I took the opportunity to have some seat time with the Model A and Number 5 mower. There was some tall grass that needed to be cut down as to not be a fire danger once it dries up. The grass was really tall, but the mower and tractor did a good job. Most of the issues were with the operator, as I’m used to using more modern equipment to cut hay with…
The Number 5 Mower was fun to use though, as it used to be my grandfathers mower, on my moms side. My grandpa used to spend a lot of time with it, so my restoring it and using it has a sentimental value to it as well.
Wow, it’s been a while since I’ve updated the blog last. Basically, as far as farming goes, my spring/summer can be summarized as the following.
The first project was the restoration of the 1957 John Deere 420 Utility. I went to Utah and picked up another 420 parts tractor. I was pretty fortunate to stumble across one online for a good price, so I jumped at the opportunity to take it. I brought it home, and used it to fix my current 420 utility. They were both the same year, too, so it worked pretty well.
After that, the crank of my 1959 John Deere 630 was finally fixed. I brought it home too, but then had the 420 project come up, so I spent time getting that done instead. Once I was finished with the 420, I spent some time working on the 630 and was able to get it working as well. The 630 project was completed after spring planting and alfalfa cultivating, which cut into the projects time, but was a priority.
Afterwords, it rained. It rained and it rained. The good thing was, we never had to use the sprinklers for first crop. It did stop raining, and instantly went to very hot/dry temperatures, so I was able to cut the alfalfa with the John Deere 4230 and 945 MoCo (mower conditioner, aka swather). We then waited about 3/4th of a week, then raked the hay. I used the newly restored 420 Utility for most of the raking–and it worked great! It was fun spending some seat time on a machine that I spent so much time with the restoration process.
After the raking came the baling. With all the rain we had, there was a very good high yield of bales. The yield was much higher than last year. I used the JD 4640 and Hesston 4790 3×4 big baler for the baling.
Anyway, that about sums it up. I’ll post some videos here and in future posts. Enjoy.
This weekend we will be moving the beef cattle to the dry farm in preparation for calving season. The dry farm has shelter (trees) and the hill, which is good for keeping dry once the snow starts to melt. If you’ve seen a flat field with cattle on it in the spring time, it can get pretty messy. Anyway, I took the G over to where they will be to help keep the road open, where we aren’t using it daily (yet). It’s always fun to have an excuse to get out on the two-cylinders, and the G does quite well with the 3-point mounted blade.
Feeding in the Fog with the John Deere 3020 and custom-made bale feeder. Here I am feeding 3x4x8 feet large square bales. Hereford and Angus beef cattle on an early January evening, 2015. Taken from a GoPro that was strapped to the top of my head.
Where we’ve received a lot of snow the past few days, I used it as an excuse to get some seat time on the G by making a little road though the field to feed the cattle with. I think it did a pretty good job–even if it did snow a lot the following night… Guess I’ll have to do it again. 😉 If you get bored, there’s GoPro footage at the end. There’s no sound because the sound wasn’t worth including.
This video is of the John Deere G and John Deere 2010 raking alfalfa. It also has some slow-motion video. Because the large baler needs to be fed so much hay, and the hay needs to be turned to dry, we rake the two rows together. Eventually it will be nice to have a twin rake that does it both in one pass. In the meantime, this is what we have–one or two tractors that rake and roll the hay together. The slow-motion of the iPhone 5s is kind of fun to watch as well.
This video shows some hay (alfalfa) being hauled with a 1950 John Deere Model G. The model G was the largest row-crop John Deere at the time, with more CI displacement than even the 4020 at 412 (vs 404, but not near the horse power). The G was replaced by the 70, which was replaced by the popular 720 and 730 series of John Deere two-cylinder tractors. The other tractor in the video is a John Deere 4020, which loaded the bales.
This video is about Harvesting the Alfalfa 1st Crop 2014. It goes from cutting the crop with a pull behind John Deere 945 MoCo Windorower (swather), Raking it with an old John Deere 2010 and side-delivery rake (retro, but when you are starting out from scratch, that’s what you have to do), and baling it with a John Deere 4640 and Hesston 4790 large square baler. Hauling with a John Deere 4230 and 1972 4020 with a front-end loader. Some of the video is shot with a Parrot AR.Drone, which, despite its lack in quality, gives some pretty neat shots.
Discing with a John Deere 4230 with a BW disc, and drilling (planting) with a John Deere 4640 and LL-A grain drill. The drill is the device that is used to put the seed into the ground. The harrow and the roller are there to smoothen out the ground and push down rocks, as we live in a rocky area.
There’s also a hawk at the end that kept flying to the next wheel of the wheel line (irrigation pipe) with a mouse that it was trying to eat.
This year I purchased a snow blower to help keep the barnyard cleaned out. The snow slides on the side of the barn to the point where it can’t slide anymore (builds up too much). SO, with the snow blower I am able to keep it pushed out better. It also lets me use the warmth of a cab tractor to push snow.
This video is a time lapse that I took with the GoPro. It’s not the greatest video because it got a lot of moisture over the outer housing, and I probably shouldn’t have made it record it so fast… But, it is still kind of cool to watch anyway.