Explain It To Me From My Knowledge Base

I have been following several people on social media over the last few years about agriculture issues.  I have been getting side feeds trying to explain use of glyphosate to the urbanites and suburbanite.  Really do I need to see one more video trying to explain 22 ounces of liquid covering a football field?  Why don’t the farmers explain it from urbanites and suburbanites perspective and knowledge base.  Maybe then, they’ll get it!

First a little background.  I grew up in the suburbs of St Paul Minnesota.  My mom and dad were raised on dairy farms.  After they were married, they moved to the St Paul area and raised their family.  My grandparents, on my dad’s side, continued to dairy farm.  We would go to their place when I was a child and spend the weekends.  My grandparents farm was 160 acres of corn, oats and hay to feed their milking herd of 25 cows and young stock.  Part of the acreage was pasture ground and so the managed acreage was about 120 acres.  My grandpa’s biggest tractor was 60 horsepower and that’s small by todays agricultures standard.

When I was 20 I moved from the big city (so did my parents and family and bought their own dairy farm) back near my grandparents farm I and got a job on a neighboring farm.  This farm was a bigger dairy farm.  On this farm we milked 78 cows and had young stock.  The farm was about 450 acres raising corn, oats and hay.  Some of the acreage was in pasture ground.  The biggest tractor on this farm was 120 horsepower.  This is the small tractor on todays farms.  I worked on this farm for 13 years before I left and went to work in town.

About 15 years ago my youngest daughter took sheep as a 4-H project when she was in her junior year of high school.  She moved on with her life and the sheep stayed.  At first the sheep were urban sheep. When me and Laurel build a new home in the country we moved the sheep to our new home on 13 acres.  We have about 2-1/2 acres of tillable land and the rest is pasture and woods.  I manage my land with a 1952 Ford 8N tractor with a whopping 23 horsepower.  Most of my feed is raised on my dad’s farm.  So there in a nut shell in is my farm knowledge base.

Laurel and I have gardened most of our 35 years of marriage.  At first we gardened like farmers then transitioned to gardening on the square foot method.  The gardening as a framer we would plow with a tractor and use wide row methods so we could till the ground between the rows of plants.  As we learned more about gardening we moved to permanent 4 foot wide raised beds.  I would till the soil with a garden fork and the tiller was idled.  The beds were planted on the square foot method and mulching of the beds was used to suppress weeds and conserve moisture.  At our new home our vegetable garden is the barnyard.  Each spring I clean up the manure pack and reset the fence panels to create the garden.  Back to the days of plowing and wide row plantings.  Today we mostly plant tomatoes green beans for canning.  We also grow a variety of peppers and sweet potatoes.  We gave up on regular potatoes and squash because of the bugs.  We also have a small terraced garden near the house were we plant carrots, beets and spinach.  The terraced garden is heavily enriched with compost.

Now I know your starting to think, this guy has a wide base of knowledge.  Is he conventional or organic?  Is he large scale gardening or small scale farming?  Or is he a hybrid of both systems.  Dad continues to farm raising corn and soybeans and a few acres of hay for me and a neighbor who bought his beef herd.  The corn and soybean seed is Round-up ready, meaning it is GMO seed.  A few years ago I got my applicator license so I could purchase chemicals and apply them to the fields.  As time marches forward and dairy industry has left our area.  The cover crop of hay ground is being replaced with the row crops of corn and soybeans.  This is happening to the hillsides where 30 years ago corn would have been planted for one year and the back to hay ground via oats as a nurse crop.  The farmers were spreading manure back to the fields enriching the fields.  Today the fields are being fed fertilizers to feed the corn and soybeans.

