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[cumminstinkerer]

@all night moe I'll tell mike to check forum, he may be busy with farm stuff since its pretty nice out

 

[all night moe]

@all night moe I'll tell mike to check forum, he may be busy with farm stuff since its pretty nice out

Thanks brother. It's been much nicer here to of late. Cept today is a dreary drizzling day.
Thankfully the brunt of winter has ended......now we'll get slammed with another cold dip for my mentioning. LOL

 

[cumminstinkerer]

Thanks brother. It's been much nicer here to of late. Cept today is a dreary drizzling day.
Thankfully the brunt of winter has ended......now we'll get slammed with another cold dip for my mentioning. LOL

that will be when the claves start hitting the ground! Hate to be a pessimist but this year I'm going to bet it will snow like a mother here in Iowa on April 13, I havent had snow on my birthday for a very long time! Mike has been a bit busy today he will check in when he has a few, he text me back quick but that's a lot easier to do when in a machine versus getting on a forum, lol

 

[jblnut]

Any updates.
Curious minds want to know.

I’ve been in contact with Joe multiple times but between my busy life and his busy life it hasn’t happened yet. I pushed off a few times and he canceled twice lol. I’ve worked with him in the past and so far am still 100% happy with how it’s going 😂

that will be when the claves start hitting the ground! Hate to be a pessimist but this year I'm going to bet it will snow like a mother here in Iowa on April 13, I havent had snow on my birthday for a very long time! Mike has been a bit busy today he will check in when he has a few, he text me back quick but that's a lot easier to do when in a machine versus getting on a forum, lol

I’m here brotha !! I was splitting wood with Pops this afternoon and had a big fancy company meeting this morning. We’ve decided to add a fleet of spray drones to our seed corn business so that’s exciting. I’m already licensed to spray aerially so we just got to get the other guys licensed and procure a few drones. Gonna have a guy out to demo an EA Vision J150 next Tuesday. Pretty stoked.

Yesterday pops and I set up the bucking table by the driveway where a tree service company dropped a few loads off. Seemed easier to bring the table and totes down here than carry the wood to it.

Decent load of splitters. We ended up with 7.5 IBC totes of split chunks out of this load. Not bad !!

Wow those are big chunks !!
Naw, it’s just a little chainsaw 😂

Decided to noodle a few of the larger ones so I didn’t have to manhandle them onto the splitter. What a pain in the rear rump that was. Took 3 tanks of fuel in the 066 to make it happen.

Just when I was as sweaty and sore as I’ve been in a while I got an over current alarm from a feed line in the chicken barn. Gotta keep the little cluckers happy so they can grow big and tasty and end up in your freezer ! Holy bad bearing Batman. This thing was seized tight.

New bearing on and ready to feed chickens again ! Yesssssssss ! Old one was a bit crunchy lol.

 

[cumminstinkerer]

man, youv've been having fun lol, that drone stuff is cool, buddy is doing their own and looking to expand into custom, sounds like I'm gonna have to get my license too, him and his dad are just working out logistics with all that, plus his dad and uncle are both getting to the point of slowing down with the farm, not ready to be totally done yet but that leaves hime stretched pretty thin with dirt work and farming so fingers crossed the stars align for me to go work for him

 

[jblnut]

Hello y’all !! It’s been awhile.

I purchased one spray drone to get the hang of things and wow, what a piece of hardware it is !! I can do 45 acres/hour doing fungicide including refills and recharging. Pretty bonkers.

We did some major planter upgrades a few weeks back. It got new boxes, electric drive meters and a hydraulic downforce system .

The guys had to tag it with their logos lol

We also finally got some apple trees planted on the property. A dozen total with three different hybrids.

I decided to use the drone to spread cover crops into standing crops so we’ll see how that goes. It’s spreading oats in this picture.

We started combining before it got soggy. It was hot and dry all fall and now it won’t stop raining. That’s how it goes sometimes !!

