[Andy Carson]

If it hard to for me to imagine how 1000 bacteria can go to 100,000 in a bulk tank without outside contamination. Some bacteria can grow at 4 degrees, but they grow really slowly, with doubling times of 1-2 days usually. That means it would take raw milk a week or two to go bad without outside contamination… Unlikely. Another possibility is that the milk is not truely cooled to 4 degrees immediately. Some bacteria can have doubling times of as little as 20 minutes, but still, one hour to cool would turn that 1000 into 4000 and you’d probably still have a week before bacterial counts hit high levels in raw milk. On the other hand, lets say you get a gram of manure on your hands (hard not to), that’s 10,000,000,000 bacteria! Lets say you didn’t wash your hands and contaminated 100 liters of milk. That’s a count of 100,000 right off, and in a day it will be 200,000. Now lets say you washed your hands, and got rid of 99.9% that’s still 10,000,000. Now let’s dilute that ten million bacteria into 100 liters, and you get 100 bacteria (an insignificant addition). The conclusion from all this math is that almost all commercially produced milk must be at least partially contaminated with either sick cows, manure, or incompletely sterilized equipement (if the counts actually approach these upper limits). For these producers, it seems there is little choice but to pasturize. If you wash your hands, take care of your cows, clean your equipment, and drink the milk before it gets old, you ought to have more options.

[Andy Carson]

Welcome Jordan, we are glad to have you.

[Andy Carson]

Yes, milk in the udder of a healthy cow has very few (if any) bacteria. The key word here is healthy, as a diseased cow could have orders of magnitude more bacteria, and of kinds that do produce disease.

[Andy Carson]

An interesting thing about the pasturization of milk in the US (at least) is that it is the heat is not actually hot enough (or applied long enough) to actually sterilize the resulting milk. If subjected to the heat required for true sterilization, the taste of the milk changes dramatically. I experienced this first hand when I traveled to Europe, where much of the milk is “ultra” pasturized and does not require refrigeration. It was, at least to me, undrinkable. The food industry has gone so far as to set standards for total bacterial count as well as coliform (such as E coli) counts in milk after pasteurization. Grade A milk has less than 20,000 total bacteria with less than 10 coliforms per ml. Given that fresh milk from a healthy cow contains 100-1000 total bacteria per ml before processing and storage, one could make the argument that it is the freshness of the milk (rather than the processing) that is the primary determinant of it’s ability to produce disease.

http://ohioline.osu.edu/fse-fact/pdf/0003.pdf

[Andy Carson]

Ugh! I can’t imagine what you do if you run over a hive dragging a log in the woods. I would imagine you couldn’t go sideways too far and you probably can’t trot off. Do you just get stung until you get out of range? Do you unhook in the swarm? They followed me pretty far, maybe 75 yards. That would have been a miserable walk…

[Andy Carson]

After this roller only lasted about 15 minute before breaking, I pretty much redesigned it from the ground up and got rid of the wooden parts. Here’s a picture of what I came up with. I got rid of the rake function b/c it didn’t seem strong enough anyway and also removed the shafts. I definetaly overestimated how hard a roller pushes going downhill. It’s doesn’t really push very hard and with the tire placed where it is, that pushing force tends to push the tire down and create extra braking force. It’s plenty of friction from the tire to stop the roller on any slopes in my field. The “bearing” is a greased 1/2 inch pipe placed inside a 1 inch pipe. The whole things works very well now, and I’m happy with it. Just got done rolling a couple acres. The other change was wearing tennis shoes, as I get blisters walking that fast and that long in work boots.