This brings me back to my earlier question.  What is your knowledge base?  I understand gardening and small dairy farming.  But….  Do I understand milking 500 or 1000 cows?  Do I understand managing 1000 or 5000 acres of corn and soybeans.  How about 10 sections of wheat?  Dad’s corn planter is 4 row, and in America’s corn belt farmers are using 24 and 36 row corn planters.  Dad just follows a mark in the soil to keep the corn rows parallel.  The big planters are using GPS to keep their row parallel when they plant.  I have sat in some of the biggest tractors with all their buttons and switches and thought learning to fly a airplane would be simpler.  So if I am overwhelmed with the size and technology, what about a urbanite or suburbanite?  If they have one tomato plant on their deck why can’t 40 acres of tomatoes be managed in the same way?  If they have a grouping of small raised garden beds or a garden 30X30 and they are able to manage after a hard day at work with a hoe and pulling a few weeds so why do the farmers need chemicals?  Can’t they manage the crops in an organic way?

I have though about that.  Laurel and I are sometimes overwhelmed by our garden that is 30X30 with all the weeding.  Lets make the garden bigger.  Let say 320 acres.  For you that are struggling with size, 320 acres is a area 1 mile by a half a mile.  If I wanted to plant a 320 acre field of soybeans and keep it organic, how do I control the weeds?  One method is to walk the fields hoeing out the weeds.  Let stop and do the math.  I first have to determine how wide of a path I can manage weeding.  Lets just say 20 feet.  So I will walk 1 mile weeding a strip of soybeans 20 feet wide.  When I reach the end of the field I will move over 20 feet for the return trip.  I will continue this across the field.  A half a mile is 2640 feet at 20 feet a time is 132 times I would walk a mile.  For all you runners, that’s 10 half marathons!  That’s one field of soybeans in America.  Who’s going to do this all this walking?  You don’t get all summer to weed you maybe get 30 days in the heat of July.

Gardens aren’t small fields and fields aren’t big gardens.  Each has their own style of management.  If as a gardener you  lose your tomato crop you maybe had a financial lose of $100 and will have to buy your canned tomatoes from the store.  If a farmer loses their tomato crop there is no paycheck!  But the bank loan for the plants, fertilizer and fuel still needs to be repaid.

Back to glyphosate.  Why do urbanites and suburbanites think the farmers douse their fields in glyphosate?  Look at their knowledge base.  As I was watching a commercial for Round-up on television and saw how much chemical the homeowner is applying.  He was dousing the poor little plant ensuring its demise.  Maybe that is where the public gets their vision of dousing weeds in chemicals on the farm.  The homeowner could have bent over and pulled the weed with same results, but that would sell product.  If he walked his patio, how many miles would he have walked.  At the end of the commercial it shows the homeowner lying in a hammock enjoying the fruits of his weed free lawn and patio.  Is that how the urbanites and suburbanites see the farmers?  We just spayed our fields with glyphosate and now lying in a hammock wait for the crop to be harvested?

Please stop trying to explain things from a farmers point of view.  Break it down to something I can relate to and is in my knowledge base as an urbanite and suburbanite.  Maybe that will leave me with a better understanding of your choices as a farmer.

I guess that’s how I see it.  Thanks for reading my point of view.

Today’s Ag Equipment Using Yesterday’s Invention

Way back when I was in elementary school I remember my teacher asking the question, “Do you know anyone who had received a patent?”  Maybe one or two classmates would raise their hand, but for most of us our hands remained on our desks. As a class, over the next week we would try to think of a new invention or rework an invention.  I don’t remember any of my thoughts on any inventions.

Over the last few years Dad has told the story of him and his brother Bob telling their uncle Ray about a new corn head they had purchased for their New Holland chopper.  The corn head is used to harvest standing corn and feed the stalk into the chopper.  The chopper chops the corn plant into small pieces.  Then the pieces are blown into a silo where they will ferment and be come silage for cattle.  As they told Ray about the cutting mechanism Ray said, “Where the hell is our money?”  Dad and Bob didn’t know what Ray was talking about.  Then Ray told them how their Great-Grandfather Courtland Bird had invented that very cutting mechanism.

