[dominiquer60]

I like your point on energy conservation Tim.

I often refer to my last 2 years of college as “when I learned how I didn’t want to farm.” One class that I was happy to go to was Forages. We learned a lot of good usable information that I use all of the time, and I will admit that it was a little enjoyable beating all the kids raised on dairy farms in the hay judging contest.

Anyway the major haying advice that I remember is to work the hay as little as possible, meaning only as much as necessary. More trips meant more fuel/energy and less dry matter as a return. The general rule our professor threw around was 5%, every time you handle the hay loose or baled, you lost 5% of the Dry Matter. Of course there are a lot of variables, you loose less than 5% when you ted the first time, but if you get too dry you loose greater than 5% during the final raking. Don’t forget handling bales either. Ever time you move a bale from one place to another you loose a little. You can see your high nutrition leaf matter blow away in the breeze when the baler kicks into the wagon, or how about that pile of chaff at the bottom and top of the hay elevator, it is not all seeds and dust. “Nutrient Erosion” is certainly something to avoid as much as possible. Haying is like many things in life, finding the right balance, enough moisture but not too much, somewhere between moldy and stems striped of leafs there is a happy medium, and so many methods to get there.

[dominiquer60]

Happy New Year to all, because next year will be better yet! 🙂

[dominiquer60]

I don’t have much experience with driving 3, but I have to say that I like it a lot for plowing with the 2 way sulky. My first time driving 3 was my first time plowing, a little intimidating at first, but now that I have a couple acres under my belt I prefer using 3 for this task. I use lines for 3, so I don’t have anything to write about using team lines and the short lines to hames. I agree with Wally, after experimenting with a few different horses, it is much easier to drive this hitch with your most forward animal in the middle.

As for the “lazy” horse, it needs to learn its name. We keep a pocket full of small stones if a stick is not handy for horses that like to lag behind. I am not saying that it is the right way, but these training aids are found everywhere so they are often used here as an extension of the arm.

[dominiquer60]

Jelmer,

I found this video of torsion weeders in action. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y7pKHnVoyiE. It seems to me that when they uncover them at the end, the torsion weeder is somewhat deep and looks to form a ridge when the loose soil is removed. Do find this to be the case?

I wonder if a torsion weeder is a possibility in our soil. We have many stones and even though it is classified as a sandy loam, the soil can harden and can become difficult to penetrate with cultivating equipment. I can picture it jumping up or over due to the stones and possibly causing more damage to the plants than I would like.

I also worry that if torsion weeder does make a bit of a ridge, that this would have a negative impact on conserving soil moisture. Like the Nordells I don’t have irrigation so if there is no rain in the forecast I may not want to use this tool.

I am not putting the torsion weeder down, I am just curious if it would be right for my soil conditions and water conversation methods.

Prices for any of these items would be nice. However I do not want to import such equipment, which is why Kress is inviting because they have a warehouse here in the States. I will let you know Kress prices are when I get them. Thanks for your input, I think that the use of mechanical cultivation is on the rise and it will be interesting to see how it progresses.

[dominiquer60]

Farmer Brown has a team of big Percherons for sale, I have no idea if they are for beginners or not. I use some tall Percherons for market garden work, they are much bigger than I need, but on with 36″ beds, they are not too bad. If they are base narrow or have feet smaller than a pie pan they could work. http://www.draftsforsale.com/ShowAd/index.php?id=52b3b5a4d47a0&fb_action_ids=10202706778895776&fb_action_types=og.likes&fb_source=aggregation&fb_aggregation_id=288381481237582

[dominiquer60]

Thank you Jelmer, I able to click on the link. Sorry that the editing feature doesn’t seem to work as we would like it to.

I am hopeful that I can purchase a pair of these finger weeders to add to my cultivating options. Like you have stated, there are pros and cons to this, and most cultivating tools. It is all about choosing the right (or best fit at the moment) tool for the right job given the conditions of any given day. I feel like these will give me a better in-row cultivating tool than I currently have, and I like that they are available in a range of sizes and finger firmness. Each plastic color of this finger weeder indicates a particular firmness, so you can use a soft finger for delicate plants in light soil or a firmer finger on larger plants or harder soil. The finger weeders that I know from the states here have rubber coated metal fingers, and are really aggressive, so I like that these are gentler and vary in firmness of plastics.

The other tool that I would like to try out is the comb that follows a sweep. This link should show it in the upper right hand photo, http://www.kress-landtechnik.de/wEnglisch/produkte/gemuesebau/hacktechnik/hackwerkzeug/hackwerkzeuge_start.shtml?navid=31. The comb that I mention is blue with 6 tines and a weight above. The weight can be adjusted to make the comb more aggressive or less depending on the conditions and the comb is on a hinge so it can float over rocks and such.

