No-till into Alfalfa, I make Alfalfa/Oat pellets with the Pelletmaster, Rotten Plastic bags, and other pain and suffering

Today has started cold and damp. 

I did not wake up at 5 a.m. Probably because when using the sleep apnea machine I tend to put my head under the covers and use the tube as a diving hose...

I was not cold enough for my wife to start the fire.

It rained last night and there is still a residual mist that is not really fog but more like 120 percent humidity.

I went out early to get gas for my wife who is the one who currently has a real job. It was damp, cold, and dark so I thought I would start up the computer and send out a couple bills.

I am completely broke. Or I will be when I write this $350 check for half a unit of 2x4's to maybe fix my house.

Rather than come up with an orderly narrative, I just dumped a bunch of pictures.

Direct seeding fescue into Established Alfalfa. Mellow ground, minimum down pressure, 10lb per acre 1/2" deep. Spring harrow behind drill. Watching the moon rise!

The week started off good with a no-till planting job. I planted fescue into a sorghum field and an alfalfa field. You don't a lot of Sorghum grown around here. I am pretty sure it was not Sudan grass as it was planted on 14" rows. They either green-chopped it or round baled it. 

This was a challenge as the ground was very mellow and the Great Plains 1500 no-till drill tends to bury seed in loose ground.

I have cheated and started putting hydraulic cylinder stops under the lift wheel cylinders to relieve the down pressure as it is easier than changing springs on the openers. This is not an approved method.

The alfalfa was not an issue as it was an older stand. There was a lot of moisture and the nights have been warm so it should come up.

If you look closely, you can see the moon coming up over the trees.

I am running the 9" pelletmaster mill on the White 2-60 in the dark. The days are shorter and the mill seems to max out at 300lbs per hour with the 3 mm die. Sometimes I get 400lbs.

I have orders for pellets. I am making oat-alfalfa pellets. 2/3 oats and 1/3 alfalfa. Or close to that ratio. Finally have a really good set up. I have a hydraulic powered belt conveyer with a hopper which has a flow control. This lets me feed my PelletMasters.com 9" pellet mill slowly. The key is not keep the three rollers just barely covered. If you fill the pellet mill hopper too much it actually slows production.

All I need now is an extension on the barn so I can work in the rain, and a bigger mill. Production is painfully slow.

Of course things go wrong...

Been in the sun too long! This bag looked fine but when I picked it up by the handles the sides split. One ton in a plastic bag never seems to work out well.

I have around 6000lbs of orders and I need money so I have been working to get at least 2,000lbs by the weekend. 

As you can see from the above picture, there are problems. I picked up this 2,000lb of oats and it split down the side. Fortunately, it did not spill onto the gravel!

1970 Minneapolis-Moline G1000 Vista running the New Holland 358 Mixer-Grinder and vintage Bazooka auger. I am shoveling! It wasn't too bad...

 

I have an old Bazooka auger that has a hydraulic motor so I hooked that up to the venerable Minneapolis-Moline G1000 Vista and got a shovel. The Vista runs the old New Holland 358 mixer grinder at any speed with no complaint. Now if only I could fix the hydraulic leaks...

This is a one year old plastic bag that sat outside all summer. It ripped along where it was folded I think. I buy the bags as cheap as possible on Amazon. Maybe I should find a better source? ($14.75 and fee shipping. I think they are made in India)

Everything was working great and I loaded out my first bag. When I went to pick it up with the forklift, the side blew out. Rotten plastic. I blame the Red Chinese for undermining our economy with crappy plastic. Or Trump. I live in Oregon. I should blame Donald Trump...

I am filling the feed conveyer from the NH Mixer-Grinder. The G1000 Vista idles down far enough I can just about run the auger continuously. The feed conveyer is hydraulic powered with a flow control. If feeds the pellet mill at a low rate to not over load the mill. The mill dumps into a longer covered conveyer that has electric fans to cool the pellets. The White 2-60 only has one remote so I use a hydraulic flow divider.  

