Posted by Hugh MacKay on March 07, 2008 at 06:20:44 from (209.226.106.47):
In Reply to: Calling Hugh MacKay posted by Glenn F. on March 06, 2008 at 19:10:46:
Glenn: I did some quite unconventional things back in the 60s and 70s. My soil was a sandy loam only about 8' deep on top of pure gravel, very flat. This land had drainage problems up until the 1950s, as the water table was controlled by the river and streams flowing to the river. I can remember my dad telling me of his father in law warning him to be careful crossing from one dry area of farm to another with team and mower in the 30s. My dad said he laughed, thinking how could one ever get stuck with a team of horses and a mower. He assured me grandpa had the last laugh, dad almost got stuck. This land was in Nova Scotia, on one of the many river flood plains. These valleys were anywhere from 1/2 to a mile wide with farms up each side of the river. (Do not confuse these with the Annapolis Valley close to 10 miles wide.)
These valleys were close to 15 miles apart, with high ground forest land in between. Of course that forest land was part of our water sheds and water run off from forest land had to go through our farmlands via streams and river to sea. The river and streams leading to river were blocked by driftwood and gravel bars keeping water table close to surface. Our place wasn't too bad as river had good flow and fall. We had one main creek flowing to the river from the forest, 3' deep max, with a huge gravel bar at the mouth. There was another gravel bar in river at the down river end of our property. In 1950 my dad hired a guy with a Cat D6 and they pushed all that gravel up on shore. DOT saw the huge piles of gravel and wanted to buy it. Dad sold the gravel. Two years later the gravel bars were back, again dad pushed them out and again DOT bought. This happened about 4 times, and all of a sudden DOT and CNR noticed their bridge abutments on respective bridges across the creek were falling into stream. By 1960 dad had a creek 6' deep and river close to 8' deep, I'm talking field level to water level. Well the highway and railway built new bridges, dad never did sell his last pile of gravel, but he had over 200 acres of some of the best drained flood plain around. We knew it was hungry land, I mean what else could you have with 8' of soil over gravel and a perminant water table about 8' down.
Being in the dairy business, our first line of cropping approach was grow alfalfa, but it wasn't until we added corn to that rotation and getting rid of weeds that alfalfa came into it's own. We aimed for 3 years corn and 4-5 year alfalfa. all our manure went into land going into corn crop. By the late 60s we were harvesting more lbs of dry matter per acre off alfalfa than silage corn. this cropping rotation allowed us to reduce our feed and fertilizer costs to about 14% of gross milk sales.
In the spring of 1972, dad hadn't been around much all winter, but he was there to see the yearling+ replacement heifers go to pasture. He scolded me suggesting I'd never make money feeding grain to growing heifers. Well, it took me and two hired hands most of the morning convincing him the heifers had seen nothing but 21% protein alfalfa, water, salt and minerals all winter. It was a good job the oldest of the heifers knew where they were going. So feirce was the discussion, the heifers could have broke out of control at any time.
Some other things I did was get rid of chloride, wheel weights and add more rubber. I could see as early as the late 60s maximun drawbar pull with tractor weighted to the limit was causing most of our compaction problems. My big power demand was PTO, doesn't take a whole lot of tillage to feed 175 holsteins. Reduce the pounds per square inch by adding rubber.
I've got to run at this time, why don't you send me an e mail.
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Today's Featured Article - Choosin, Mounting and Using a Bush Hog Type Mower - by Francis Robinson. Looking around at my new neighbors, most of whom are city raised and have recently acquired their first mini-farms of five to fifteen acres and also from reading questions ask at various discussion sites on the web it is frighteningly apparent that a great many guys (and a few gals) are learning by trial and error and mostly error how to use a very dangerous piece of farm equipment. It is also very apparent that these folks are getting a lot of very poor and often very dangerous advice fro
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