Jelmer, I think that you had similar combs on your equipment in Barton. I regret not being able to make either of your cultivator sessions, please forgive me for my ignorance of what you have already covered. I am just excited to discover something new to me at a trade show targeted at tractor farmers that I can apply to a draft animal operation.

[dominiquer60]

I had an interesting talk today with the USA rep of K.U.L.T. or Kress for short. http://www.kress-landtechnik.de/wEnglisch/produkte/gemuesebau/hacktechnik/hacktechnik.shtml?navid=6
They make some great tractor tools, especially tool bars set up with a combination of sweeps, tines, discs and combs for cultivating. After I showed him a couple straddle row cultivators we took some time to brainstorm how a couple of the components could be adapted to my McCormick Deering. Of course these tool bar systems would be great to have, but in reality I might only be able to afford a pair of finger weeders and combs. The finger weeders are ground driven and need to float independently so we would need to fabricate a way to mount as such.

Kress already imports the units and parts to a warehouse in NY, when I get a price list I will share it.

One of the sessions this morning was about mechanical cultivation, it was great to see draft power represented. Jody from Roxbury Farm (where Jelmer works) gave a great slide show explaining how the farm tackles weeds, it was inspiring to see that amongst the big equipment and fancy front mounted tractor cultivators, there is still a very effective use of a single horse and an old cultivator.

It will be interesting to see what innovations and new equipment becomes of this influx of European technology.

[dominiquer60]

I have a 3 horse yoke in my barn back in NY, it is not stiff. It has a ring in the middle, but I can’t recall exactly how it was set up. Maybe I will find it for you the next time I am there, hopefully soon 🙂

[dominiquer60]

I am going to beat Jean to it 🙂

That is wicked awesome, it always pleases me to hear about connections between young people and draft animal power. Good work Jay and Brad!

[dominiquer60]

So how did it go? I see a lot of good pictures on face book and talk of Wendell Berry, but not much about what is actually done at one of these events, besides logger yoga 🙂
Do Tell

[dominiquer60]

I just started having this problem too, it certainly makes it difficult to use the forum, who wants to search around looking for recent posts?

[dominiquer60]

I was able to open the pdf. Some great photos and diagrams, looking forward to reading it.

[dominiquer60]

Carl’s thoughts made me think of the days that I lived in Easton, NY, just south of an intersection of 2 major roads in the county. We knew every other vehicle that drove buy, Mrs. Rymph delivering silage, Stewart going buy to plow the Riggio lot, English on his school bus route. As much as we knew all of them, one comment that we frequently got was “I saw you sitting in your field.” As often as many people saw us in the field this way, they never seemed to understand that we were never sitting, we were weeding, thinning, harvesting, transplanting, but never did we have the luxury of just sitting in the field. Seemed that even fellow farmers were out of touch with what it takes to grow produce for retail.

[dominiquer60]

We spend a lot of time commuting. All of the market garden is at our house and hay fields are all over the neighborhood, the animals are at Sam’s parents place. Every time we want to harness up to work in the garden or most hay fields, we have to travel the road. By pavement we are a mile away, by dirt road and farm lanes it is a little over a 1/2 mile. We don’t have many neighbors on this route. Traveling by or through 5 corn fields is good for scouting purposes and we can keep a close eye on the grain corn that we cultivate. It can be enjoyable when we have the time and time consuming when you just want to cultivate a few garden rows. We let the horses trot the road and a couple of straight a ways. It is nice to have this distance to work a little attitude out of the younger mares. When we set out taps, we have a 2.5 mile collection route around the neighborhood that includes the state road. Generally it is just car traffic and an occasional logging truck. The neighbors enjoy watching anytime we are on the road with the horses or steers. Traveling by or through 5 corn fields is good for scouting purposes and we can keep a close eye on the grain corn that we cultivate. It would be nice to someday have the work animals closer to home, but for now we make the best of our frequent commute. Great to read others experiences.

[dominiquer60]

Thanks Donn.

You should be able to plant into the oats in the spring. That is what I did this year, I had to disc a few times, but I had some serious oat and pea residue to cut through. If yours was planted too late then you should have few problems. The oat and pea residue made a huge difference this year with all of the rain early in the summer, it did a great job holding soil and when the rain stopped it retained a good amount of moisture.

I always plant my garlic by hand, but if I can prep the beds well it makes the job of planting easier, that was certainly the case this year compared to last.

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