[Andy Carson]

Erika,
You are kinda at the edge of my knowledge with this question, but I will speculate. In my field (which was all corn last year and was not cropped this year) a disk was all that was needed to reduce weeds and prepare a seedbed. Granted, the corn stalks (which were not chopped) have been a purpetual challenge. Also, the weeds looked like they might win out for a while, but eventually they gave up (this corresponded to the time when the rains stopped). In the end, much of the plant residue remained on the top of the soil and capable of retaining moisture. This is similar to your field A, which produced OK for you. Perhaps field B would have produced better if disced and/or springtooth harrowed rather than plowed? Perhaps even a chisel would be appropriate if the depth is set so it won’t rip out your tiles. Also, I think it was important that I waited until a strong rain was forcast before seeding. I did this partially because I wanted to have a “safety net,” but in a year like this it seemed to be lucky. I certainly didn’t have a fine seed bed in many areas and other areas didn’t even get rolled, but a soaking rain (I think) made these factors irrelevant (except for the clover). Waiting for rain could have easily been the wrong descision with a couple weeks of lost growth if rain had come. Perhaps a true grain drill would help in your situation as well. I think that’s all my thoughts, and I hope they help, remember I am not an expert.

[Andy Carson]

In case anyone is curious, I have been checking on the field periodically and have a report to share. The oats are growing well, and seem to be unaffected by rolling (remember I seeded right before a soaking rain but my roller broke before I could roll everything). Turnips likewise seem unaffected by rolling. The clover seems pretty affected, however, with the rolled areas having maybe 1.5-2 times to number of sprouts. I still plan on rolling everything in the future, but found this interesting anyway.

Fun notes… I have lots of volunteer clover in my “clover” field (the large leaves differentiate it from what I planted). Freshly sprouted turnips taste just like full grown turnips from the garden. An area were I spilt a little oat seed is embarrassingly obvious.

[Andy Carson]

I am attempting to use animal power and minimal tillage. I think the concept makes alot of sense, but have to admit I have struggled with weeds alot at this early stage. I expect that each additional year and cover rotation will eliminate more weeds, but that remains to be seen and I am not ruling out plowing now and then. The Nordells lay out a model for these techniques that works in thier hands. They sell a video that lays out thier techniques, which I found fascinating. It is interesting to me that thier techniques use a mix of traditional tools and newly developed tools. Also, many of the traditional tools are also used in slightly different ways than they were intended for. For example, skim plowing with a traditional hand plow. My take home message was that there is much from big “modern” tractor-based farming that can be adapted to animal power and that the “old time methods” can be improved in some cases with modern techniques and knowledge, including minimal tillage. I think it’s worth taking substantial time thinking about and understanding the reasons for why each techniques was performed with animal power in the past, how these fuctions are performed on big “modern” tractor-based farms, and how either method might be adapted to draft animal power today. I think that modern technology and plants can improve these techniques alot, which might result in modifications to old tools and the developement of altogether new tools. I think it the future most animal based farmers will use a mix of old and new tools, both designed for use by animals, which are capable of taking full advantage of the last centuries agricultural research and development.

[Andy Carson]

Here’s a trick I’ve used to weigh heavy things when a scale is not convenient. First, weigh yourself in the clothes you will wear when looking at the disk. Then find a long piece of lumber (12 feet is nice) or other prying device that can be used to lift it. Next, find a point by which you can lift the thing in question. You will want to pick a place where almost all the weight is suported by your prybar. Often times a human helper is needed to balance the thing on the prybar. Now the tricky part… Move the pivot point back on forth on your prybar until you find a pivot point where you and the disk are even. Now, mark and measure the distance between the place on the bar where the disk is supported and the pivot point, and also the distance between where you are standing and the pivot point. By knowing your weight and these two lengths, you will have a pretty good estimate of the weight of the disk. For example, if you weigh 200 pounds, and are standing 8 feet from the pivot point, and the disk is supported at 4 feet from the pivot point, the disk weighs 400 pounds. This method has gotten me to within 10% of the true weight in the past. The most likely cause of error is 1) estimating your own weight (rather than actually weighing) and 2) not having a long enough prybar or having to move the pivot point very close to the thing being weighed, which both make accurate measuring difficult.

[Andy Carson]

To me, this actually looks like it’s got alot of potential. I wouldn’t be suprised if a team can outpull an ATV for this kind of work at all. I use alot of ATV/lawn tractor equipment and have found that a single draft is often a more than adequate substitute for an ATV or large lawn tractor. Now I know the machines make more HP, and given the correct gearing and speed, they could probably outwork a horse, but they don’t have the traction, so there you go… I would still weigh it, it possible, because I think that will give you the best idea of what you are looking at. It would probably also be helpful to know how long you plan to use it at a stretch.

