Anybody use a 9N, 2N or 8N for cultivating or spraying?

lastcowboy32

Well-known Member
We have about 5 acres in row crops this year: sweet corn, sunflowers, peas, beans...etc.

I didn't want to spray with roundup. I want to cultivate instead.

I also might want to top-dress the sweet corn with fertilizer, once it's emerged.

I have a few weeks to figure out how to do this. Ideally, I'd like to setup my Ford 2N for both tasks.

I know it isn't a traditional row crop machine...but has anybody else used this style of tractor for row crop maintenance?

PS... I'm going behind a White 5400 four row planter.
 
Sure they were. The N's and implements were designed to be two-row machines for field crops. Get out your Owner/Operator manual and look at the several different tire tread wheel spacing options. The N Series and up, had and an adjustable Front Axle capable of 8 spacings from 48 to 76 inches. Rear wheels were made to set to same dimensions by reversing center discs and or wheels around. Back in the day, there were no weed sprays and fertilizer options were basically organic ?animal manure. Work was done using cultivators and weeders and manure spreaders. Todays sprayers are all 12V so your 2N would need a correctly switched-over electrical system. I would not use Round-Up on anything that is planted and will be consumed by humans like sweet corn. Ditto for crops to be used for animal feed. Yeah, I know the MONOSTAT disclaimer says it is OK but based on outside studies, the carcinogens in it make me avoid using it. There is now lawsuit going on against MONOSTAT about this very thing. Back in the 70's there was a big scandal in Michigan when PCBs got into cattle food mix and many herds had to be put down. Farmers were not compensated for and many went belly up. One rumor at the time of that lawsuit was that anti-animal activist vegetarian hippies had secretly spiked the feed and fertilizers used at the companies making them. The PCBs were flame retardant so the big sick joke was that you couldn?t cook your steak or hamburger because of that. Cultivators had a front row marker/pointer/steering guide that bolted to the front axle. The tractor operator only had to watch it by placing the marker over the row of small young crops to keep his rows straight. When the 3-pt. first came out using the rear attached cultivator, the pointer was needed so the farmer didn't veer off the path and thus destroy his precious young plants. Up til then, tractors used front mounted cultivators so the farmer could see exactly where he was going. With the 3-pt setup, old habits made farmers want to turn around and watch what they were doing and that is when they veered off and destroyed their crops. With the steering pointer attached, no looking back, only forward and never worry about veering off into rows of crops. Let us know what you do...I'd love to see pictures of cultivating. I have three, one early Ferguson-Sherman KO Model Field Cultivator, and two Dearborn 13-2 Spring Shank Models. Here's one:

1948 FORD 8N w/DEARBORN 13-2 TWO-ROW CULTIVATOR; TIM DALEY, OWNER/OPERATOR:
5ocGG4Xh.jpg
 

Thanks for the reply.

I'm feeling a little better about this idea now.

I'm running in ad lib mode right now. 160 acres became available for rent right next to us.

For a farm that normally puts in about 4,000 small squares a year, that's a tall order...

My wife said..."Make the deal to rent it, figure it out as you go."

We did some financial gyrations and got some cash available...but we only were told about the land in mid-May...by the time we got our cash in hand, it was June 1st... So we are running behind, but catching up :)

We've picked up some more haying machinery, and we've already dug into the task of haying the hay fields.

There was a 60 acre piece that was done in cow corn two years ago. It sat fallow last year. Can't cut that for hay... but we have swung some deals with friends that we've done hay for to get our hands on a bush hog and a 7' tiller.

We carved out a patch for sweet corn and vegetables. We got them in the ground. Now we have to figure out how to cultivate.

For someone with a busy mind, the thinking on the fly has been a rush. It's working out so far...but I need to keep thinking, asking...working.
 

The tip about the steering pointer is well taken. I always dread how hard-attached three point hitch implements track. They track the back end exactly...it can be a blessing...and a curse...
 
cultivator.jpg


2009_longerlowerwider.jpg


I’ve done an acre or two of field corn a few times for chicken feed, and used the 8N to mechanically cultivate. Learned quick to keep the sweeps set real shallow - you only want to barely skim the surface to take out the weeds, not dig a huge furrow.

