Spreading more compost

It didn’t rain last night (there was a chance). So, this morning, I spread compost on the small field near the orchard, at the end of which I planted the 50 asparagus crowns earlier. My compost spreading process involves two tractors, a manure spreader, a loader, and a field cultivator.

This is the field before I started. I disked it a few days ago. Last year, we tried to grow corn here, but the crows and other varmints interfered with that. The soil doesn’t have a lot of humus, appearing to be mostly clay. Like much of the other ground on our farm, it was used to grow tobacco in the past. There were tobacco stalks in it when we moved here almost eight years ago.

I took compost from the piles at then end of the field. Yesterday, I used from one of the piles for spreading on the garden.

The manure spreader that I have is an old one that I bought last spring. Of course, it’s not as old as the one I used before I got this one. I’ve only been able to use this one the last couple of days even though I bought it a year ago. Thankfully, it worked fine today. I pulled and powered it with my 1966 International 424. This has been a very good tractor since I bought it 7.5 years ago. I use it for just about everything.

Part way through the process, I took a photo of my progress. I’d already spread 10 loads at this time, and the first pile was completely removed and I had started on the second pile. I loaded the spreader with the loader tractor. I would’ve liked to have used the Bobcat, but it needs the battery charged. The voltage regulator doesn’t work on it. I ordered another one. Hopefully, that will keep the battery charged.

In all, I spread 13 loads on the field. I estimate each load at around 3,000 pounds. Since the spreader is PTO powered, I ran the tractor in first gear to allow the compost to be spread as thickly as possible. I also went over the same ground at least twice. It’s amazing how little it looks like when it is no longer piled up.

Once I finished spreading, it was time to rip the compost into the soil. I didn’t want to leave it on the surface to dry out and lose some of its goodness. Thankfully, most of the time while I was working it was also overcast.

The field cultivator I used has seven shanks and does a really nice job. This ground was a little harder than the garden I worked yesterday. So, I couldn’t get it to go in quite as deep. Almost as deep though.

It started to rain a little just as I finished working the compost into the ground. I considered that a blessing. It wasn’t much rain, but it was nice to have a little to wet the compost into the ground a bit.

The final photo is of the field after I finished. The soil doesn’t look much darker than before in the photo, but it is a little. It will take several years of working in compost to get it where I would like it to be.

We’ll use this field as a second garden area. I don’t know that we’ll use all of it this year. What we don’t, I hope to sow buckwheat or some other beneficial cover crop on.

Mechanical project (Bobcat M500 tear down)

Last spring I purchased an old Bobcat M-500. The guy I bought it from sold it cheaply because he wanted it out of his barn. I paid to have it hauled from his home in Michigan to here (about as much as I paid for the machine), but I deemed it a good buy since it ran and worked. I was able to play with it a few days and was pleased with it overall. It had some issues, but it seemed like it would work fine for my purposes.

Then, it wouldn’t start. There was a click when I turned the key, but the starter wouldn’t turn. Since I was busy working on my house, I parked the Bobcat in the barn until I could devote some time to remove the starter. Finally last fall, I found time to remove the starter, only I couldn’t remove it without pulling the engine out. I was able to get the solenoid off of the starter without any problem, and I thought that it was probably the culprit anyway.

I took the solenoid to the local guy who works on starters. He said solenoids like that one rarely if ever go bad, that it was probably the starter. If I’d bring it in, he could check it out. I didn’t really want to have to remove the engine, but the machine continued to sit there waiting for me to do the job that needed done.

So, last week, I started on it. It became clear that I would need to remove the lift and everything else off of the Bobcat in order to be able to get to the engine. Although I’ve been working on it at what seems like a slow pace, everything is going well. I’ve broken a few bolts which I’ll replace with new ones when I reassemble everything. I pulled the engine this week – I have a chain hoist secured to a metal truss right above the Bobcat. That made it easy to lift things up and off.

It was easy enough to remove the starter and also the generator (it’s questionable that the generator has been charging as it’s supposed to). I’ll be taking both of them to have them checked out and repaired.

With the engine out, I could see I’d need to pull the flywheel because a couple bolts on the side were loose. Thankfully, I was able to get the flywheel off without too much difficulty, and I’ll only need to replace the bolts with ones a little longer than the originals. As I was loosening the flywheel, I realized that the head gaskets (there are two – one for each cylinder) weren’t holding the compression – I could hear air escaping from the head when turning the flywheel (the pistons were pushing air out at the heads and pulling air in on the return stroke). I just ordered new head gaskets this morning – I was amazed I could find a set since Kohler no longer supports this old engine.