Another piece of unasked for advice… Make sure your team “whoas” well when you are riding on a disk. A rock and palouse hill and we might have no more Geoff.

[Andy Carson]

I have a single gang disk that is just about right for one horse at 40 inches wide, but the weight is only 120-150 pounds per foot depending on how much I weigh it down. The weight makes a huge difference in the draft and you notice it right away. Is there any way you can weigh the implement in question? I would guess that if it is a single gang there is potential.

Another random thought. My disk is a converted lawn tractor disc with a few extra reinforcements, heavier blades, more weight, and a seat. You can pick one of these up used (as on craigslist or similar) for about $75. If I had a team, I might be tempted to buy a couple of these, and bolt them together to make a double gang disc. Similarly, you might be able to modify the disk you are looking to buy. It would probably not be as easy as just taking blades off, though, as all the weight would be on the remaining blades. Maybe if it’s a double gang, you could remove the rear gangs. Not sure how this disk is put together though…

On the other hand, implements designed and built for a team of horses aren’t too hand to find (at least around here) so it’s probably not worth the time and expense of modifying things…

[Andy Carson]

Yes, it was originally designed for a lawn tractor. The settings are supposedly in “pounds per 1000 square feet.” It not even close! I ended up spreading oats at the setting of “11 pounds per 1000 square feet.” It is an easy pull, I can move it around myself no problem. If I was going to pull it with a much smaller animal, I might rig up way to prevent the tongue from nosediving into the ground from time to time. That the only time it gets hard to pull by hand. The horse, of course, doesn’t notice this. She’s way overpowered for this job, but she’s reliable. The booklet on the spreader says the swath is 12 feet, but it looks pretty thin 6 feet away from the center, so I overlapped and made about 8-10 foot passes. I actually made alot more passes than this, because I was getting used to the seeding rate, which was so far off the booklet info it took a while to convince myself. I have concerns that the small seed (turnip seed) may have settled to the bottom of the seeder when mixed with the large seed (oats) and been broadcast at greater rates at the beginning of the run, but not much can be done about that now…

[Andy Carson]

I attach the singletree to my sled using two chains, one to each sled runner. I try to keep them as short as possible, so the singletree is probably about 1 foot in front of the chain attachment points (I attach the the last link on the heel chains to ensure the sled doesn’t hit my horses heels). I like as short of an attachment as possible so I have increased maneuverability and a little lift in the front. I am not sure how much you are going to use the sled, but you might wear through the metal in those runners pretty fast. In the first year I had my horse I worked her almost exclusively on the sled and wore through about 75 pounds of steel in runners (that’s 1 set of 1/8 inchx3 inchx6 foot runners+2 sets of 1/4 inchx3 inchx6 foot runners!) I came to the conclusion that steel less than 1/4 inch is not worth bothering with (I actually replaced my last set with 1/2 inch steel), but your use and experience might vary.

[Andy Carson]

Ha! Thanks for the encouragement, but I’m hardly John Deere… Yes, it is a concrete roller. I poured it in a cardboard Quikcrete footing tube 12 inches in diameter. I read farmers used to roll fields with oak logs about 2 feet in diameter, which gives about the same pounds per square inch as a 1 foot diameter concrete tube (assuming 1/8-1/2 inch compression). Of course it doesn’t roll as well as a 2 foot diameter tube, and when it was “naked” sometimes pushed a little dirt starting off. I wrapped a small section of wire fence around the roller, which increased traction quite a bit and prevents the dirt pushing. The axle is 1 inch black pipe and was placed in the tube before pouring (so it’s fixed to and rotates with the concrete). I used a couple plastic plumbing attachments to act as bearings between the wooden shafts and the steel axle. They might wear fast, but they only cost 31 cents and I figure I can just replace them as needed.

PS. I estimate that this thing weighs about 500 pounds and with the increased traction, it’s tough to turn. I think that 4 feet wide (the width of this roller) is pretty much the limit for how wide these can be made in one piece and still turn OK. If someone wants to make a wider roller, I would highly recommend making several independantly rotating rollers. The old style oak roller I was using as a model had three rollers to span about 10 feet.

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