My corn looked just as nice as the “Better Farming Through Chemistry” field next to us by harvest time.

es
 
I?ve used two row planters and cultivators behind an 8N, 9N,
and a Ferguson TO30 in years past, had wheels spread out
on 6? centers, will get the job done
 
(quoted from post at 08:23:31 06/18/18) Sure they were. The N's and implements were designed to be two-row machines for field crops. Get out your Owner/Operator manual and look at the several different tire tread wheel spacing options. The N Series and up, had and an adjustable Front Axle capable of 8 spacings from 48 to 76 inches. Rear wheels were made to set to same dimensions by reversing center discs and or wheels around. Back in the day, there were no weed sprays and fertilizer options were basically organic ?animal manure. Work was done using cultivators and weeders and manure spreaders. Todays sprayers are all 12V so your 2N would need a correctly switched-over electrical system. I would not use Round-Up on anything that is planted and will be consumed by humans like sweet corn. Ditto for crops to be used for animal feed. Yeah, I know the MONOSTAT disclaimer says it is OK but based on outside studies, the carcinogens in it make me avoid using it. There is now lawsuit going on against MONOSTAT about this very thing. Back in the 70's there was a big scandal in Michigan when PCBs got into cattle food mix and many herds had to be put down. Farmers were not compensated for and many went belly up. One rumor at the time of that lawsuit was that anti-animal activist vegetarian hippies had secretly spiked the feed and fertilizers used at the companies making them. The PCBs were flame retardant so the big sick joke was that you couldn?t cook your steak or hamburger because of that. Cultivators had a front row marker/pointer/steering guide that bolted to the front axle. The tractor operator only had to watch it by placing the marker over the row of small young crops to keep his rows straight. When the 3-pt. first came out using the rear attached cultivator, the pointer was needed so the farmer didn't veer off the path and thus destroy his precious young plants. Up til then, tractors used front mounted cultivators so the farmer could see exactly where he was going. With the 3-pt setup, old habits made farmers want to turn around and watch what they were doing and that is when they veered off and destroyed their crops. With the steering pointer attached, no looking back, only forward and never worry about veering off into rows of crops. Let us know what you do...I'd love to see pictures of cultivating. I have three, one early Ferguson-Sherman KO Model Field Cultivator, and two Dearborn 13-2 Spring Shank Models. Here's one:

A rumor blaming the crazy vegetarian hippies?
Exactly that just a clever rumor for damage control,
tailored by monatso to create a fictitious threat, the hippie, and a phony enemy the PCB but a false flag all engineered by Monatso to cover for sicfness and death resulting from their stinkin' carcinogenic (and other complications) GLYPHOSATES.

A False Flag consists of a fictitious crisis or threat (say .. . global warming) and a phony enemy (Carbon Dioxide say).

Here we have the hippie threat and the PCB. :D
 
Phil at RedRock make the steering pointer for the front axle. So long as you can get your wheel spacing right you shouldn't have a problem. I prefer to cultivate and side dress with farmalls but an 8n will
work. I would suggest fenders on your cultivator as shown in Tim's photo but if you don't have them work with what you have. Here's a shot of my small food plot sprayer on my 9n. gives a 10 ft swatch. Note
the 12 Volt battery.
BTW I have a set of 3pt cultivators listed in the ad section on this site.

<a href="https://imgur.com/RLLuYyd">
RLLuYydl.jpg" title="source: imgur.com"
</a>
 
hahahaha! I still have a copy of 'The Ann Arbor Sun', an underground hippie newspaper from the early 70's with an article all about the PCB issue, and it was their reporter, then and there, who first reported/suggested about the hippie sabotage of PCBs in fertilizer and animal feed. I seriously doubt it was due to any 'vegetarian hippie' sabotage. Poor, ineffective management most likely, but as per usual abundant policy, seek to place blame on someone else. I grew up with this here in Michigan as I was a young adult and remember it well. For years many did not buy beef or milk for human consumption. In 1970, chemist Monatso discovered glyphosate but it wasn't marketed yet until 1974 as Round-Up. Oh yeah, the ALGORE sky-is-falling/global warming scam crowd will now chime in...

