A quick coffee with the landlords as we inspected the peas this morning. We hit -2 and north of here was -5! The peas are Colin along nicely with close to an inch tail on some of them. Will watch them closely over the next couple days to spray them right before they pop out of the ground.
Always neat to watch the first seeds of the year grow.
Over the past week, well actually 9 months we’ve been testing and demoing a variety of high speed vertical tillage tools to determine first if we need one of these $100,000 + tools and secondly if the answer is yes, which one. I’m currently testing the King Kong as Lance has dubbed it (Kongskilde 9100). JayDee AgTech brought this unit out last Tuesday tethered to a 9560R 4wd powerhouse. These units require higher horsepower to pull them properly to do their job. So this massive 9560R ( that’s 560 horsepower with the R standing for rubber tires vs T which would be tracks) with 800 metric rubber, full auto shift with cruise control, full pivoting swivelling seat and console and ….. Oh wait, back to the real demo.
These units are about trash management, getting through the straw, levelling the ground, helping it dry and preparing the seed bed. The Kongskilde demo was accompanied by 2 manufacturer employees and 2 JDAT employees to get it set right to meet our needs. That was hugely beneficial to fine tune it. I’m thrashing through heavy oats straw currently (barley straw last week in moist conditions) and it’s doing a great job of turning the soil, and managing straw piles and bunches. At 7-9 mph it trails nicely avoiding strips. It’s a heavy unit, as they all are. When you hit wet soggy low spots where the tractor starts to spin, it’s debatable if you are better to leave the unit in the ground or lift it onto the 8 oversized tires that want to sink as well under the weight of the unit. With the ability to adjust the offset of the gangs of discs it seems quite versatile. Overall very impressed with it. Do we need one? The verdict is still out.
I’ll move over this afternoon to a very simple Kelly Harrow. Seeing it winged up makes it appear much more complex than it really is. Cleaning up what was a disastrous pea crop and cattail sloughs was its most impressive feat. As was leaving it all level and smooth.
Last fall we demo’d the Kelly after a Lemken which honestly is my least favourite ( the Lemken that is) The most complex with the most parts of the lot, it arrived brand new with no instruction. After the experience of the fine tuning on the Kongskilde I’m sure the same holds for the Lemken. The Lemken floated more behind the tractor causing strips and was prone to plugging up gangs on wet or heavier straw requiring lifting up and over and circling back to try and level them off.
So again we ask ourselves, do we need one. And if we did, the toss up would be the Kelly or the King Kong. It’s a pricey tool to sit and be used from time to time.
A huge thanks to Tyler and Bentley at JayDee AgTech as well as Bill and Chris from Kongskilde for their time and attention last week.
Being on the cusp of seeding, we needed to keep ourselves busy which honestly, that’s not that difficult. We took the rock rake (a tool that rakes all the rocks into a convenient row for the rock picker to pick up), the rock picker and the cultivator to Picklers quarter to clean up a line fence we demolitioned last year. It’s always great to get projects like that done before we start seeding as once we’re in that mode, these odd jobs are hard to tackle. And the good news is we can now seed that area now. I was bugging Lance that he loves to pull superbee grain trailers so this was him with 2 units behind the John Deere 6140 hauling everything home.
I heavy harrowed 40 acres before the rain and hail started, which coincidently started just as Lance was reaching the field with the drill to start seeding field peas. Disappointing but we didn’t end up with much rain so we’re ready to start mid-day tomorrow hopefully. Walking to the road for Lance to pick me up after the rain, this miraculous sight in the sky sucked most of my IPhone battery. Tonight I spent the evening trenching water by hand on Picklers enjoying the peace and quiet before the storm (which is to say seeding).
http://www.wired.com/2015/04/dmca-ownership-john-deere.
Its a fascinating read about who owns the farm equipment we drive up and down the field. And its not the bank you’re worried about this time.
Earlier morning than I have been used to this morning. Hauling out some malt barley this morning to our local malt gathering station at Englefeld. About 4 in of wet snow was not what we needed as it makes everything slippery and sloppy. That’s why you’ll notice I’m using our day cab truck we use for hauling liquid fertilizer in the spring and short hauls of grain from the field to the bin. I didn’t want to get the big truck all slopped up after having just finished polishing all the aluminum on it to a mirror finish. What can I say, I’m a suckered for shiny things.
After a day of snow the sun is out today, it is +7 degrees and the water is running again. The wet snow yesterday is making the yard very sloppy so what do big kids do. Go play in the water. I bladed off what snow was left and tried to level any ruts made this morning.
Some of the barley hauled in today is being cleaned for seed so need to go pick it up tomorrow and dump into a cleaned out bin. Got the auger all set up today so should be ready for tomorrow provided it is cold over night and freezes the ground.
Waking to 2″ of snow was not exactly what we had in mind for an early Spring that would hopefully dry up the fields and roads as we prep for seeding 2015!
In due time, we’ll be ready to roll, but these snow delays are slowing us down and making this feel more and more like a regular Spring (wet and a little bit more wet).
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