Life on the Farm

[Buckskinner]

That is a sweet arrow, should have gotten more!  Still waiting for my beets to pop up in my garden, one of my favorite veggies.  Corn rows showed up yesterday behind the house and we could use some rain.  Very slow spring for getting crops in around here, I would guess only about 50% in now.

[bjrogg]

Yea WB I wish it was that easy. The windmills were a real pain when they were putting them up and running all the underground wire. It’s a lot better now that they are sprouted and grown up.lol

Bjrogg

PS yes I worry about getting the beets planted. Then I worry about getting them up. Then I worry about all the things trying to kill them before I harvest them. Then I worry about harvesting them. Then I worry about getting them processed before they rot on the piles. Life would certainly be much less worrisome without them. Last year we had a record crop for tons. We had 25% more tons last year than our highest tons the year before. Unfortunately we had to dispose of 20% of our crop and the sugar content was so low that even if we could have processed every ton, we would have had about 10% less sugar. It’s still hurting and a lot of bad feelings with the growers here. Especially since other commodities have gone up in price and beets are so expensive to grow. And everything has gotten much more expensive this year

[bjrogg]

Thanks Buckskinner. I was hoping it would bring a little more, but just happy it brought as much as it did. I’ve donated stuff before that only brought a few bucks. Like I said. Most people don’t realize how much goes into one.

I’m glad we got the window to get stuff planted here. A lot of seeds went in the ground last week. A few guys planting again today.

Bjrogg

[bjrogg]

We sprayed the rye cover crop to terminate it. It had done its job and now we need to prepare for planting our edible beans.

I have been spreading fertilizer the last two days and almost done now.

Kinda short handed again. My brother has a doctors appointment today and my nephew had a really high temperature yesterday morning. I haven’t heard back from him yet today. I hope he gets feeling better soon.

We had a light white frost yesterday morning but I don’t think it hurt anything we had growing. Turned chilly and cloudy with little sprinkles here and there. I’m hoping to finish spreading fertilizer this morning and then switch planter over to beans. I still need to plant about 75 acres of soybeans on sugar beet fields headlands and wedge rows. It’s another thing that takes a little extra time now but saves so much time when we are harvesting sugar beets. Digging headlands and wedge rows is very time consuming and when we have a full crew of truck drivers and harvesters we like to get stuff done and not have everyone watching me dig headlands.

I took another picture of one of the windmills on our farm for WB. If you look close you can see their service truck parked by it. Kinda gives it a little idea how big they are.

Bjrogg

[WhistlingBadger]

We sprayed the rye cover crop to terminate it. It had done its job and now we need to prepare for planting our edible beans.

I have been spreading fertilizer the last two days and almost done now.

Kinda short handed again. My brother has a doctors appointment today and my nephew had a really high temperature yesterday morning. I haven’t heard back from him yet today. I hope he gets feeling better soon.

We had a light white frost yesterday morning but I don’t think it hurt anything we had growing. Turned chilly and cloudy with little sprinkles here and there. I’m hoping to finish spreading fertilizer this morning and then switch planter over to beans. I still need to plant about 75 acres of soybeans on sugar beet fields headlands and wedge rows. It’s another thing that takes a little extra time now but saves so much time when we are harvesting sugar beets. Digging headlands and wedge rows is very time consuming and when we have a full crew of truck drivers and harvesters we like to get stuff done and not have everyone watching me dig headlands.

I took another picture of one of the windmills on our farm for WB. If you look close you can see their service truck parked by it. Kinda gives it a little idea how big they are.

Bjrogg

Wow, those things are BIG!  There are a lot of them down in southern Wyoming, but I've always just seen them from a distance.

[Buckskinner]

Thankfully those turbines do not grow well around here...

[bjrogg]

Yea WB these are the biggest ones in our area. There have been several different groups or “Wind Farms” put up in the thumb of Michigan.

From what I can see these where the most annoying putting them up, but have been the least amount of trouble running them.

Bjrogg

[bjrogg]

Buckskinner I’m certainly not a huge fan of them either. I do kinda wish they didn’t grow so good around here.

They have had to change and fix about 1/3 of the “sails” or blades which go to land fills.
Otherwise these have been regular maintenance.

Some of the other ones were not so good. Several broken blades. And I mean broken in two pieces laying out in the fields.

They even had one that the blade hit the tower and the whole tower came down.

It has been entertaining.

Bjrogg

[Gimlis Ghost]

A couple of years ago a blade broke off one of these and landed in a school playground. A few minutes either way and it could have mowed down dozens of kids.

[GlisGlis]

Bj do you have experience of birds being killed by the blades?
I've heard about it but never had evidence

[bjrogg]

A couple of years ago a blade broke off one of these and landed in a school playground. A few minutes either way and it could have mowed down dozens of kids.

Yes so far I would say they have been fortunate that no one has been hurt or damage done to personal property. The zoning laws in our wind farm require them to be something like 2,000 feet away from a house. The smaller ones are much closer. They complained about that at first and I suspect it’s one of the reasons for the larger ones, but I’m thinking that probably isn’t a bad idea.