I started think about that story and one day I did a little research on the internet looking for Courtland’s patent and I found his patent.  It was titled “Cutting Mechanism of a Corn Harvester.”  I looked over the drawings and noted the patent drawings where of two designs.  The first design was a friction drive.  As the cutter would approach the corn stalk, the stalk would slip between two sharp disc cutting it just above the ground.  The second was a mechanical drive of the cutting wheels.  The drawing doesn’t show how the discs were driven, but I assume by one of the wheels.

Today is the 90th anniversary of Courtland’s patent.  When Courtland designed this idea it was designed for the corn binder.  The conventional way of cutting the corn stalk on the corn binder was using a short sickle moving back and forth cutting the stalk close to the ground.

I took a look at Dad’s New Holland 824 corn head and noted their design.  The corn head of today uses two disks with a mechanical drive design.  New Holland drives their disc cutters with a chain being powered by the gathering chains on the head.  The only improvement I noted was that New Holland notched there discs.  I also stopped by one of the local implement dealers and looked over their collection of corn heads.  I also saw a Case head sitting there and saw it too used a disc cutting mechanism.

I guess my 2nd Great-Grandfather was ahead of his time and we are still farming with him every time we put up corn silage.

Responding to The 30 Day Blogging Challenge

Over the last two weeks I have been reading the six blogs I posted about in my last post.  It got me thinking.  What would be my blog posting to each of the titles?  Who would be the Influential Person in Agriculture to me?  What are the things I Love?  I raise Food and I like to cook and grill.  What were the Life Lessons I taught my daughters?  I drove and rode a few  Dirt Roads in my life.  And a Song, to sum up Agriculture in my life.

Influential.  I can’t name one person, it’s more like a composite of people.  Grandpa, Dad, Uncles, Employer, Friends, 4-H Leaders and may other people.  There are blogs I read today and I see them leaving a mark of influence on me.  As a child I was on my uncle’s knee learning to drive the tractors.  As a teen working for my Grandpa milking cows and learning to operate bigger field equipment.  In my early adult years I worked for a neighbor on their dairy farm for 13 years.  When my youngest daughter was in her junior year of high school she said she was going to take sheep as a 4-H project.  That decision brought us a new learning curve, new people to meet and leading me and Laurel to be the sheep superintends at our county fair.  I still yet today learn history of farming from my Dad thru his love of Red-Bellied Fords and Hit-and-Miss engines powering farm equipment.

Love.  Enjoying a handcrafted beer on the deck on a warm summer evening.  Firing up the grill and having the heat, smoke and meat marinade together and creating a shared dinner with Laurel.  Bonfires with family and friends.  Grandsons being toted around the farm with my tractor pulling a trailer with them riding behind.  Helping Dad do projects on his farm and helping with his field work.  Helping my daughters with needs in their projects on their homes.  Learning new skills in photography.  Working on my genealogy leaving a history of our family for my daughters and grandchildren.  But most of all a love for Laurel.  Spending time with her.  Whether it be as simple as holding her hand, traveling with her or preparing an elegant dinner just because I love her.

Food.  Being around the dairy industry growing up, beef was what was for dinner.  Back in the 70’s when we lived in the Twin Cities, people were outraged by the price of beef in the store.  Mom and Dad’s neighbors were talking about boycotting beef .  When they would talk to Mom she would come back with the statement ” The farmer needs to eat too!”  Over the last few years I have come to love grilling.  Beef, Pork, Lamb and Vegetables.  They are all in need of smoke and I am the guy to add the smoke.  For my 50 birthday my kids threw me a bash complete with a grilled hog.  The next year we celebrated Laurel’s 50 birthday with a grilled hog also.  My cousin was at Laurel’s party and was so impressed with the hog he asked me if I would grill a hog for the family reunion.  Now that I have said yes, he told me the only way I can get out of grilling the hog is to DIE!  I guess I have a date for the next 30 years.

Life Lessons.  I can’t list specific lessons, but as a look at my daughters today they must have learned many lessons from me and Laurel.  All three of my daughters are in their 30’s and are married to wonderful men. It seems they each learned the lessons of hard work, family and love.  They continue to love today the same things we did as a family when they were children.  Gardening, travel, camping and simply gathering as a family.

