Big Brown Truck came up the drive tonight

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North West Indiana
Dropped off two boxes, both from Amazon with free shipping. UPS driver was surprised and told me with the weight of the one box (137 pounds) and the other over 40 pounds that I would have had over $150.00 in shipping! So he backed up to my pickup and we slid them off of his brown truck onto the black tailgate of my truck. Sooooo, I tell Lou that I will wait for one of the son in laws tomorrow but need to get them into the shop. Backed up to the door, slid them in the shop no problem. Of course the light box I put on the workbench, cut it open and checked out the contents. I bought a Swisher dry spreader (http://www.amazon.com/Swisher-Spreader-Utility-Attachment-10272/dp/B000N5ZFN4). Only I don't have a UTV or ATV and am going to use it to spread some urea (nitrogen) on my hayfields. So have to build some brackets and attach it to my forecart which looks like this (http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl...V5ayUZ7qC8TfyQHp8YHgBQ&ved=0CE8Q9QEwBg&dur=32). Will try to get pictures of the ponies working and spreading urea on the hayfield soon. Think Eric will have me seeding and fertilizing food plots next year!

Okay, onto box #2, the heavyweight which by the way is not sitting on the floor of the shop but up on the shelf where it belongs. Oh my aching back, when will I learn??? Anyway, finally couldn't live without one. Bought this (http://www.amazon.com/JWL-1221VS-12-Inch-21-Inch-Variable-Speed/dp/B00BGBVJCU). Man is it a beaut!!!! No I did not turn anything or mount a piece of wood on it, but did run it through its paces and it is quiet and smoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooth!! Everything lines up, fit and finish look impeccable!!!! I can't wait for a rainy day now!!!!!!!!!!

First cutting of hay is a wrap. Legitimately a wrap. Worried about rain, cut hay Sunday, baled Tuesday, wrapped them Wednesday in plastic. So theoretically made haylage for the cows, well, the feeder calves as we are selling our cow herd this summer/fall. Steve, been wondering how the weather was for you and your haymaking, hope all has gone well there. Working on a wood project before next cutting of hay. Planning on putting up loose hay and building a buckrake for my tractor. Some places call it a hay sweep, this is what I am talking about (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJPT8SvJiqU). Until my ponies are broke well enough to pull a mower, I will continue to pay to have the hay cut, but they should be able to rake the hay and then I can put it in the barn with the buckrake. Cutting my costs tremendously.

Well, in a nutshell, that is what has been happening here the past week.
 
Congrats on the new toys, Jon. :thumb: That's a sweet lathe for sure.

And I was gonna make some crass joke about the urea fertilizer spreader, but I didn't want to embarrass Larry. :whistling: :rofl:
 
I'd have to think it would be quite a sight to see a lot of the farm work being done with horses the way you do Jon. More power to you for going that route.

I'm sure your horses have more fun the most of the ones I see here in the valley. Well, at least the domesticated ones. Most of those I see penned up all day long, all the time. You hardly ever see anyone actually paying attention to their horses.

We had some wild ones stop by today, I like to think even with their harder lifestyle, they have to enjoy it a bit more.
 
:D :thumb: So you are obviously taking the shot at getting your money's worth for prime. The fore cart setup sure looks like a good deal. Oddly even when we did 100% of the farming with horses we never used one of those.
 
Enjoy the lathe. Progress reports are expected.
Are you getting out of the cow business completely?
We sold out about seven years ago. Several drought years killed us financially, it was time to give it up. I still miss them.
That is a nice mess of hay, looks good.
 
We are doing pretty good down here. Hit and miss showers are making it interesting. We did buy a new mower this year.

Those intermittent showers are what caused me to decide to bag the first cutting. It eventually stayed dry enough that I could have made regular hay, but hindsight. After last year, glad to have 29 bags plus the 30 I bought made from a rye field this spring with the heads on. Good luck in your hay making.
 
I'd have to think it would be quite a sight to see a lot of the farm work being done with horses the way you do Jon. More power to you for going that route.

I'm sure your horses have more fun the most of the ones I see here in the valley. Well, at least the domesticated ones. Most of those I see penned up all day long, all the time. You hardly ever see anyone actually paying attention to their horses.

We had some wild ones stop by today, I like to think even with their harder lifestyle, they have to enjoy it a bit more.


Boy I could see those wild ones really messing with my herd. Of the nine, seven are mares! Fences to wild horses are about as useless as they are for whitetail deer!

You know, funny thing, on a hot day have had people stop along the road and scold me for spreading manure with my team. They have this dumb look when tell them the horses get to stand while I load all that manure by hand. So actually they have the easier job and make the decision for the manure to be spread! And the majority of my horses, the more they are used, the easier they are to handle and catch. That speaks volumes.
 
:D :thumb: So you are obviously taking the shot at getting your money's worth for prime. The fore cart setup sure looks like a good deal. Oddly even when we did 100% of the farming with horses we never used one of those.

Forecarts are really a modern invention to horse farming. More needed due to tractor equipment. The old horse equipment each piece had its own tongue or hitch point. Equipment tongues were unknowns until the tractor came on the scene. Forecarts can be deadly as the put you in front of the equipment being pulled (disc or wagon or whatever) so if something happens and you fall off, you usually get run over. Most true horse equipment the teamster was on top or behind the equipment (thus putting the teamster in the cloud of dust also!!!). I have one dedicated forecart that has a hand raised and lowered back blade I use to plow snow off of the drive as well as level dirt or pull manure out of the corners of corrals. Now there are powered forecarts with big diesel engines and the Amish use them with up to 10-12 horse hitches to pull and bale hay.
 
hay Jonathan, i hadnt heard of cutting rye heads till you mentioned it and seen it today.. at least i think its rye looked like wheat sorta but had hairy heads.. why do it so early more protein in it that way?
 