If the Vista didn't leak so much oil, and if the bearings were replaced on the Mixer-Grinder, I could run the Vista at an idle and feed the pellet mill. The frustrating issue here is that the mill is only putting out 300-500lbs per hour with the 3 mm die. People want the small pellets. Today, if it doesn't rain, I am going to try the 6 mm die and hope the hydraulic leak fixed itself overnight. I put hydraulic sealer on it. But I didn't have real LocTite 545 sealer so I have little hope. New hose and new fittings and it still drips. Yes, I got it tight!

Vintage Iron... I am trying to come up with a compact layout so I can perhaps put a shelter over the setup and work in the rain.

 

I will leave you with the front view. Talk about old technology! The Gator Sprayer is there to provide electricity for the cooling fans and to pressurize the molasses sprayer. The cooler is just a covered conveyer which I have added a couple 12v radiator fans. It works surprisingly well. It dumps into a large metal bin. When I get the bin full, I usually let it set overnight and then lift it over a bag stand to fill 1000lb bags. I also have a setup for sewing 50lb bags but usually do that direct off the conveyer. The pellets are cool enough to put in small bags.

I have been saving for a 16" mill but that is $12,000 and I don't have $.50 right now. You can't borrow under $40,000 from AgDirect and my market is too fickle and the profit margin too narrow to do a credit card. Also, I want to do 3-5 years for Tax reasons. 

My backup plan has always been the no-till drill. In fact, the first thing I did after leaving the University was (aside from breaking my hip) was to check out prices on new drills at my local Great Plains dealer. But, farming has changed a lot in the past five years. Medium to small (1000-150 acres) farmers are an endangered species in my neighborhood. 

Speaking of broke farmers... I do have to laugh. I keep having this "tough times," discussion with farmers while leaning against their brand new pickups or $30,000 side by sides. One of my old customers told me he couldn't afford to have me plant for him last year, but this year he bought a $20,000 Great Plains 10ft no-till drill. He is going to do 100-200 acres a year.

I got this handy App from AgDirect that lets you figure loan and lease payments. It also lets you see how much per acre your costs will be and has options for Yearly Payments.

I see his logic, but he is wrong. I don't think he realizes how long it will take to no-till 100 acres with a ten foot drill. Especially since you really should not pull them faster than 7 mph as it turns the GreatPlains no-till drill into kind of a rototiller...
To break it down.

To hire me to do 100 acres it would cost him $3,500. I could do it easily in two 8-10hr days depending on the fertilizer and seed options. For example, 20 gallons of 10-34 and 200lbs of wheat per acre results in a stop every ten acres for a refill which takes 10-20 minutes. But, 8 gals and 120lbs of wheat means a stop every 16-17 acres with the fertilizer refill every other load and my efficiency goes way up.
But the payoff is this, the farmer brings out a tank of fertilizer and a truck of seed. It doesn't matter if it is in bulk or 50lb bags. Some farmers have a power bin and a forklift and big bags. They just leave and I do it all myself.

Planting 100 acres with a ten foot drill means slower speed and more fill ups. I think it would be more like three 16 hour days, maybe four.
I would be very happy with a guaranteed 150 acres a year within ten miles of home. When you do that you get moved to the top of my planting list. 
But, now I am just complaining...

Have a nice day!

Edit: (that is a lie, I don't edit, I just added on) How do I get my old readers back who disappeared when I had to make my blog private?  I clicked on a google tag option. Going to see how that works. I suppose I could post more often. Or comment on other people's blogs? But most of my old blogger friends are dead...

Looking out my back door

We have had a week of rain. It is turning things green again after a long dry summer. 

Yesterday I was watching the sun over the coast range behind the shop. I have always thought the layering of colors by distance was pretty amazing. 

The trees by the river at the end of our property are almost black. The trees on the ridge by Muddy Valley are dark grey. The hills behind Muddy Valley are a slightly lighter shade and the ridge line behind them is in a stark contrast to the clouds. Somewhere past that ridge is the Pacific Ocean.

