A photo of a tree and a photo of a planting success!

There was a really big old oak tree in the hillside field and I took a photo of it. Compare the size of the tree with the size of my pickup.
I was trying to figure out the elevation of the field. I know the lowest point was 250ft above sea level. I looked at the GPS at the top of the highest hill and I am sure it said 1600 ft. Say it was 1450 and I rounded way up. That is still a heck of a climb in a 20 acre field. Total acres ended up being 75 acres in three fields. Not too bad a job.
Sunday I went back to move the tractor out of the field. I planted my way down a hill and up another which was about half a mile from the main field entrance. The hill was too steep to climb if it would rain and rain was forecast for Sunday evening.
So Sunday afternoon I went to move the drill and pump the remaining fertilizer out of the tank on the drill. It was quite a nice hike up the hill. I need to exercise more.
I had 100 gallons of fertilizer left in the tank on the drill so I decided to pump it back into the tank on the truck. This should have been simple but of course it was not. I blew the end off the hose on the truck. I did not think the little pump on the drill was that powerful, just an little ace 104. You can loose a lot of fertilizer in the time it takes to shut off a tractor, get out of the cab and turn off two valves! And it all ran right down the field road so there is no way to just pretend it didn't happen. 10-34 is something like $3.?? per gallon I think.
Later I drove by a field I planted April 27th. I think I posted about it here. I planted oats into a fescue field that was green as can be. It had only been sprayed a day before and there was a lot of plant growth. Well, I was worried about it. On the way back from moving the drill I stopped and looked. It is a little yellow as everything has been pretty wet, but it is growing.
I do NOT understand this whole no-till thing. You can do something you know will not work, planting oats into not dead fescue on wet river-bottom soil, and it works. But, you think you have it all figured out-like my barley into nice crumbly soil, and it turns yellow.
Now it is Monday and I have to decide if it rained enough to change my plans. Not that I really had a plan.
I could:
1. Plant a pasture 10 miles away on another steep hillside.
2. Plant corn for a neighbor
3. Plant soybeans here, it is still a little wet
4. Try to disk
5. Bug the dairy fellow next door about chopping silage
6. Take a nap
7. Wander around aimlessly and try to look busy
8. Scrap metal
9. Clean behind the barn so Aunt E. doesn't have cow
10. Take my truck in to find out what went wrong in the $2500 overhaul that failed.
Oats into Fescue Photos. Note the lovely shade of orange...

The 2-155 has seatbelts and I used them for the first time!

I'm planting a pasture. I think there is close to 75 acres total. The first field was 20 acres. It ranges from 300 ft above sea level to 1600 feet above.
I have discovered a couple things.
1. My tractor has seatbelts
2. There are hills that the 4wd White will not climb.
3. My tractor has good brakes
4. I don't mind having the duals set out so far anymore
5. I need new tires
6. Today I will take two pairs of underwear...

If anyone has a spare window for a White tractor laying around will you mail it to me?
In the top photo you can almost see the farm!
In the middle photo you can almost see Uncle Ted's house.
In bottom photo look at the water level in the foam marker... I am not speeding around a corner. I just noticed that you can also see the fertilizer level. I did not raise the drill out of the ground on this pass...
Today will be one of those, "oh crap!" days...

Food safety and big companies and big government and wallmart and mcdonalds

I was reading the FarmAid website. It kind of gives me the urge to smoke dope and embrace alternate lifestyles but it is interesting none the less.
I found a link to this SF Gate Article on Food Safety rules and how it will hurt small farmers.
Wallmart and McDonalds have such strict requirements for the farmer to comply with that they have to poison animals and birds in their fields.
And this is the response:

Deputy Agriculture Secretary Kathleen Merrigan said Monday the administration is keeping a "close watch" on these so-called "super metrics," acknowledging that they have harmed the environment but said, "nobody gets a pass on food safety."

Oh, yeah! We have a "green" administration.
No one except earnest and sincere elementary school teachers and a few folks in itchy scratch woolen underwear really gives a rat's bottom about the environment. Everyone else is making a buck or influencing policy or what ever it takes to capitalize on a trend.
I have some opinions on how the E-coli got into the spinach...
I doubt anyone will propose a portable irradiation device to go at the end of the packing line conveyer belt...

There was also a discussion on round-up ready crops.
In our area there is a debate over the question of the expense of the technology fee and the round-up vs the benefits on round-up ready crops. We found round-up ready was only really a benefit when you had serious weed problems. But, we don't have 2000 acres of corn and we can use atrazine and we can do some mechanical weed control before panting.
The real problem is the monopoly of two companies that sell the seed, fertilizer, and chemical, and the lack of genetic diversity in the plants.
If round-up doesn't work people will stop using it...

Shooting rats

I don't really have the patience to shoot rats this time of year. However, my messy feed grinding operation has attracted them.  I shot two yesterday and then ran out of ammo and had to change brands. This new .22 ammunition shoots all over the place. I've never been real precise. I go for the if you can't hit it the first time you've got 10 more chances school of shooting and so I sight the scope in if I drop the gun or the bolts come loose. This new ammunition shoots completely differently. I don't see how an obviously lower powered ammunition can shoot high but it does. I went back to some good CCI's and I was shooting right on the cross hairs. The new Federal ammo I have to aim low.
I took a photo. It is an old Weaver K1 or K2. Not sure the model number. It is older than the famous K-4. It is mounted on an old Ruger 10-22. It is fun to shoot. I missed four times today. I tried a starling and shot out all his tail feathers and sent the powerline vibrating like crazy. Perhaps I'll have to go back to the 12 gauge. It is kind of loud...