Tim Daley(MI)
 
(reply to post at 09:24:18 06/19/18 )

wth? i try to avoid this kind of thing, but - monsanto is mentioned here several times, and not once spelled correctly.

plenty of sky is falling examples to go around - on both sides. i could list some others, but *I* will respect the following:

[i:c8cc042b1f][b:c8cc042b1f]Reminder: No advertising. No political comments, hate speech or bigotry of any kind. No promotional website links. Violations will be removed and posting privileges may be revoked. Thank you.[/b:c8cc042b1f][/i:c8cc042b1f]
 
Hfj,

Eventually it will dawn on you that the spelling was deliberate, so you are actually the only one who mentioned that company.
 
Putin that there monsandeo roundem up ready in the ground ain't
hurting nutin.
Now don't you miss old Dell
 
(quoted from post at 16:03:50 06/19/18) Hfj,

Eventually it will dawn on you that the spelling was deliberate, so you are actually the only one who mentioned that company.

sorry, but i've never thought that deliberately misspelling the name of a person or a company to insult them was a pretty lame thing to do.

i didn't expect it from u.
 

LOL, love that edit button.

sorry, but i've [i:c367a9ba68]always[/i:c367a9ba68] thought that deliberately misspelling the name of a person or a company to insult them was a pretty lame thing to do.

i didn't expect it from u.

fixed.
 
I grew up on a 1951 8N. We used it to plow, disc, spring tooth harrow, for planting and cultivating, pulled the Woods one row pto picker and the 6' cut Woods combine that had it's own engine. (I
still have the 8N)
I did not know what a front guide was until much later in life. (I have one now and have never used it)
It was not hard to stay straight in the row unless I started to nod off. (it happened)
The other thing that we did was plant all row crops at 34". That way we did not have to keep changing
widths of equipment. Matter of fact, we set the wheels wide enough to straddle the rows and left them
there even to plow. To do that we did adjust the plow a bit to the right and did not run the furrow
wheel hard agains the furrow landside. We could have moved the right front wheel in and run it against the
furrow wall. Our garden was also planted in 34" rows. Our soils were a sandy-loam. We did not have
any clay.
Dad then bought an "H" Farmall for a second tractor. It did the heavier lifting, ie Woods Bros pto corn
picker and Woods Bros. combine.
Suprisingly to many people, an 8N with a 2-14 Economy plow and the H with a 2-14 trailer plow were dead
even plowing, hour after hour.
We were farming about 120 acres along with my father having a full time job.
Have fun, be safe.
 
(quoted from post at 14:36:30 06/19/18)
(quoted from post at 16:03:50 06/19/18) Hfj,

Eventually it will dawn on you that the spelling was deliberate, so you are actually the only one who mentioned that company.

sorry, but i've never thought that deliberately misspelling the name of a person or a company to insult them was a pretty lame thing to do.

i didn't expect it from u.

You just don't get it do you. The name was misspelled by Tim and I to circumnavigate board censorship and for no other reason, at least from my perspective.

But hey, we choose our sides. I'd much rather be on the side of the SEVENTY THREE U.S. Family farms AND FARMERS that have just filed a brief with the supreme court against the company whose [i:842f6cb31e]good[/i:842f6cb31e] name you defend.

From your perspective, defending the natural sanctity of farming is politically incorrect on a tractor forum, and speaking out against a corporate threat to crop purity is unfair hate speech. (?)

Do some research on the farmers' battles with that giant; it's easy to find.

T
 
Correction . . . the appeal to the Supreme Court was a few years ago . . . but let's not latch onto that as though it negates the truth.
 
I do small scale row tilling with a Ferguson cultivator, with 3 of the center
shanks removed. (We have been doing this type of weeding since 1948)
a270949.jpg

a270950.jpg
 
You might also want to consider using sway bars so your 3pt arms
don't swing too close to your plants.
 