 

But then I pulled back the camera and we see what I see every day. Lots of Junk!

Artifacts from High School

I have been attempting to clean my shop.

I found this battery terminal puller and this brass punch. 

I made these in shop classes in High School. 

Somewhere there are more brass punches. They tend to get abused. 

Probably because they are so useful.

When I was in High School I thought I would make something of myself. At least I have good punches and a battery terminal tool that I almost never use. But when I do need to use it I am very happy I did.

Fall planting annual ryegrass

The days are shorter and the nights are colder and we have rain. 

Over the years I have had two main goals. First is to move to Florida or Costa Rica and ditch this stressful life. But, that involves buying lottery tickets and I am too cheap, My other goal has been to have all out annual ryegrass planted before October first.

I had come to believe that the former would occur before the latter.

But, with the collapse of the three-tie straw market, no silage to chop, and me not having a real job, we are getting closer. 

We worked ground pretty much right behind the straw baler. I was able to get my daughter a job raking the straw for the big baler while she was home. I ended up finishing that myself.

Then I went right to farming. Or at least the Nephews did. I farted around with a straw sale that I have yet to see money for.

We worked 120 or so acres and packed it down and waiting for rain so we could plant into moisture. Two weeks ago we got two inches in an evening. So we got the sprout. I of course jumped the gun and started working ground before the sprout was out of the ground and so it wasn't a perfect kill.

Next we reclaimed a 40 acre corn field which we had been subleasing as our landlord wanted corn patches for his goose hunting. This year he didn't ask for corn patches so we planted annual ryegrass. Annual seed is not a good price right now but it is generally a quick sale. It is much cheaper to grow than anything else and grass seed in general is in the crapper.

My Nephew was pretty determined to get it farmed so that was a big plus in the decision. The ground was pretty wet so the trucks left ruts. We disked it twice with a drag harrow behind the disk and then used the Forest City Machineworks Do-All to take out the remaining corn stalks and do more leveling. The Do-All is a field cultivator with a stalk chopper and a harrow in one implement. It works amazingly well for minimum tillage. I really wish ours was 16foot wide.

I used the no-till drill for the final pass. The Great Plains 1500 cuts through corn stalks and wet clods like butter. Should be a good seedbed unless it rains another two inches and the loose soil covering the seed trench turns to concrete.

I planted 130 acres in three days. The Nephew did another 40+ with the M670 Super and conventional drill. I think we did a good job this fall. Now we wait...

Now I have to work on crap I have been putting off all summer. Like cleaning my shop. Putting skirting around my house, fixing the bathroom floor, making 6 ton of oat/alfalfa pellets at 400lbs an hour, and other stuff I have been avoiding for the past decade.

1967 M670 Super and unmentionable named grain drill. We really need to get a big Minneapolis-Moline drill. Or a new Great Plains conventional drill or an International or anything but this Green and Lemon-Yellow abomination.

2-155 number two with the Forest Machineworks Du-All and a sprocket roller. It did a nice job of leveling and knocking down remaining stalks.

Now I have to work on crap I have been putting off all summer. Like cleaning my shop. Putting skirting around my house, fixing the bathroom floor, making 6 ton of oat/alfalfa pellets at 400lbs an hour, and other stuff I have been avoiding for the past decade.Getting a reasonably early start. The Great Plains works pretty good for final tillage.

The A/C drain tube plugged and dripped water out of the cab climate control box. This is not coffee. It also doesn't smell that great!

This was a 100 percent FarmerGPS job. I could not see a change in color in the dirt. If I got out I could see a difference in clod size and texture but in the cab it all looked the same. Mechanical markers didn't help either. Might be an interesting pattern later.

End of the summer

The Month of September never seems to be a good month. 

It is the end of the summer, back to school, end of freedom, rain and depression follows.

Unless, the corn crop is good and there will be two weeks of corn silage.

But, I digress...

I got a call from one of my few remaining liberal friends. Of course he wanted to talk about Charlie Kirk. I already knew that there would be the usual talking points. He would note that I am white and subscribe to the same racist/colonialist/hypocritical enactment of Christianity. I was not wrong. 

