Pa Hillbilly Farming

Lenny that's looking great! Your dividers are so much nicer than my pcs of paneling. But then, that's a carpenter v.s. a fabricator. I assume the foam's for seeing where your last row is, shouldn't you be setting it out for your front tractor tire? Text me about coming over...
 
I’m planting a mix of grains and grasses to help get the soil conditioned. Looks like decent soil with hardly any rocks in it. Hopefully no rocks will be ok. All of my success in past has only been with rocky plots. Lol. Guess we’ll see how it goes.


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Buckwheat is critical for new plots, releases the existing nutrients in the soil. I was critical at first, until I witnessed this phenomenon firsthand. The biggest mistake that I made on new plots was not planting buckwheat rightaway.
 
Lenny that's looking great! Your dividers are so much nicer than my pcs of paneling. But then, that's a carpenter v.s. a fabricator. I assume the foam's for seeing where your last row is, shouldn't you be setting it out for your front tractor tire? Text me about coming over...

I wasn’t sure about setting it by the tire. Since we use two tractors do the planting I was afraid between that and different operators setting it by the last row drilled would be the safer option. Remember we sometimes have to dumb things down when we’re dealing with free helpers. Lol. Maybe the week of the 15 could work for you. Next week is too busy for me to break away.


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You could make a horizontal slidebracket, or similar mounting bracket that has two different settings for each tractor, this would be a big help for inexperienced operators, just put the front tire on the edge of the foam and drive. Actually, where you have it now, with your 8' drill width it should be close to the steering tire on your bigger tractor? However, if you are driving left or right on a slope also makes several inches of difference vs. a level field, which the operator needs to take into account. My front steering tires are several feet in from the last pass with my 10' notill drill, but after many years of planting it's like keeping a vehicle in the middle af your lane on the road, you just kindof get a feel for where to drive to get a correct row spacing, but the foam system will be more accurate. Traditionally, growing up on a farm, the dads did all the planting and left the tillage and mowing to us lowlevel help, and that's kind of how I still operate with my food plots. I've found having free helpers doing seeding can be more things to fix than it's worth.
 
Hopefully new tractor will be delivered next week. Front 3pt hitch is on back order so I told them they can install it later. Those front tires are almost setting to out side of drill. The neighbors have a lot of planting they want to do. Where both trying the crop roller this year so we’re planting now then again in June. Since I’m able to make the plots quicker now I guess I need to spend my free time planting more often. I have my fruit tree order ready to pick up so that project is about ready to start to. Went this week and picked up telephone poles to split into 10’ post. Got 7’ fencing to go around both orchards im making. Have a Danuser post driver coming next week so hopefully that project goes easy. I’m just gonna fence in the whole area instead of every tree. 100 trees I figured that would be the better option


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How can something this size hide in the field.


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well this is all I got done today. Rain came. A little smoothing off and I should be ready to plant this week.


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The way I see it, quickly getting seed in the ground in that plot asap is key. I'd drill that mix you have as soon as it dries. As you already know, I'm very anti bare dirt, each week that passes you lose nutrients and topsoil. What I've learned with new plots is that fast seeding is way more important than perfect seeding. If your soil isn't quite right the first seeding might not grow well, and first seedings usually don't grow well, even if the proper amendments are made, but at least something is growing, which is ten times better than nothing growing, especially on our Pennsylvania soils with slopes to a lot of our fields which makes erosion of bare soils an issue. That soil has great promise, I'm envisioning a beautiful picture of that field knee deep in clover by next year.
 
I plan on having it seeded Thursday evening. Warm temps things are starting to green up. Should be good timing for the new growth.


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Please tell me about the new tractor and why you picked this particular model.

Well I was looking at all brands this winter even though I am a JD guy. As I have heard great things from local farmers on the blue and red ones. The visibility out of the cab on this one is awesome. It has a tight turning radius which may be the shortest but hint quote me on that one. The upgrades from my old tractor that I really liked are the 16 spd power shift. Old one was 12 and not a power shift. Reverser on loader knob is nice. Extra lighting which is all LED. 3 hyd on rear. I added a front 3 pt which will be installed next month when it arrives. Aux hyd on loader. Creature comforts in the cab I think are second to none. Other than just ball park pricing with other brands I never went any farther after tried at the R series. I was just looking at M series but I didn’t know the R was so much different that the m or e which I had. This one has 5 year Warrantty and I try to replace these at 4-5 years old. I use it for my hobby farming in summer but it gets used for snow removing in winter at my business and I don’t want break downs so I try to keep newer equipment for that. Plus I help with plowing and at 4 o’clock in mornings a nice tractor plowing snow makes job a little better. That was main reason with seeing out of cab and the lighting was important. Plowing around 200-300k trucks you want to see where your going. The 115 hp was only because it was in stock. My old 85 worked fine. This 5115R is about like driving my KR pickup truck. It’s that much different than my other tractor. And I thought it was nice. I’ll post some more pics of it today if you want to see some. It got dark last night till I got my drill hooked up and calibrated and the foamer adjusted. Only made a few passes planting in the dark. PS. The trainer seat alone was worth the upgrade. Lol
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