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. 
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 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.