He started out with the observation that I liked CK due to sharing the same ideology, I tried to appeal to the idea that colleges are elitist gatekeepers of information and only released information that supported their gourpthink. I suggested that Kirk was challenging that lock on belief by allowing students to argue without fear of retribution by grade or shame. He countered by asking me if I would appreciate him teaching people how to shoot guns and ride motorcycles. I was going to counter with sarcasm relating to the qualifications of people with PHD degrees but fortunately I was saved by a neighbor who stopped to talk. 

This September depression started with the Catholic School Shooting, deepened with the Girl on the Bus getting knifed, and the CK (initials as I am avoiding search engines) assassination.

What really affected me was the young people who feel it is their duty to commit these crimes.

I think about the news reports and what they say about the parents. The parents are completely stunned. This is the other tragedy and this is the pain experienced by parents every day.

Your whole goal in life is to raise a child to be able to live the best life possible. You want them grounded emotionally and spiritually. You may actually think that you have done so,

But, there is always that one teacher, trusted relative, bad relationship, or just that one person who gives them advice to "be their own person," follow your dream, and the dream is not a good dream.

Then there is the world of the computer. Relationships developed through online gaming are strangely intense. There is no real world context and no conscience online. It isn't real so you can be what ever you imagine. You don't have to deal with what has been given you, instead you can create your own reality.

Us old people have no idea.

Suddenly, your child has different beliefs it may be spiritual or sexual identity, but society and every liberal boomer idiot tells the young person that their parents are evil controlling christians who want to ruin your life and who are full of hate.

In reality the parent wants to save the child from a world of pain.

In short, the internet, the educational establishment, and much of the religious world is trying to turn your child against you and there is not a lot you can do about it... Such a shame, such a waste.

In other news...

My wife took me to the coast for the weekend. It was nice...

It was amazing how the tension has now returned. 

At least I no longer have a soul sucking job

 

Feeding the mill

Not all my ideas are successful...

Or perhaps it is that I do not make my ideas successful as there is a neighbor who is actually making money selling feed. Same concept as mine but with more success.

My nephews said that, "at least I keep trying." 

I got an order for Chicken feed at 18 percent protein. I priced it before I found out how much I needed to pay for peas. I may have misjudged my pricing.

I set up my pellet mill with a feed conveyer that I got from the scrapper and then added a hydraulic speed control so I can slow down. The idea is to feed the mill as to just cover the rollers. This increases production.

It worked.

And I sold out of Chicken feed. Or at least in theory. I haven't been paid and the feed hasn't all been picked up but I am a firm believer in probably...

The sound of a Minneapolis-Moline 585 diesel cutting hay

The Nephews have been fixing tractors. 

There is a backlog of  favorite tractors which need minor repairs and were parked and never fixed.

The first one to receive attention was my Minneapolis-Moline G1355. This is the first tractor I really bought on my own. It cost $4500 in the 1990's and had a few hours on it then. It has chopped silage, plowed (no three point), baled thousands of acres, cut a lot of hay, pulled the Great Plains 1500 no-till dril. 

We quit running it because of a clutch problem and the three speed wasn't shifting. The clutch issue was due to the throwout bearing assembly locking up to the the PTO shaft. This was due to the tube the throwout bearing assembly coming out of the three speed and binding to the PTO shaft. I have no idea why this happens, but it also happened on the White 2-135.

The three speed was missing the bolt that keeps the counter shaft indexed, the big nut came loose on the over drive clutch pack, and there was a tiny o ring missing on the tail assembly.

I cut hay with the 1355 last week. Unfortunately, one of the Titan Goodyear Radials 18.4x38 has now failed and the sidewalls are so bad I don't think we can put a new tube in it. Sounds like a $1400 repair.

I put this video on YouTube ten days ago and it already has 5,000 views. Must have hit a key word there somehow. Maybe lots of searches for 585 diesel.