog. And A picture site. Wonder how long that will stay around...



Was just looking at photos on AGCO's website. http://www.longlivethefamilyfarm.com/ Ed Winkle did a blog about the site on his blog. (http://hymark.blogspot.com) For his efforts he got a plug on another AGCO website (http://agcodtb.blogspot.com/)
Ed seems to be a pretty positive sort of guy, while traditionally here at the Daily Strumpet we have pretty much thrived on finding the black lining to every silver cloud. Back in the day of the paper publication of The Daily Strumpet, much of the humor was gained for finding the odd little tidbit and blowing it completely out of proportion...
So, I suppose I should do a quick history of Moline and post some photos over at the Long Live the Family Farm website.
The problem is that I really don't like Agco. I never liked White. I did have some admiration for a company that could take two companies, Oliver and Minneapolis-Moline, and totally alienate their most loyal followers in the course of a decade. They were able to take two companies which had something like 10 percent of the tractor market each, and merge them into one company with like seven percent of the market.
I did like White-New Idea. It seemed like they were really trying to build on the old lines. I thought the White American series was a pretty neat line. The last small tractor really built in America, I guess that is not a good advertising slogan. I wish they would have rebuilt the M670 Moline or G1000 rather than the Oliver 1800 but I appreciated the effort. I still dream of having White American's with FWA and Cabs pulling my hay equipment. Of course I was totally broke at the time the White American came out.
The merger with AGCO was a dark day in my new found White appreciation. It would seem that Agco's goal is to become the General Motors of the farm equipment business. Instead it seems more like the American Motors of the ag industry. They have bought up legions of small line manufacturers and made them disappear. Sure there are a lot of logos on the AGCO heritage site but that is basically all they are. Just logos...
So now we have the Long Live the Family Farm site. Just what does that mean? There are no family farms of the sort represented by old calendars and Marx play sets.
I live on a "family farm." We are going broke farming 400 acres. We got rid of the cows because we are off the farm doing custom baling and planting to hold of going completely broke, and we don't have time for the livestock. We don't all come in for a big dinner, we don't milk 10 cows, but we do run old Minneapolis-Moline and White equipment. Does AGCO really care? I think if they did they perhaps would not charge $800 for a hydraulic valve or $100 for a valve rebuild kit.
And then there is the issue of Hesston. I understand the disappearing brands. After AGCO concentrates really hard on a brand, gets rid of the old engineers, cheapens the construction, irritates the customer base, then they have to retire it. The key to understanding when this is going happen is to watch for the last gasp advertising campain where they tout the "Heritage" commitment of AGCO and it's love of small farms which still use, for example: Hesston products.
MasseyFerguson was one of the best selling world wide brands. But, really it was the only brand AGCO had not completely ruined by associating its name with. So it has become the final target of destruction. (Although, I see all Orange on the new AGCO websites. So perhaps they think people have forgotten the royal screwing all the AC owners got back when the signs were all green and the old dealerships were forced out of business.
So, there is no more Hesston. My grandfather worked for the fellow who started Hesston. (Was a while back.) I switched to Hesston when I bought my first real (meaning expensive) mower. A Hesston 1340. It has been an excellent mower and the parts prices were at one time so affordable I could actually run it. Later I bought a Hesston 4690 three tie baler, also a very good buy. (I hear Hesston will discontinue the three-tie baler soon). Almost bought a new 1345 but didn't want on that said Massy-Ferguson on it. So I bought a Great Plains drill instead...
Then there is the White corn planter. The White planter is considered one of the best planters on the market. It has a very loyal following-so why would you rebrand it MF? Hesston has a long line in the hay business, MF does not... So the obvious choice for AGCO... Rebrand Hesston.
Or what about this for an idea. Sell Yellow tractors to Cat industrial dealers so that they can COMPETE with AGCO and Hesston dealers who have been struggling to promote their brands for years. That is sure brilliance!
Anyway, perhaps I'll post on the site anyway. DOn't think I'll get a link back...

Planted today

Today was a beautiful day.
The sun was out and while the ground was frozen this morning when I should have been planting, it didn't get sticky enough to shut me down in the afternoon.
I'm planting cayuse oats about an inch deep into fescue sod. Fescue looks to be planted on 12" rows. Not a lot of bare dirt between the rows. It is a tad on the wet side. The Great Plains drill is slicing through the soil, not really crumbling the side walls of the seed trench like it should do. If this were late in the season and it was never going to rain again I would be pretty worried. I think it will be fine. It was nice to get away from the farm and do something to make money.
Daughter was sick today and missed school. Stayed home with her till 10 a.m. She slept in for two hours. Seems fine this evening.








This is a close up view behind the drill. Just making a little slot, dropping the seed in and closing it up. This photo looks good.