Dirt Roads.  I always remember the night we ate at the Blue Diamond many years ago when I was a kid.  The Blue Diamond was a supper club near my Grandma and Grandpa’s.  We had gone out for their Friday night fish fry.  I don’t remember who was in the car other the me and Grandma and Grandpa.  As we left the Blue Diamond, Grandpa turn left instead of right and we were off to find our way back to the farm on roads I didn’t know.  Grandpa turned on a township road.  We crossed over the railroad tracks and the road turned to gravel.  Grandpa stated we had crossed into Minnesota.  Everybody knows Minnesota’s roads were all gravel.  About a mile down the road it turned back to asphalt.  He claimed we just crossed back into Wisconsin and would be home soon.  Now I was a little smarter than that.  Growing up in the Twin Cities and traveling to Grandma and Grandpa’s we had to cross the St Croix River.  So Grandpa’s fib didn’t hold much water because I claimed we didn’t cross the St Croix.  He just laughed.

Meet Me in Montana.  Ever since I heard this song from years ago, I have always love this song.  It was originally preformed by Dan Seals and Marie Osmond in 1985.  When I looked it up on YouTube I found a version by countrychloe.  I loved her video. She did a wonderful job interpreting  the song with photos in the video.  It isn’t that I need to meet Laurel in Montana, but I do love meeting  Laurel on top of Prickly Ash Hill each and every day sharing a life together.

30 Days of Agriculture Blogs

Last year I came across a blog that was titled 30 Days of Thanksgiving.  I read the blog daily and found the words uplifting and inspirational.  As October rolled around I saw a calling for a group of bloggers to take up this years challenge.  The 30 day challenge is headed up by a Holly Spangler at Farm Progress.  She has titled this years challenge “30 Days: Agriculturalists Who Influence”.

Here is my must read blog roll for 2014.  There about 25 people participating in the challenge telling stories of life and farming from their point of view.  Here is a link to the Farm Progress web site and Holly’s day one blog.  The bottom of the post will be the list of bloggers participating in the challenge.  Find your favorites and enjoy this Thanksgiving season learning something about agriculture.  I am going to continue to follow Holly’s postings of, 30 Days: Agriculturalists Who Influence.

The first two blogs are blogs I have read over the past year.  It will be interesting to read more about their lives and their style of agriculture.

Carolyn CAREs.

This is the blog I followed last year.  Carolyn titled last year’s challenge 30 Days Of Thanksgiving.  This year her title is 30 Things I Love.  I believe I will read more postings of her love of God, Family and Farming.

Prairie Californian 

Jenny’s postings will be 30 Days of Food.  She is going to highlight a farmer and the commodity they raise for food.  She is going to take the commodity and incorporate it into a recipe.  Caution: I think she could have titled her posts “30 Days of Weight Gain!”

 

The next postings are new people to meet.  I have read the first couple entries and like what I read.  They will tell me of their lives and help me see agriculture of their little plot of ground in America.

 

Country Girl Creations

C K Jones is going to pass on the lessons of live to her daughter, Little C.  She has titled her blog: 30 Thing I Want My Farm Girl to Know.  I am already liking the simple things of life she blogging.  I believe I will continue to read her blog into the future.

Farver Farms

Shauna has titled her blog: 30 Days of Dirt Roads.  She is going to be tell stories for the end of a long dirt road at most of us will never drive down, but it is were our food starts.  Her family raise cattle and crops in Montana.  She states the population of their county is 1200 and huge towns (pop 2500) are 45 minutes away.

Kelly for Ag

Kelly’s blog will highlight 30 Days of Cattle Songs.   Kelly’s family lives in Iowa and raises cattle.  The title alone sounds light hearted, but I’m sure there will still be a message of working cattle in America.

Dinner Is Served!