Before I reinstall the engine and put everything back together, I’m going to give the old machine a good cleaning and spray on a new coat of paint – nothing fancy, though. I’m hoping that the engine will run better when I’m all done without leaking head gaskets and that the Bobcat will prove to be a useful tool around here. The starter problem which prompted this project is a blessing because it revealed other repairs necessary and is resulting in cleaning up and getting the old machine back into the useful shape it ought to be in (I was just going to use it dirty).

On another note, our pond is once again full. We had enough rain at the end of February to top it off. It’s nice to see it full once again – it’s been several months. I’m hoping that the water won’t seep out of the bottom like it did last year, that it will hold water better this year.

Carbon material

Earlier in the week, I stopped and spoke with an Amish man who has a small sawmill at his dairy, inquiring about getting saw dust from him. He was happy to continue letting the gentleman who cleans up for him take care of it. When I got home, Anne said she had good news: a friend had dropped by to chat for a while, and she said that we could get saw dust at a small saw mill in Marrowbone. Well, I was busy working on a project Tuesday and Wednesday, so I couldn't get to the mill to see about acquiring saw dust until today.

This mill is only 10 miles away mostly across country roads. The guy in the loader said that I could help myself to the saw dust and take all I wanted, when I asked him about it. He didn't offer to load it, and I didn't ask him. As I show up for loads regularly, he may be more willing to load, but I'm not afraid of manual labor (working a shovel). Thankfully, I had taken the scoop shovel. I was able to back the truck right up to the pile to load it which didn't take long.
After unloading here at home, we (my good friend Danny was with me) hooked up the trailer and headed for another load.

 
The pile of sawdust is gorgeous. Apparently, when the pile gets too high, the push the saw dust back away from the auger that unloads it.

 

There's another pile of chipped bark from their debarking machine. We loaded the trailer with this material and then filled the truck with saw dust.

 
I took another photo with the trailer loaded. We used pitch forks for loading this material, and that worked pretty well.

 
Here’s a photo of the truck loaded with saw dust. We covered the load with the tarp so that not too much of it would blow away. Notice the dark material in the background: that's where they have pushed the saw dust and chipped bark in the past and let it sit. I'll have to ask about acquiring some of that good looking stuff, too. . .

When we got home, it was time to employ the "burrito-method" of unloading to get the material off of the trailer. It unloaded great.

 
The trailer load dumped right on top of the first load of saw dust.

 
Here's the carbon material we hauled today in two trips.

In the morning, I'm heading in the opposite direction to haul home some more material from the sale barn. They cleaned out some of the back lots today, and I want to get some of that back here. If that hauling goes well, I'll haul three or four loads of carbon material in the afternoon. Then, this Sunday, after a nice rest on the 7th day, I'll build a beautiful compost pile.

I bought a new tractor (as I mentioned in my previous post). Here is a photo of it:

 
It’s a 1976 Case 990 with a loader. The loader has been well used, broken, and repaired, but it’ll work for my purposes. It’s like having 100 men with shovels and pitchforks ready and willing to work for me, something not to be taken for granted. It's a great tool.

I’m thrilled about having a source for carbon material. It’s one more step toward extreme composting!

Bobcat M500

One piece of machinery that is necessary for the expanded composting operation I have in mind is a loader of some sort. I recently found an old Bobcat skidsteer loader for sale in Michigan for a very good price. Everything worked out for buying it, including making arrangements to have it hauled here – I wasn’t interested in driving nearly 700 miles to get it myself, and the haul fee wasn’t too much more than it would have cost me in time, gas, food, and lodging.

My shipper called last evening to let me know that he had it on his trailer and was heading my way. I drove over to Somerset, Kentucky, this morning to meet him and transfer the machine to my trailer. We had no problems, thankfully. The Bobcat started fine and drove onto my trailer without any problems. I chained it down securely and headed home. There is an old manure bucket that came with the loader, but it is in need of some repairs.

When I bought it, the seller was unsure which model it was. Someone had painted it in the past, including painting “Bobcat 610” on the side, but he couldn’t find a serial number tag. I looked for information online about the model based upon the seller’s ad which said it had a 2-cylinder Wisconsin engine. I could find no Bobcat models that ever had such an engine. The 610 had a 4-cylinder Bobcat.

