[mitchmaine]

Hey George, my dad put up loose hay when I was a kid. And in the winter, when he had a sense of how much hay we had he’d sell some and someone showed up with a motorized baler like the one in seans video, and four men would pitch hay down from off the scaffold, hopefully like it went up. Half a wagon at a time. And two would pitch it into the baler hoping not to plug it up. And another would be loading a truck. They were wire bales and heavy, and even in February, it was a long dirty job. My pennies worth would be either take it in loose or bale it in the field.
There was also a time inbetween when we hired our baling out for a fifth the hay. At the time it seemed like highway robbery since we cut, kicked and raked it. But now we have our own baler and buy twine and parts and maintain it and the tractor that weaseled its way onto the farm alongside the baler, I might be apt to say hiring out the baling was a good trade.
Then there is the tractor…… once you buy it, it owns you, that’s all I’ll say.
mitch

[mitchmaine]

@PhilG 27013 wrote:

Mitch,
it has had some modifications in the back, not sure what’s going on there ?
do you think it needs a wheel out front ? would that help control the depth ?
phil

phil, looks almost like the original beam was broken and replaced. ?? hard to tell. i thought i might have one and i found it this morning with two cherrie trees trying to pull it back into the soil. it was a oliver and it had a jointer (knife), a guage wheel and a small horiz. and vertical clevis at the nose of the beam. i have never used that kind of a plow. no experience with it whatsoever. but i wonder with the plow shifting sides and pulled with the same beam, how much difference the horizontal adjustment might make. maybe none. but i think a guage wheel would be pretty important. that plow looks pretty beat up. but the point looks in pretty good shape. let us know how it turns out.
mitch

[mitchmaine]

@PhilG 26999 wrote:

I finally found a plow, it has a lot of holes in the beam and I was wondering if they were for bolting on a wheel of some kind ? or if I need a wheel? it is a 16″ ih p&o, which seams a little big for my single horse, but I have been reading about the “skim” plowing which would be plenty deep for what I need- any advice on what would be different for hitching up for this? any advice on this would be greatly appreciated, Thanks

phil,
your plow looks like a trip plow or a roll over. it might have a dog behind the share. you trip it with your toe and the ploe flips over to the other side making it a two way walking plow. if thats true, then you may be measuring it wrong, and it could be a smaller plow easier on your single horse. the advantage of the plow was you could plow two ways. the disadvantage was the moldboard doesn’t turn soil as well as a conventional plow. more good news is there is a pile of points twenty feet deep that fit your plow out in ohio, if your plow is what i think it is.
mitch

[mitchmaine]

hard to tell by the picture, john, but it looks like birch to me. maybe black birch. if that is so, most might consider it a weed tree, but it grows quick enough and can get big enough to burn. we cut and burnt grey birch on our farm all the time, but really just to get rid of it. might be elm, but looks more birch to me.
mitch

[mitchmaine]

@reb 26996 wrote:

I think Mike Rowe has it right “safety third” I found this video on you-tube. I think the whole video is great, but at 14:00mins he talks about safety.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-udsIV4Hmc
Richard

thanks, reb. that’s so correct on so many levels, i can’t beleive it. very enjoyable. thanks again. mitch

[mitchmaine]

carl,
your points are all good and strong. but i think you are missing one or might not just said it. the individual family farmers working on this cooperative all “might” lack a certain incentive derived from working on and deciding the direction of “your own place”.
i’ve seen it happen here on local intervale. hundreds acres of the best growing soil in maine leased to any who wish to grow there. farmers come and go, always opting for poorer heavy soils somewhere they can afford to own someday, so that all that work someday belongs to you.
the webbs put shelburn farm together out of thirty farms. almost 4000 acres with the most beautiful barns ever seen. hired the farmers they bought out to work it. it lasted 14 years with a millionaire footing the bills.
farmers are all artists in a sense. very creative business designing and building a farm. from the rockwalls to the orchards, all some outward statement of who you are. five painters all working on the same canvas. not gonna work.
mitch

[mitchmaine]

thanks john for posting the speech. i don’t pay much attention to the news but i have to say i never heard one word of the prince of wales visit or talks.
not surprising seeing that the local university is currently working on a $100,000 grant to determine what sustainability means. the status quo doesn’t want to hear what he is saying, me thinks. now if a local woman decided to grow lettuce in her kitchen window box, and the feds rushed in to do a lead paint analysis on the window box to determine whether or not it was a food safety issue to the global food network, it would be all over the news and entertainment tonight. it wouldn’t surprise me and i totally expect our nation to outsource our food production, military and currency in the name of security. sounds absurd, doesn’t it. no one would give away their guns, money and food, but we are slowly giving monsanto and others complete control over food production. to a corporation that sells stock on the world market. anybody rich enough can own a controling interest in a corporation that controls the food. scary.