I will be checking in on some other blogs, but this is my must read for November 2014.  I hope you will look over the list on Holly’s blog and find your own must reads.  Take the season of Thanksgiving and explore the world of agriculture and see how your food is produced by the Farmers of America.

 

Spring Time at Prickly Ash Hill

Here it the end of April and we are looking forward to a week of rain.  The spring time bring lambing season to Prickly Ash Hill Farm.  It was a good season, but we have had better seasons and some seasons worse.  With the endless cold of winter, I am glad we lambed late this year.  We only bred 5 ewes last fall and held back 5 spring lambs.  At one time we had dreams of lambing 20-25 ewes and this year that would have been all we could handle.  The 10 head on the farm this year was more than enough.  The extreme cold and endless snow falls made 10 head just about right.

Last summer when I was baling hay the knotter on the baler broke.  The hay was in perfect condition and it would have been a shame to wait until the knotter was fixed.  I drove over to the neighbor’s and asked him if he could make small round bales for me.   He said he would be over that evening as soon as he was finished wrapping hay bales for another neighbor.  He asked me what size I wanted, and I told him to make them 4X4.  He responded with ” The last time I made you round bales, I made them 3X4.”  After talking awhile, I told him to make them 3X4.  The next day I drove pass the field and it was covered with 30 “Husky Boy Bales”.  That was a great decision as the winter unfolded.

The 3X4 round bale is what I refer to as “Husky Boy Bales”.  They take a good husky boy to push those bales around and no tractor is needed.  I was able to roll them into my trailer and transport them to the pasture.  I would unroll some of the bale and put the rest into a bale feeder.  As the snow got deeper I wasn’t able to unroll the hay so I just put them in the feeder.  When the snow got deep enough I wasn’t able to take the bales out to the pasture with my trailer.  Then I went and got my Dad’s bale spear and put the spear on my tractor and took the bales out to the feeders.  With the size of my tractor, a Ford 8N, a bale on the spear was enough counterbalance to pull the front wheels off the ground and leave me with no steering.  I made it work this winter and kept the sheep fed all winter.

The first lambs were born the end of March.  The endless cold of the winter was fading and it was a nice time to start lambing.  In the past when our daughter was in 4-H, we would try to have our lambs near the 15th of February so they could be shown in two different classes.  Before the 15th they would be classed as a winter lamb and after the 15th a spring lamb.  Lambing at that time of the year you would have to be right there to start drying of the lamb and help them start nursing.  We wanted the lamb to get its first nursing within 30 minutes of being born.  After they had their bellies full of milk, they were good to go no matter how cold the winter got.  In late March the sun is warm and some of the snow is melted.  The time frames are still important but not as critical.

After the lambs are about 2-3 weeks old they start to get a good set of legs under them.  They start drifting away from their mother only to find she is gone.  They start to cry out and do a mad dash to find her.  Also the lambs will start packing up and run around the pasture as a pack.  As my one neighbor says “They look like little NASCAR’s racing around the track.”   Our back patio door looks out over our barnyard and pasture.  It is a peaceful time in the  morning or evening just to sit and have something to sip on and watch the sheep.  It is a moment in time to allow your  mind and spirit to relax and take on peace from a busy world.

 

Grandson Time

This past weekend I took my grandson, Carter, to a small thrashing show and draft horse plowing.  Carter is 4 1/2 years old.  We loaded up in the car and did the short ride to the show, Grandpa and Carter time.

When we pulled into the field and parked the car a team of horses was making their first pass with a one bottom plow.  We got out the car and walked over to the edge of the field being plowed.  The soil turned easily and smooth.  I started showing Carter small details of the plowing.  I pointed out the one horse walked in the furrow and the other horse was on the unplowed gound.  We listened to jingle of the horse tack and the creaks of the plows.  A few minutes later more teams of horses joined in the plowing and one plow hitch had 3 horses.  A few minutes later a couple of discs joined in finishing the soil to prepare it for planting.  Now the farmer will not be planting the field this fall, but he will rework the field in the spring and plant it to oats so next year the horses will be able plow the ground again.