We cultivated with a 44 2N for years with 2 row cultivators. The picture of someone cultivating one row is not of a row crop cultivator and never made for that. It was designed and made by Ferguson and called a tiller and is actoally a small size early chisel plow and does not have the crop clearance for cultivating crops. And it never had a guide shoe or disk. A ror crop cultivator will have either a guide shoe or disk depending on who it was made by. And with that it will not move side to side to wipe out the row unless you steer the tractor off to the side. We used thar guide that fits on the front axle for years. 2N Ford, NAA Ford, TO30 Ferguson. When we got the 3 cylinder Ford 4000 and 4 row cultivators the axle would not accomidate something like that. If you have fairly good eyesite you can keep on the row just by focasing on the hood and picking a spot on each side equal distance from center and that will keep you on the row. DO NOT use sway bars as that will if you get just a bit off row it will double distance the cultivator gets off row to oposide and wipe out the row and when you try to get back on ror it will do the oposite and wipe out the other row. You need that good guide shoe (Ferguson cultivator, and most are wore out) or guide disk (Dearborn), Deere and Oliver and others made a 2 row rear mount cultivator but I do not know what guide system they used. But that quide needs to be about 3" in ground, shallower wants to pull out and let cultivator wander. You have to make sure cultivator if perfectly level left to right and with the correct forward -backward tilt for them to go in ground. And for small plants fenders to be taken off for later cultivation. Use half sweeps next to row. With second row od sweeps either 6" or 8" depending on what row width you are using with the back 3 shovels either 8" or 10" sweeps. Do not try using wider as the wings of the sweep will not go in the ground with the point of sweep having enought tilt to penetrate the ground. And that tractor was designed with cultivating in mind. Altho I cultivated many an acre with Fords with rear mounted cultivators I prefered the Deere front mount and cultivated many an acre with them as well. Up to 3 cultivatings per year. And we also had a 3 point sprayer for the Ford with PTO pump that Dad bought about 1950.
 
Great description of the guide disk on the Dearborn cultivator. I agree that use of swaybars would do more harm than good.
Our 8N (now mine) also has the Sherman Combo trans. We could use step down gears and keep the RPMs up for better engine cooling while going slow with the fenders in place to protect the young plants.
It sounds like everyone adapted techniques that worked for them based on the equipment they had.
Live and learn.
 
(quoted from post at 11:08:05 06/20/18) Testing.



As for the herbicide vs. no herbicide thing...

I have a full time job in engineering, every decision is vetted, studied by committee, examined in meetings ad nauseam.

Then there is social media; which consists of many people arguing about whether the Earth is round or flat, whether one party is better than the other, etc, etc.

Our farm is the one place where I can fix things without needing to reason why.
Where I can create an idea and carry it to completion, based on my intuition and instinct.
Where I can fail and just be accountable to me.
Of course, no man is an island; and all of my actions are informed by all of these larger arguments; but I just don't need to have them with myself :)

So, I will demure from the larger argument. I have no problems with the dairy farmer over the road spraying his cow corn with round up. That's his business.
Myself, I just figure that I don't want to handle the stuff.
I'm going to eat the corn out of the patch myself...and why would I grow sweet corn, if I can just buy it...if I didn't do something different than most commercial sweet corn farmers?

It's just my own personal choice and I'll respect others that make different choices that fit their goals.
 
(quoted from post at 23:18:54 06/19/18)
(quoted from post at 14:36:30 06/19/18)
(quoted from post at 16:03:50 06/19/18) Hfj,

Eventually it will dawn on you that the spelling was deliberate, so you are actually the only one who mentioned that company.

sorry, but i've never thought that deliberately misspelling the name of a person or a company to insult them was a pretty lame thing to do.

i didn't expect it from u.

You just don't get it do you. The name was misspelled by Tim and I to circumnavigate board censorship and for no other reason, at least from my perspective.

But hey, we choose our sides. I'd much rather be on the side of the SEVENTY THREE U.S. Family farms AND FARMERS that have just filed a brief with the supreme court against the company whose [i:5e08c784c4]good[/i:5e08c784c4] name you defend.

From your perspective, defending the natural sanctity of farming is politically incorrect on a tractor forum, and speaking out against a corporate threat to crop purity is unfair hate speech. (?)

Do some research on the farmers' battles with that giant; it's easy to find.

T

wow. just wow. u interpreted my remarks as a defense of monsanto??? YOU just don't get it.

my remarks meant exactly what they said. they were in no way a defense of monsanto. try not to read things that aren't there.

i am a tree-hugger. i have no love for monsanto.

i would never have "gotten" that u were evading censorship. there is certainly nothing preventing me from spelling the name right, nor jim.

put down the foil and back away slowly :)
 

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