Gills I have often heard that to , but I have never seen even one dead bird laying under one. I’m not saying it doesn’t happen , but I personally haven’t seen evidence of it either and maybe we just don’t have the type of birds that would be effected by them. I have always been curious what type of bird this is supposed to happen to. Most of ours have pretty good vision and it’s not like the blades are spinning so fast you can’t see them.


One other thing I have seen is ice. It gets built up and then breaks off and is flung through the air and I don’t think it would feel good getting hit by it.

This particular model has had less trouble than some of the others. It’s the biggest model around. They need a really large crane to work on it. This model they have to put the blades on the hub one at a time at the top. They turn hub so blade to be put on is at 3:00 position and hoist blade to top.

The other types are smaller although they are still pretty big. Those all had the blades attached to the hub. Then the hub is hoisted blades attached to the top. They can actually use a smaller crane for them.

They got the really large crane stuck in our field. They crushed our tile main that was nine feet under ground.

I’m not totally against them, but I’m not a huge fan of them either.
Not totally convinced they are going to be the savior to the environment. There’s alway advantages and disadvantages to everything.
Bjrogg

[Stoker]

Looks like things are coming along Bjrogg. Got to do some farming with my son-in-law and his brothers couple weeks ago. Got to ride along in the new to them sprayer. Quite the machine GPS tracking, like the starship Enterprise. So much lining up with a fence post. Your right about the worrying. Hopefully everything turns out ok
Take care
Leroy 

[bjrogg]

Looks like things are coming along Bjrogg. Got to do some farming with my son-in-law and his brothers couple weeks ago. Got to ride along in the new to them sprayer. Quite the machine GPS tracking, like the starship Enterprise. So much lining up with a fence post. Your right about the worrying. Hopefully everything turns out ok
Take care
Leroy

Thanks Stoker. We are coming along nicely. Hoping everything comes up and does well.

Glad you got to experience the space age ride in the sprayer. Of all the advancements in ag technologies I think I appreciate the technology that has gone into sprayers the most.

Like you said . It has gone from aiming for a fence post and having to remember what is sprayed and what isn’t. Trying to match speed and pressure to get the right amount on. Skips and double up spots as a result.

It’s so different now. GPS with sub inch accuracy and auto steer to guide the sprayer. A coverage map that’s instantly updated to show what is sprayed and what isn’t. Swat control that knows what is sprayed and what isn’t that turns off individual sections of the spray boom where spray has already been applied. Very accurate rate controller that very quickly and accurately changes and applies the right rate to match your speed. Documentation of you chemicals used and a map of the rates applied.

It really is stuff from the space age and it’s technology that is still making amazing advancements. The stuff coming out now is really mind blowing. Each individual spray nozzle is computer driven and turns on and off individually with swath control. Not only that , but it knows if it’s on the inside of a turn it’s traveling slower and adjusts it rate lower to put on the correct amount. If it’s on the outside of a turn it knows it’s traveling faster and increases it’s rate to apply the proper amount. We don’t have that yet but it is available technology and really amazing stuff.

Bjrogg

[M2A]

Things look to be moving along for you BJ. Don't know a thing about sugar beets but I have seen sweet corn fields come up uneven from lack of moisture, and that late stuff is usually not worth anything at harvest, so hope you been getting some rain there.  We been getting rain every other day for the last week or so. Had a hail storm cover the ground about 10 miles south last week, so glad we missed that one.

Been busy here. The crew has been transplanting tomatoes, peppers and strawberries when the ground is dry enough, and mulching blueberries otherwise. Sweet corn is a weekly planting until about the end of June. I've been in the orchard most of the time and will spend most of this week there. Between mowing, thinning, scab/fireblight sprays its usually a crazy 2 week period for me. By June things seem to become more routine through the summer.

Here's a pic of my high tech measuring device in the orchard
IMG_4606 by Mike Allridge, on Flickr
That was several days ago, I suppose that apple is 18mm by now.

A lot of hurry up and wait been going on because of the rains. Had a buddy stop by on Friday to drop off some graphic arts designs for my sons bow. I finished up a preform I had on my desk to give him as a thank you for his work.
IMG_4617 by Mike Allridge, on Flickr
Spent today in my shop finishing up a dozen target arrows. way too long in the making. Should have been doing other things, didn't realize how much time I spent down there until it was dinner time.
Mike               

[Stoker]

Bjrogg you are right on with the ways of the newer machinery. We had to fix some sort of connection on the one wing when we refilled the tank. They explained it to me, I must of had the deer in the headlights look on my face. Good on them to make it go without too much disruption. Help is 1 hour away. Being self-reliant is a wonderful thing.

M2A Nice looking apples coming along. I like your apple gauge. My Granny Smiths are in flower right now. Coupla weeks away form pie season.
Thanks Leroy