Enjoy the lathe. Progress reports are expected.
Are you getting out of the cow business completely?
We sold out about seven years ago. Several drought years killed us financially, it was time to give it up. I still miss them.
That is a nice mess of hay, looks good.

I am building some shelves for my mom, working on a picture frame for a present for a school board member, but once I get a couple of rainy days, a progress report will be issued! I also bought the barracuda with the large diameter bowl jaws.

Cows, only selling the cows at this time. My wife was on some medicine at the beginning of the accident that crushed her foot that has left her with making poor decisions. The first cow lost her twins but Lou goes out to the pasture on her crutches and gets knocked down twice by that cow. The next two cows to calf she is out in the pasture with them. Selling the cows is a hard decision as they are old show heifers from our girls 4H careers. But the girls now know for their mom's safety, they need to go. They are tame cows, but a new mama cow is nothing to mess with as you know. Our cows are half jersey and some of our calves when we need more are all jersey so it is an easy switch to just buying week old calves and eliminating the cost of the cows and the winter chores associated with them.

They video isn't me, that is a random utube video I pulled to show an example of what I am building. I can't believe that man had any useable hay come winter time the way he stacked it out of doors without a rain shedding layer on top.
 
A good spreader can't be beat. and the other....great toy.

I agree, and funny, we bought a JD manure spreader this spring that has worked out great! This Swisher spreader will make overseeding easy as well as spreading urea as I can buy it out of season or from broken bags cheaper than I can from the Co-Op due to the small amount I need. Yes, the lathe, really looking forward to making time to work with it and enjoy its benefits.
 
hay Jonathan, i hadnt heard of cutting rye heads till you mentioned it and seen it today.. at least i think its rye looked like wheat sorta but had hairy heads.. why do it so early more protein in it that way?

If you harvest the grain off of wheat, rye, oats, etc, then all you have left is straw (the stalk). Leaving the grain on the stem makes it hay. Since it is so wet, we round baled it then wrapped it in plastic, Lou took some pictures of the process so after getting caught up will try to post a new thread on that topic. Putting it in the plastic is like putting it in an airtight silo. It does increase the protein content of the silage. We didn't feed any grain to our feeder calves this winter due to two things, first of all the price of grain. But we bought baled winter wheat that was baled and wrapped after last March's warm up and with the grain heads on that silage, we got better growth just from feeding that silage than in the past with hay and grain combo. So hoping to see some of the same gains this coming winter with this batch of calves. Plus, next year without the cows, calves will have the bigger pasture/better pasture earlier than normal as that is the one we used for calving so we could keep an eye on them and any coyote/dog problems.

We plant oats with our first planting on a new hayfield as the oats sprout and cover and keep weeds in check from shading the hay as it grows slowly. First cutting then has a lot of oats in it. Man it grows a great crop of mice in your barn but unbeatable again for fat slick horses through the winter.
 
Jon, are there any mold issues when you stack and cover wet hay? I remember when I was a kid a we grew our own alfalfa, my dad was always concerned about putting up wet hay because of the mold potential.

Oh, and now that you've used a VS lathe, you'll never go back. :D
 
Jon, are there any mold issues when you stack and cover wet hay? I remember when I was a kid a we grew our own alfalfa, my dad was always concerned about putting up wet hay because of the mold potential.

Oh, and now that you've used a VS lathe, you'll never go back. :D

You are exactly correct Vaughn except that by bagging (if done correctly) it eliminates oxygen so makes it aerobic (or anarobic (sp?)), can't remember now which one is without oxygen. Thus, if done correctly, no mold. Will open one or two bags in 30 days to check that is when they should be finished and will know if I have silage/haylage or complete rot. It isn't without risk.

Oh I can see the VS will really spoil me fast! Can't wait to see if the reverse function changes the look of the finish on my pens also. It is more robust and larger footprint than my mini for sure. I also splurged and bought the barracuda chuck and the large flat bowl jaws for it, who knows where this lathe will lead me.
 
I don't know much about farming any more since I left the farm just as my teen years began, but I do remember doing some of the work... I remember that as a very youngster, around the WWII time, my dad used mules to farm. He was a sharecropper and didn't own his own mules, he would take a young pair, break them to work and have a team for that season... next year, a new team to break... hard back breaking work.

When we moved to West Texas, the farm owner had a tractor for him to use. We were cotton farmers so the farming was a little different... remember riding a "go-devil"... a cultivator that had knives that slid under the ground on either side of the cotton rows and cut the weeds... there was a safety vane that ran on either side of the plant rows so the driver could see where and how to keep from cutting the cotton plants off... my job was to sit on a seat above vanes and keep the weeds from clogging up the system... I had a hooked stick to pull the weeds off or to catch a chain that lifted the vanes and drop the accumulated grasses and weeds....I "slipped" off the seat once and landed in the dirt behind the unit... my dad looked back just as I "slipped".... if the knife blade had hit my foot, would have lost it right there.... my dad probably almost had a heart attack... he piled off the tractor, grabbed me by the shirt front and FIRMLY planted me back in the seat... nothing more said, and I never "slipped" again.
 
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