[mitchmaine]

ixy,
i don’t know how you are using the word scale there? to me scale is very important. without the importance of scale, there is only big farming. small farming becomes a novelty and it isn’t. i don’t want any agent or tourist passing judgement on what i do here, and i’m guessing you don’t either. i say how big this farm is and how much i do and how many i employ. it’s that simple.

[mitchmaine]

she tells her story so honestly, karl. everyone whos ever been there say “yeah”. she lays it right open to the bone and i admire her for it.

[mitchmaine]

my young farmer neighbor, keena, is the same keena in the book, while working for mark down in penn.
she dropped off a copy two nights ago thinking i might like the book.
i’m on my second go around and read it to penny last night in bed. we both love the book. and encourage every one here on the site to read it too. its a hoot. just a great story about falling in love with farming and horses and people. thank you donn, for posting this.
mitch

[mitchmaine]

@near horse 26891 wrote:

Funny – I just heard a story yesterday about how modern US farmers are better able to cope with global climate change and the example they gave was due to increased moisture levels farmers have adapted by: 1) spraying for potential fungal issues related to the higher moisture levels and 2) buying/using Bigger (?) equipment so that they can get out into the wetter ground.

Sounds like great adaptations – for the chemical and equipment guys.

In my case, I fertilized last week using my horses and a forecart w/ a drop spreader. Definitely too soft for tractor and some spots for even a 4-wheeler but not for animal power.

hey geoff,
the bigger equipment they are talking about might have to be boats if this keeps up.
regards, mitch

[mitchmaine]

right andy,
we do have lots of opinion here, and open minds to boot. what we are lacking seems to be information. we are ready to jump headfirst into the program, and it looks like the testing fields are yours and my backyards.
nuclear power was going to be the answer to all our dreams. i remember the filmstrips back in grade school in the fifties, with the little friendly atom bouncing around doing all our work for us. any thoughts on how that turned out.
we had the greatest public transportation system on the planet. trollies and busses and trains already there, and scraped overnight for the automobile and the highway.
when some govt. talking head tells me we have top men working on something, forgive me if i can’t get too evcited. whatever it is, its going to put lots of people out of real work, and make a small number of people very rich. nope. i’m not one of the openminded. mitch

[mitchmaine]

you probably won’t ever get better advice than what tyler just told you.
find a gelding not a day under 12, who gets pushed around the pasture by every other horse. last one in the barn. don’t have strength enough to pull your sick aunt off a milking stool. feed him, tend him and get his faith and he will teach you anything you want to know.
don’t refuse helpful advice or real experience, but in the end, its always the horse is your teacher. good or bad.

good luck and best wishes, mitch

[mitchmaine]

hey ed,
we had a load once we dumped a couple buckets in a new garden, and ended up with bind weed (morningglory?) and have never got rid of it.
its probably ok in a pasture, but if you piled it and composted it. turned it every couple weeks and spread it in the fall, might be a better use of it.

mitch

[mitchmaine]

@jac 26264 wrote:

April 10th 2011. We have had a warm dry spell over here in Ayrshire so we got the harrows out. This is the second time we have harrowed this year. The 1st one was realy just to level the mole hils. I will harrow again in a couple of weeks to try and rip the buttercup leaf. It definaitly helps to control this weed. My youngest daughter Caitlyn took the lines for a while. She handles this team well for a 12yo. Its great to pass the skills on to the youngsters…
John

hey john,
there is a day here each spring and the fields are finally green. even though you know its coming it is always a suprise. today is the day. i walked out the door this morning and the fields look like yours in your photos, a little shorter in grass albeit. so i figure we are about three weeks add another for the grass behind you here. cheer up a bit there. it might you take another week to get your sfj, but you have us beat by a month on spring. we’ve ploughed up some of our old soil, but now its time to plow some sod. best wishes and good plowing, mitch

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