First time plowing

We bought our country paradise last summer and wanted to grow an acre of sweetcorn for ourselves, friends, and to sell along the road. Plowed up an acre of wore out alfalfa (less than 10% left) last night. I grew up riding on tractor when dad was plowing but never got to do it in my own or had to set up a plow/tractor. Billonthefarm let me borrow his 2x14 Deere 44H plow and manual. Got the hitch adjusted for my Oliver 77 and got after it yesterday evening before the rains came.

Looking good. Now its just you and the raccoons waiting for the corn to be ready.lol gobble

Beautiful pictures....except for the "cherry bomb" muffler it could pass for the 1950s.

Very first time out? You did an excellant job! Are you sure Bill didn't coach ya......just a little? :>)

Allan

Great pictures. Looks like a nice straight Oliver. Hope you wore hearing protection.

Better start after those raccoons now.

Paul

A bit of unsolicited advice.

If you're going to plant an acre of sweet corn, stagger the planting days so it doesn't all come ripe at the same time. (Possibly you already knew this).

My wife and I made that mistake and planted a half acre in one shot once. The whole works ripened at the same time. We started out selling it, then ended up calling everyone we knew to come and get it so it didn't go to waste.

looks like it turned over nice

I'll bet old Ollie had a bit more paint on 'er in 1950! Nice job with a nice tractor
Ben

Great job of plowing.

Even more unsolicited advice. Get 3 varieties- a real early one, a medium, and a real late one. Then do 2 plantings, in blocks. It will help spread out the crop.

Whitetail deer love sweet corn as well. Difference is that the deer don't wait for it to mature they eat the corn plants as soon as they start coming up.

But then again you can add those to the freezer also....

Soil rolled over better in one direction than the other, was plowing on a gentle side slope which had an effect on sideways orientation of the plow depending on the direction of travel. it took 2-3 passes to get the hitch set so that when rolling uphill the leading share overlapped the furrow about an inch and would consistently roll the sod over completely. This meant going the other direction the share overlapped the furrow maybe 3"+. I took the time to get the wheels and hitch set right and used a sanding wheel to polish up the moldboard before starting.

Like I said earlier, I spent a lot of time riding on the drawbar of our 720D growing up but that was 20+ years ago. I still have fond memories of running behind in the furrow or riding along and believe it or not still was able to remember how dad did it after thinking about it a bit.

Even if the sweetcorn experiment is a total bust giving my kids the experience of riding on the drawbar and running behind the plow in the furrow it was worth every minute and every dollar spent.

The cherry bomb muffler was there when the tractor adopted us. The hood and fenders are nice and straight, front side curtains are missing, rears are there but not real straight. I want to get the right muffler and stack on it one of these days but it sounds real good with the cherry bomb, not loud at all. My 11 year old took some video on my phone and the gear whine was far more pronounced than the exhaust.

Did you hit any tough spots in that Alfalfa field ?
I plowed one and the tractor darn near came to a standstill and then I'd hear a bang and then keep going. Others have told me it was the strong roots breaking loose ? I was concerned the tractor was falling apart ?

Well done, nice plowing with the furrows all level and shut up well to stop the weeds growing. These comments come from a champion plowman here in the UK. MJ in the UK.

(quoted from post at 09:21:55 04/02/15) Did you hit any tough spots in that Alfalfa field ?
I plowed one and the tractor darn near came to a standstill and then I'd hear a bang and then keep going. Others have told me it was the strong roots breaking loose ? I was concerned the tractor was falling apart ?

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Had a couple spots where the front wheels came up pretty good and had to ease the throttle back a bit to get through and one spot where it just bogged down, didn't lose traction, just didn't have enough snort. Put it in 1st and get through fine. Used second most of the time, could have used 3rd for most of it but something doesn't feel right in gearshift in 3rd, need to pull trans cover off and take a look, something is not right there, didn't want to risk trashing gearbox.

You must have been paying attention when you were riding that drawbar. We just bought a 44h last fall - I'll be tickled if I can do that nice of a job with it
Pete

It looks like Bill may have advised you a little and you listened to him.
Good Job

Good job, but where'd you put all the rocks???

I actually get very jealous seeing pictures like this - must be fun to plow rock free earth like that!

(quoted from post at 19:17:39 04/02/15) Good job, but where'd you put all the rocks???

I actually get very jealous seeing pictures like this - must be fun to plow rock free earth like that!

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I turned up an old glass coke bottle and a couple pieces of clay drain tile, does that count? Seriously, having good soil probably helped a lot with how good of a job you can do. Hoping to get a disc in here in the next week and get ready for planting.