After watching the horses a while we headed over to the thrashing area.  The farmer that owns the land has collected and restored a thrashing machine, a corn shreder and a silo filler. He also has about 30 antique tractors to power these machines.  He picked out one of the restored antique tractors and put it on the thrashing machine.  He slowly engaged the the belt pulley and the thrashing machine started turning.  He throttled up the tractor and the thrashing machine came to full speed.  Two people stood tall on the wagon loaded with oat shocks and started feeding them into the machine.  I knelt down next to Carter and pointed out the details of the thrashing machine.  I would talk about the oat shocks going into the machine to separate the oat grain from the straw.  The oat grain would go thru the scale counter and move to the gravity box and the straw would come out the blower pipe building the pile of straw.

We then took a small ice cream break.  One of the vendors at the show does homemade ice cream and they have a ice cream maker that makes 5 gallons at a time.  It is a father- son team and they will make ice cream and sell it at these small shows.  When my Dad celebrated his 70 birthday, he had these people make ice cream for his party.  I went and helped them make the ice cream.  The recipe comes out of a old church cookbook and makes the best ice cream.  It is not diet food!

Carter was getting ready to go home, but we took a few minutes a did a wagon ride around the plowing and thrashing area.  It was a very enjoyable day with my grandson.

The Hay Wagon

A little father-son time this weekend.  My Dad called me Saturday morning and  left me a message on the answering machine.  He said he had the boards and if I want to come over we could start rebuilding the bale wagon.  Now this wagon has been a safety hazard for many years.  Every year we get ready to bale hay we check over the wagon and say we should replace the floor.  But if we noticed the floor was bad enough we just laid down another sheet of plywood to cover over the bad area and started baling.  This year we are going to think about our safety.  We don’t need a broken bone trying to bale hay.

So I went out to dad’s and we pulled the steel cage off the floor.  We didn’t have to remove any of the bolt holding the bale cage on the wagon.  The wood was so rotten the steel was about to fall off the wagon.  We lifted the cage and blocked it up and pulled the wagon out from under the cage.  I pulled out to a burn area and Dad lifted the old floor off the running gear with his loader tractor.  Over it went in a heap.  Back to the buildings I went with the empty running gear ready to rebuild the floor.

We laid out the main stringer, attached the cross members and then we  laid the flooring.  Finally we reattached the steel cage to the floor with new bolts

Before we attached the new floor board I thought I would grease the running gear.  So I went into the shop and picked up the grease gun and went out and started pumping grease to the spindles.  The first spindle resisted the grease but soon started allowing the flow of grease.  The second spindle just refused to take any grease.  Dad said “well it’s a fifty year old wagon.”  So I started questioning him about the history of the wagon.

 Dad had a chance to tell me the history of that running gear as we rebuilt the new floor.    That running belonged to his father.  Was it new or used my dad did not say. My grandpa took that running gear and made his first chopper box for chopping hay and corn to feed the cows.  My dad stated he did that in about 1957.  Dad said he never used that chopper box because we working for another farmer.  But I remember going to grandpa’s and grandma’s and helping my uncles unload hay out of that chopper box.  Yes the days would be hot and you would be sweaty and hay chaff would stick to your body under your shirt.  I may have been 8 or 9, but I still remember those days.  Then 10 years later my grandpa took that box off and replaced it with a self unloading chopper box.  After my grandpa died my dad and uncle started farming and shared the machinery together.  They took off the self unloading chopper box and replaced it with the bale rack which they have used over the last 30 years.  Now today that same wagon has a new floor.

 It was Me and my Dad that worked together to replaced the floor and I was given the history of a wagon.  Yes the floor will last another 30 year and my father will not be here on earth to see it get replaced again.  Maybe it will be a son-in-law or a grandson who will help me replace the floor the next time and I can tell them the history of this wagon and they will continue use the wagon and pass on the history.