So Much For Being Done Plowing.

Well, after the death of one of the uncles on the farm last fall, I thought they were scaling back, and did rent one of the 3 farm that they own, but they also had a deal with a neighboring farmer where they planted crops on about 50A of his land. The neighbor talked to the remaining uncle earlier this week, and they agreed to work his ground again this year, so I am back to plowing if it ever stops raining.
This is creek bottom land and much different soil consistency than the high ground that I have been plowing.
I went down today to see if I could plow and check out the fields. I have never been down there in them. Way too wet and slimy on top. I found the dead furrow and made a pass down the field, but did not try to plow back up through. I just deadheaded back up along the hedgerow.
Both the sod and corn ground have to be plowed., plus a couple of other small irregular fields. About 50A total.
As I have stated before much of this land around here, is on limestone bed rock, and ledges are prevalent in most fields. In the pic from the cab looking back up to the big ledges, in the corn field, you can see the stair steps where the ledges out crop and drop off. Plowing down over them is not much of a problem, but the plow points tend to catch into them on the trip back up, giving the plow's hydraulic reset system a real workout.

The big ledge covered with thick green moss is really awesome looking.
The tree stump in last pic., has some significance, as the current landowner's brother, one of my classmates, was killed cutting the multi trunked tree down, about 20 years back now.
Loren

Loren,

Great pics and story. I want to walk around there - and in your woods... it's all beautiful country.

A couple questions if you will Loren? About how many acres do you plow each year, and how long, or how many acres can you do before having to change some major iron on your plows? I wouldn't mind maybe getting back to plowing some of our farm ground, but dang, last time I checked, moldboards, points, frogs, cover boards, etc, are all pretty expensive. If I had to take a rough guess, I would think you would have $200-250 a bottom in a plow. That wouldn't be too bad if you could get 300 acres or more out of it, but soil saver teeth are pretty cheap, and I flip them halfway through ripping and can get a season out of a set of them. All of this ground used to be plowed, when my grandpa and great grandpa used to farm it, but I'm wondering if I'll end up with more stones on top than I do with the soil saver. We have really good dirt, but very stony, and wet since we are in a river plain. Does a plow leave more of a hardpan underneath than a soil saver?

Ross

That's to bad about the classmate. Just another reminder for us.

Great story and pictures. But why are you plowing? If you have to till, cant you just disk or field cultivate it. Just a lot cheaper. My SIL farms big, all types of ground. They no-till some and work some with a disk o vater. Disk gang in front, sweeps in the middle and rolling baskets in rear. They do no deep tillage. They do tile a lot.

(quoted from post at 18:08:06 05/03/19) Well, after the death of one of the uncles on the farm last fall, I thought they were scaling back, and did rent one of the 3 farm that they own, but they also had a deal with a neighboring farmer where they planted crops on about 50A of his land. The neighbor talked to the remaining uncle earlier this week, and they agreed to work his ground again this year, so I am back to plowing if it ever stops raining.
This is creek bottom land and much different soil consistency than the high ground that I have been plowing.
I went down today to see if I could plow and check out the fields. I have never been down there in them. Way too wet and slimy on top. I found the dead furrow and made a pass down the field, but did not try to plow back up through. I just deadheaded back up along the hedgerow.
Both the sod and corn ground have to be plowed., plus a couple of other small irregular fields. About 50A total.
As I have stated before much of this land around here, is on limestone bed rock, and ledges are prevalent in most fields. In the pic from the cab looking back up to the big ledges, in the corn field, you can see the stair steps where the ledges out crop and drop off. Plowing down over them is not much of a problem, but the plow points tend to catch into them on the trip back up, giving the plow's hydraulic reset system a real workout.

The big ledge covered with thick green moss is really awesome looking.
The tree stump in last pic., has some significance, as the current landowner's brother, one of my classmates, was killed cutting the multi trunked tree down, about 20 years back now.
Loren

Click to expand...

Sounds like a "win-win" situation, more acres/more seat time, doing what you love!

Not everyone gets that lucky!

As far as hard pan if you plow when it is too wet in the spring you betcha on hardpan been there done that.

Ross; The soil that I have been plowing has been worked for well over a century as farm land. We have the stone walls and hedgerows to prove it.
My uncle who passed away last fall did all the plowing. About 500A. Neither my cousin or my other uncle knew how to plow the fields. I stepped in and told them that I would do the plowing for them, but no way that I would plow with their 7220 Magnum and that piece of crap Keneverland 6 bottom vari-width plow. It could not turn a decent furrow even turning soil downhill. ( The main frame of the plow was meant to have more bottoms added to it to pull correctly).
We dug an old Case 8358 plow (1972 vintage--5x18) that was stored away from years back, and I hooked it to my 1969 Case 931 that I had recently overhauled with an 1/8" over bore kit in it.
My rear wheel spacing was 4" less than the book called for, but that worked much to my advantage on our steep side hills with a 3x10" hydraulic cylinder installed in the side hill hitch mechanism.
My plowing job is so much better than they were used to that the cousin was able to eliminate one secondary tillage trip from the routine.
As far as cost for ware parts for this plow since I hooked onto it, the hydraulic accumulator was bad and we found a good used one off a IH combine that is working well, That cost us $175 bucks with a fresh charge of nitrogen.
Around 270A covered since last fall, and we have spent about $300 bucks on a spring ordering program at our CNH dealer For Weise replacement parts and I still have a full set of new shears. So about a buck an Acre to maintain the plow .
The Keneverland plow was costing them around $2K a year to plow 500A.
I have saved them a bunch of money to fit the ground for planting. Loren

Roger, when the bottom of your furrows looks like a limestone sidewalk plow pan/ compaction, gets thrown out the window.

Very interesting topography you have Loren. I find it almost amusing how some folks almost want to attack you for Ploughing, instead of no till. I have done both. Did a test one year were I did the no/minimum till on one half of a corn field, and ploughed and did conventional till on the other half. Ploughed half out preformed the minimum/no till side by a long shot. Now I always plough my corn ground. Not all dirt is the same.

Bruce, I agree. Our family has always grown some of the best crops in the area. It is hard to argue with success. As you know the uncles also had top Holstein cows and bulls.
Loren

Well Bruce; No one can argue with success. The family consistently has some of the best crops in the area, and as you know the uncles had one of the top Holstein Dairies in the country along with award wining bulls.

Loren