Well, after getting it home this morning, I discovered that it has a 2-cylinder Kohler engine. Based upon this discovery and a little more searching, I determined that it is a Bobcat M500.

The loader works. It does need tuned up a bit – it’s been sitting the last few years. I think it will work out alright for what I need. If not, I do believe that I could sell it and get all my money back out of it since it is a working skidsteer.

I hope to put it to work soon loading some compost that needs spread on the fields.

Our new pond (part 4)

I worked the two full days in order to add height to the dam. The most tiring part was associated with the stress of driving my truck, my tractor, and a backhoe on top of the dam. I especially don't like when the backhoe leans to the side and when I got it into some of the soft topsoil on the back slope. I decided I didn't need it up there.

The method that seemed to work well for me was to load clay into my truck from a couple different places in the floor of the pond. Then, I drove this onto the dam and dumped it where I wanted it, spreading it out some as I dumped. After several loads, I switched to the tractor and blade to move the material where I wanted it and to pack it some more (the truck tires were doing a pretty good job of packing).

After getting enough clay built up, I took a few loads of top soil to put on top and spread that around. It went fairly well.

 
This photo shows the outcome of my efforts. I added enough material to put the top of the dam two feet above the primary spillway (the 12" culvert). This also allowed more freeboard above the emergency spillway, which is a good thing.

 
A little closer look. The section I built up looks darker because of the topsoil I added.
Digging clay and soil out of the pond bottom helped to add some more structure for fish. Structure is basically variation in depth, especially differences within a short distance There is a fair bit of variation on the bottom.

 
This is a view looking toward the dock from the dam. I was trying to show how the dock is on a ridge with drop offs on either side. There's also another elevation change going into the shallow end of the pond which is a result of digging out clay and top soil to raise the dam.

 
Looking a little to the left toward the shallow end. One of the things I wanted to do but haven’t done yet is to make a small beach area toward the house where I drove in and out of the pond hauling material.

 
This photo looks past the pond from below the dam toward some of my fields. Shortly after finishing the dam height project, I seeded the dam with fescue. At this point, I needed to finish the dock framework and then wait for rain to fill up the pond.

Our new pond (part 2)

After the contractor left, I spent some time working on building a dock. I also used the grader blade on my tractor to take a little soil off of the shallow end. When I checked the water line on the shallow end of the pond, I realized I hadn't paid enough attention during construction. The slope and depth on a couple of the edges for several feet were not what I wanted. Just looking at it, I didn't realize how shallow the water would be along the edge of the pond.

In the following photo you can see the shallow end and the beginning of my dock construction. At the edge of the smoothed area, the bottom drops down several feet. I'm placing the dock between the deep end of the pond and the shallow end. I thought this would be an ideal location. The four posts that are set in the photo are 6x6 eastern red cedar I milled. The foreground in the photo is the shallow end of the pond after I scraped it with the grader blade. I was only able to take off a few inches of soil – not enough to make an appreciable difference, though.



The next photo looks the other direction across the shallow end. The line I cut with the blade (on the right) denotes the approximate water level. As you can see, it was going to be quite shallow.



Here’s a view of the dock construction after I set all of the posts:





The photo above shows the dock posts and the first water in the pond.

In order to deepen the pond on the shallow end, I borrowed a friend’s backhoe again. I am deeply grateful to Mike for letting me use his machine so much.



As I removed dirt with the backhoe, I put it i the back of my 1979 F250 and moved it to the slope in front of our new house.



The photo above shows the dump bed in action, a feature that makes this truck very handy. I can load up to 2 tons of material in it. That only takes 6 or 7 shovels full of dirt with the backhoe.



The photo above shows how much dirt I moved in the first afternoon and put in front of the house. It was a good opportunity to accomplish two things: deepen the shallow end of the pond and feather out the slope in front of the house.



This is a view of what I was able to get done in the first afternoon with the backhoe. I dug it down about 2.5 feet. At this point I still needed to extend the excavation out toward the middle, of course. I left a ridge under the dock dividing the deep end from the shallow end in the hope that the fish will like it that way.



This view shows the pool of water from the rain we received earlier that week. You can also see that although I got down to clay in one part of this excavation (the reddish/orange colored dirt), I was still digging out top soil. I didn’t remove all of it. I did end up digging deeper and removing a bit of the clay, though. More about that later. . .