The wood pile is steadily growing.

Since it’s been soggy I decided to go some chainsawering. Once these are split it should fill up the wood pile.

 

[cumminstinkerer]

Looking good Mike, you'll like that precision planting but man bulk fill is the way to go! At least you got one good machine around there, what model is the combine? Only one family around here has turned a wheel yet and they have to be the first in if ya know what I mean.

 

[jblnut]

Looking good Mike, you'll like that precision planting but man bulk fill is the way to go! At least you got one good machine around there, what model is the combine? Only one family around here has turned a wheel yet and they have to be the first in if ya know what I mean.

The planter was purchased new and is large enough for what we do. I shopped pretty aggressively for a 16r30 1770NT center fill but we decided this was plenty planter for us for a while.

It's a very late model 2388 I purchased in 2010 from the original owner and it had 200hrs on it then. We're up to 2500 separator hours so far and it's gotten LOTS of new parts this summer with more to be installed hopefully after harvest. The feeder house needs a rebuild, the cone is getting pretty thin, the elephant ears are worn, the rasp bars are hanging in there, the concaves look like they took some ordnance at some point and the sieves are beat to crap. Not sure how the sieves got beat up but they're tough. I spent some time in there with a pliers and got them back into decent shape. The entire clean grain and tailings elevators, chains and sprockets were done this summer as well as liners and augers in the grain tank.

It owes me so it'll be here for a while yet

 

[cumminstinkerer]

them auger pans in the tank are fun, back when we did our 1660 nobody offered replacement panels and case wanted you to buy most of the tank, we had a local shop make us patch panels. The sieves are tough for sure, I've crawled on top of em more than once to hold bolts while changing bearings. At least they aint like them dang old masseys, I used to have to crawl up the throat on them and put the rasp bars on the cylinders in them, If you raised the feeder chain all the way up I'm small enough I could get in there then somebody handed me in the bars, but taking the throat off them was a huge job, that case is pretty easy really as long as you have a forklift or skidloader. Poor old 1660 finally broke the frame, hopper topper on them is not a great idea! She was a fairly early one with the 466 in it and great machine, especially after running the old 850 MF. Just had to bust your chops a bit about the individual boxes, buddy went from a 12 row split kinze box planter to a 16 row split case with bulk fill, cut three days off the planting time between the extra width and fill time savings.

 

[jblnut]

We got that big pile of splitters taken care of !

Stuck them on the boiler pile and it’s almost full.

Om nom nom munching corn !

Until we weren’t. That feederhouse rebuilt I hinted at happened mid harvest. All kinds of things came apart because one of the rock beater bearings went out and it became a game of “as long as we’re in here we may as well replace that as well”. It got all new bearings, a new floor, new chain, new hex shafts, new gib keys, rock beater rebuilt, new lower drum and upper drive drum, new solenoid on reverser, new rock beater chain, new bearings in all idler pullies two new hyd hoses. Goodness. Sorry kids, your college funds are gone

36ish hours later we were back to corn things again.

The kiddos occupied my cab as often as they could and I loved every minute of it.

We took a few days off to make corn straw as it was nice and dry. All in all I rolled up almost 2,000 bales for myself and a neighbor in 4 days. Yikes.

Once we wrapped up corn we shifted to spreading manure and working it in. I got Big John and the Wishek ready to go and got after it.

At $5.70/gal for diesel and drinking 14gal/hr we’re only working up the ground that is getting manure. We got to spreading covers on that nice fresh dirt as soon as we could. A mix of clover, winter rye and camelina is what we went with this year on around 800a of ground.

 

[sloeffle]

My daughter went to school with a guy who was / is the foreman for a big farming operation in my area. Was talking to him during harvest time and he was telling me that their combines use about 25 gallons an hour of diesel. I can't remember if they run two, maybe three combines during harvest. He said every morning a fuel truck would meet them wherever so they could fill up.