Not much left of my International

The word is that scrap metal is worth some money. Perhaps over $200 per ton if it is prepared. Meaning cut into smaller chunks. We thought the International parts truck would come apart pretty easy. We were wrong. The real fast scrappers use a trackhoe with a thumb to lift and twist and rip. We are using a very very old Farmhand F11 loader on a tractor with no powersteering and a torch my brother bought at a garage sale. We are using propane instead of acetyelene  and it really drinks the oxygen. We have gone though four bottles of oxygen and less than 4 gallons of propane.

I thought I had a tachometer for Ralph but it seems to be missing along with the drive. I am still searching.

Then the Uncle and Aunt discovered people are dumping metal trash at the burn pile. So... they picked it all up. It would have been better if they would not have thrown partially burnt chunks of stuff and a couple broken bottles in with the metal. They even picked up two coffee cans of empty brass shells. I knew there was a lot of .22 as we had been saving empty spray cans and shooting them. If you get them hot from the burning "brush pile" and then shoot them they explode nicely. Especially after dark. Apparently someone else went nuts with .22 target practice as it looks to me like they may have caused the US .22 ammo shortage themselves. A coffee can of .22 shells all in one place? That is a good day's

worth of shooting!

 

Sunday excitement! We go to OMSI, Chronic boy is faking

 Sadie and I took a field trip Sunday. We went to the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry. I am surprised that they can leave the word "industry" in a museum title Oregon. Perhaps the word Environment" could be substituted.
We discovered that there is the same about of sugar in a Cola as in an avocado. We built a Roman arch out of large cushion blocks which was pretty hard to do with only two people. I supported the arch whilst Sadie lifted the blocks into place. After two failures we found the kindness of strangers. A nice girl helped hold one side of the arch so Sadie could put in the keystone.

We saw a telsa coil make lightning bolts,

shot a water filled rocket, saw what babies look like from 1 month all they way though birth, saw a lot of space stuff, and then we had ice cream.

Meanwhile back home... Chronic boy and his new family were building a wood stove. They have been evicted from their little trailer in the big tree farm and plan on living in a tent in various national parks all summer.
Chronic boy is of course on a disability from his bunny crash and has terrible pain in his shoulder. This does not affect his ability to lift medium sized chunks of steel out of the saw, or weld, or run the cutting torch, according to folks here at the farm who don't make a lot of noise but can see the shop and the saw. I'm sure there would be a good rationalization should the question ever be raised... Pretty funny...

I am getting stuff done... sort of ...

What I am working on... I think I am done. I need to mount the monitor. I think if I ever got a good planting job I would buy a population style counter, probably a Loup. I have a pretty new AGCO which is a dickey-john but it is not the population counter. I want a SMI3000 or a Compu-trak. I may steal the neighbor's John Deere labeled Dickey-John as he thinks it doesn't work. The monitor reads row failure when no seed is flowing, but it knows how many rows are hooked to it. I think that is how it works with no seed in the planter, as I read the manual instead of calling the idiots at the local Mother Deere lawn and garden store. Not much corn grown here.

This is what I want to be working on. Needs tires, brakes, oil change, set of points, oil in forks, perhaps swingarm bushings, carb rebuild. Stinking alcohol in the gas. Alcohol belongs in the bloodstream not in the gasoline... My slogan when I run for president.

There was a huge flock of geese in our clover field yesterday. They formed a very nice circle. Then they all flew away. That was an awesome amount of noise. Wings flapping, honking, turds dropping on the barn roof. Cool traffic patterns set up as individual groups circled the field.

And we now have gauges in the vintage 1972 International tandem with a 478 cu engine. The fuel gauge is the most important. I've been trying to get another fuel tank installed but the employee resists. It is maddening sometimes. We are cutting up the parts truck for scrap. I wanted to finish the planter. He sat on the tailgate of my pickup trying to figure out how to set the propane torch and asking me what I wanted to save. For the 1,000th time. Cut the tank mounts off so we can have an extra fuel tank, get the gauges and the strange choke and throttle cable, get the heat exchanger off the engine, see if the doors and glass are the same, check to see if you wiped your arse, just get it done. I finally had to just go out there myself....

So, the oil platform blew up on earthday? Hmmmm. Probably greenpeace or seashepherds or a North Korean midget sub, or well, it can't be right-wing crazy militias as the keysone corps got them just the other day.

In another note, some of the younger set were discussing life on the local police force. These people are unbelievable idiots. Most cops should only be allowed one bullet anyway but my goodness, they think they are the thin blue line.
Not to mention the "I got beat up at school a lot so I want to be a cop," complex that they all have.
Our fair city is adding two cops with scales to do truck inspections and raise revenue for the city. The morons on the city council won't cough up the money to pay for the schooling. The younger set were incensed. I was incensed when I heard that the schooling was like three classes. Basically, the truckers know more than the cops and so there will be a fight. I hope and pray they nail some important and outspoken people right away and that those people attend a city council meeting. If only they would taser a local farmer.