Baling hay

One of our summer activities is baling hay when the grass in the fields has grown enough and the weather cooperates. The first step in the process is cutting the grass using my 1950 John Deere MT with a John Deere 8W sickle mower. I enjoy mowing. It’s pleasant to hear the two cylinder engine putt-putting along with the clicking of the sickle while watching the grass fall. We had a nice stretch of weather forecast, so I mowed the field behind the ridge on a Sunday afternoon. It’s four or five acres in size.

Ramiah and I walked through the field the next morning with pitchforks to break up and spread the grass where it had gotten clumped together. This is an important step to ensure that the grass will dry. Green or wet grass will not make good hay; it has to be dry. Thankfully, this task didn’t take long because there were only a few clumps and the weather was forecast to be excellent drying conditions.

Late Wednesday morning, I raked the hay into windrows. It would have been dry enough to bale on Tuesday afternoon, but we were occupied with other activities. For raking the hay, I use my 1966 International 424 with a Massey-Ferguson rake. One of the challenges on the field behind the ridge is to rake the hay away from the upper edge where there is a hump left from it being plowed years ago.

Once it was raked into windrows, it was about 11:30. Dad and I decided that we would start baling, planning on finishing baling and picking up the bales after lunch. So, I hooked up the baler, a mid-50s IH 45T that doesn’t tie consistently, to the 424 and headed to the field.

When baling Dad walks alongside the baler, watching for any bales that aren’t tied properly. He also pulls the finished bales off the baler and stacks them together with any other nearby completed bales. The old 45T is doing well when it ties a dozen or more bales consecutively without messing up a knot. It seems like we have to stop a lot to retie bales. If we don’t get things in order when it missties, it’ll mess up on the following bales. It’s a nuisance, but better than putting up loose hay. I’d like to get a more reliable baler when I can (but it needs to not be too expensive).

After we completed baling the field, we quit for lunch. After lunch we came back with the truck and trailer to pick up the bales and take them to the barn. It doesn’t take too long to pick the bales up from the field and stack them on the truck and trailer. Putting them in the barn is probably the hardest part. If I didn’t have 300 bales of straw stacked in the middle of my barn, I could drive in with the loaded hay and toss the bales up to the loft. As it is, we have to back the trailer up to the straw and toss the bales through a smaller opening into the loft. I tossed them up to the loft, and Dad stacked them.

 

By the time we had them all stacked in the hay loft, it was time to quit. We only baled 98 bales this time. There’s still another field to cut and bale. I’m watching the weather. It’ll probably be next week. I expect 150 bales out of that field. With what we have left over from last year and what we’ve already baled, we ought to have extra hay this year.

Playing in the dirt

We’ve had some nice weather the last few days. The temperature has been very nice – in the 70s the last couple of days. There was a chance of rain at the end of last week, but thankfully we didn’t get any. I’m thankful because that allowed things to continue to dry out enough so that we could work on the gardens.

Three weeks ago I was able to disk the garden areas, including the new ground in the turkey pen I tilled last fall. This particular spot is within a fenced area where we’ve grazed goats on a rotational basis in the past. For the last year or so, the turkeys have enjoyed it as their main paddock. That’s why we call it the turkey pen. It’s a nice, level piece of ground near the main garden area. It’s grown some nice clover during the last six years since we’ve lived here. I worked it up because of its apparent fertility and because it’s already fenced. We had problems with deer eating things in the garden last year, primarily sweet potatoes. Although deer can easily jump over the 4 foot fence around the perimeter of this area, the existing fence will make it easier to keep them out. Adding extensions above the field fence will not be too difficult.

Last week I hauled two truck loads of manure from the stock yard in town and dumped on the turkey pen garden. Each load was approximately 3500 pounds and consisted of a lot of saw dust. I spread it out with a shovel and rake as evenly over the ground as I could after dumping it – completing this task on Sunday of this week.

On Monday, I borrowed some equipment from a friend. He’s a very generous and kind person who we are truly blessed to know. I borrowed his  sub-soiler, tiller, broadcast spreader, and field cultivator. I had hoped to use the spreader to put lime on the garden areas. However, it didn’t work for spreading lime (it’s designed for broadcasting seeds). So, Dad and I threw lime out of the back of the truck onto the turkey pen ground. We dumped what was left over to be added to other garden areas as desired (we didn’t want to throw it by shovel over the other garden area which is much larger).

