This video is a summary of the activities on the farm for 2017. It covers cultivating the Alfalfa, disking, sprinkling, cutting hay (swathing), raking hay, baling hay, hauling hay, and feeding the beef cattle.
Tractors in use are a John Deere 4230, 4640 FWA, 4020 Diesel PowerShift, 3020 Diesel PowerShift, 630 gas, and 730 Diesel. Also shown are models 420 Utility, 435 Diesel, and a Model A.
Videos are shot with an iPhone and DJI Phantom 4.
2017 was a very busy year, with a lot of accomplishments, and a few failures. This was also the first full year with the new Reinke center pivot, which greatly increased the farm yield.
Hopefully, 2018 will be a successful year, filled with many new adventures and prosperity.
Ever since I watched the movie “The Straight Story” for a class in college, I’ve had a desire to do aerial photography and videography of events on the farm. I’ve recently purchased the DJI Phantom 3 Advanced drone, which has been one of the most amazing pieces of technology I’ve used in a long time. It has more than met my expectations for what I have purchased it for.
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.
