Last year, I used the 630 to feed with. However, I thought it would be fun to try the A as well. I think the A is one of my favorite two-cylinder models.
In this video I’m feeding beef cattle (Herefords and Angus) with the A and a custom-made feeder. The feeder used to be a round bale bagger. I converted it to work with the 3x4x8 large square bales. Bales are loaded with a 3020 PowerShift.
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.
Last winter we had an unusual amount of snowfall. Some were saying it was about 170% snowpack up in the surrounding mountains. The sudden warmer days created a large amount of snowfall and run-off. This created some very high rivers, and some pretty impressive drone footage.
Best watched at full screen. Enjoy.
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.
Enjoy. 🙂
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.
A few weeks ago, my sister and I went out to do some photography for one of her photo assignments. She’s currently attending BYU-Idaho, and has a minor in photography. It was fun getting out taking some nice sunrise photos.
I took a nice little stroll to the beef cows that are currently on the dry farm on the 1939 John Deere Model A. I’ve been working on the tractor most of the winter, so I thought it would be a good opportunity to warm the motor up a bit and let it stretch its legs. It was so pretty that I decided to film it. Since I’m just holding my camera, it’s a little bumpy. The video shows the beautiful west hills in Freedom, Wyoming (which is actually in Idaho) on the Robert Weber farm.
Since we had Monday off for Presidents Day, I took the opportunity to go on a quick ride up Deer Creek. The snow was pretty nice and it is close enough to home that it allowed the dogs to come and have a good time too. The video here shows me on my 2008 800 Polaris Dragon with a 163 track. The snow has been a little late coming this year, but the past few storms have seemed to be an attempt to make up for it.