I used the sub-soiler on both garden areas and two other small fields. It helps to open the ground up fairly deep – about 18-24 inches with this single-shank sub-soiler. We actually spread the lime after doing the sub-soiling. After that, I tilled both areas, preparing the ground for planting.

It’s still early in the season, but weather like we’ve had starts the itch to play in the dirt. The things that can be planted at this time are the early-season, cold-hardy crops. While I continued working on the other fields that needed to be worked, Dad pl anted onions and potatoes yesterday and today. We usually don’t grow enough onions. So, we have purposely set out to change that this year. Dad bought 5 pounds of onion sets a week or so ago, and he set out several in his garden near his house. I bought 6 pounds of onion sets last week and another 10 pounds on Monday. Dad planted all that I bought and what he had left over – about 18 pounds of onion sets (about 1,000 feet in 20 rows). I hope they grow well so that we can have enough onions this year!

Dad finished planting the onion sets this morning. After lunch we sorted out some of the smaller potatoes we have left over from what we grew last year (we planted 100 pounds of Kennebec potatoes last year). Dad put these in the ground this afternoon. I don’t know how many pounds we had to plant, but he planted 13 rows (each row is 40-45 feet long – so about 500 feet of potatoes). We will plant more Kennebecs and some Yukon Gold (I bought 50 pounds of Yukon Gold seed potatoes on Monday).

 

Our idea is the to try to grow plenty of the staples: onions, potatoes, sweet potatoes, and tomatoes. I made a hot bed for starting sweet potato slips. I dug a 2 feet by 3 feet hole 12 inches deep, added about 5 inches of fresh cow manure, and put 3 inches of sand on top of that. I’ll lay out sweet potatoes saved from what we grew last year and cover them with more sand. The manure will heat up, keeping the soil warm (sweet potatoes need warm soil to sprout). The sweet potatoes will send up multiple sprouts. When they’re big enough, these slips can be twisted off and planted in the garden (once it’s warm enough outside – they don’t like it cold). I hope to put out about 400 sweet potato slips with the primary variety being Georgia Jet (these did the best for us last year out the five varieties we grew).

I’ll be starting tomato seeds soon. We saved seeds last year. We grow open-pollinated and heirloom varieties so that we can save seeds. There will be a lot more things to get started and planted in the next 6 weeks or so, but it sure is nice to get started on the process. There’s just something about playing in the dirt.

Grandpa’s 1950 John Deere MT

In 2001, I was able to purchase the tractor that my grandfather bought new in 1950. In his blog, my dad wrote about how I acquired it. It was a real blessing in that the exact amount of money I needed to buy the tractor was what I had set aside for it. God was very generous.

The tractor sees regular use here on the farm. It is my primary hay-cutting machine. I have a John Deere 8W sickle bar mower that I use with it. The combination makes it a joy to mow hay. I have to restrain myself so that I don’t mow too much at one time. My old International 45T hay baler just can’t be expected to do too much in one day.

About three years ago, I used the MT to plow two acres of ground. The ground had been in grass. After plowing I planted wheat on one acre and oats and field peas on the other acre. Not having a seed drill, I broadcast the seed with a hand-cranked seeder. The oats and field peas made some pretty good hay – at least the goats sure seemed to like it. The wheat did fairly well, too. After those crops, I planted alfalfa. One acre remains in alfalfa while the other one was a corn field this last year.

While plowing, we took some video of the MT in action. I’ve never uploaded a video to Youtube before, but there’s always a first time, right? (I just figured out what was bothering me about this video – I forgot to put the ‘h’ at the end of Malchiah’s name. Well, I’m not uploading it again to correct it.)

Often, when I’m sitting on the tractor mowing hay, I think of the time my grandfather spent sitting on the same seat holding the same steering wheel. I miss him, but through the tractor I feel a connection with him. I never drove it while it was Grandpa’s, but when we cut firewood when I was a kid, it was there putting away while driving the buzz saw. My younguns like to be on it whenever I let them. In the plowing video (and in the photo below) Malchiah, who was a bit smaller then, was with me. Someday, I expect it will belong to one of them.

I fired it up and let it run a while just the other day. It’s nice to hear its sound. We’re in the middle of winter, but it really won’t be long before it’s time to mow some more hay. I’m looking forward to it.