 

[jblnut]

My daughter went to school with a guy who was / is the foreman for a big farming operation in my area. Was talking to him during harvest time and he was telling me that their combines use about 25 gallons an hour of diesel. I can't remember if they run two, maybe three combines during harvest. He said every morning a fuel truck would meet them wherever so they could fill up.

That must be a fairly large combine ! I part time for a couple different custom chopping crews in the fall and one crew runs Krone Big X 1100’s boosted to 1400hp. I ran one for a few days and it averaged 45gal/hr including turning around and idling time. I saw the monitor read 55+ when it was under load. Dumb thing is they had a total of 340gal of fuel on board. $250/hr just in fuel lol. It’d eat 450 ton/hour of corn silage so it isn’t all that bad per ton but still.

I’d say I’m happy the wood boiler is here but LP in our area is as cheap as it’s been in a looooooooooong time. We paid $1.25/gal for dryer gas this fall. That’s dang cheap. I burn around 2500gal to heat the stuff around here over winter so that makes the payback on stove and all its stuff take a little longer 😂

 

[sloeffle]

That must be a fairly large combine !

Haven't talked with him in a while but I believe they were running newer JD 9000 series combines. They don't run the latest and greatest stuff, but they also don't have any really old stuff unless it comes to making hay. Most of their tractors they used for tedding and raking hay up until a few years ago were Allis Chalmers tractors (WD45 I believe). They made a bunch of hay and straw at one point, but I think they've pivoted recently to more row crops. My buddy's dad talked to the farmer that owned the operation one time and he said he lost count on the number of straw bales they made that year at 40k.

I part time for a couple different custom chopping crews in the fall and one crew runs Krone Big X 1100’s boosted to 1400hp. I ran one for a few days and it averaged 45gal/hr including turning around and idling time. I saw the monitor read 55+ when it was under load.

Not many dairy operations where I live that. How many rows were you chopping at a time? And that's sucking down some serious fuel. almost a gallon a minute.

 

[cumminstinkerer]

@jblnut aren't them feeder houses fun, lol, not much corn been done around here, everyone is running hard on beans now that the monsoons let up and things got ready. You could take an evening this week and come down and help me move the boiler into the garage, lol, I'd even supply refreshments! Lost 2 combines in the neighborhood last week, one Case I think it was a 51 series but not sure, the other was a massey rotor but not sure of the vintage, I haven't personally seen either of them but most likely scrap, fire and plastic and fuel don't get along!

 

[jblnut]

Haven't talked with him in a while but I believe they were running newer JD 9000 series combines. They don't run the latest and greatest stuff, but they also don't have any really old stuff unless it comes to making hay. Most of their tractors they used for tedding and raking hay up until a few years ago were Allis Chalmers tractors (WD45 I believe). They made a bunch of hay and straw at one point, but I think they've pivoted recently to more row crops. My buddy's dad talked to the farmer that owned the operation one time and he said he lost count on the number of straw bales they made that year at 40k.

40k straw bales ?! That almost has to be small squares. If not that's an insane amount of bales !! I thought we made a lot at 2,000 4x6 roundies.

Not many dairy operations where I live that. How many rows were you chopping at a time? And that's sucking down some serious fuel. almost a gallon a minute.

That Big X had a 40' head on and we were in 22" corn so 21 most times. The injectors must have holes the size of drinking straws

@jblnut aren't them feeder houses fun, lol, not much corn been done around here, everyone is running hard on beans now that the monsoons let up and things got ready. You could take an evening this week and come down and help me move the boiler into the garage, lol, I'd even supply refreshments! Lost 2 combines in the neighborhood last week, one Case I think it was a 51 series but not sure, the other was a massey rotor but not sure of the vintage, I haven't personally seen either of them but most likely scrap, fire and plastic and fuel don't get along!

We've had the feeder off before but last time it was on a dirt floor with a skid loader in the cold. This was waaaaaay nicer !!

One guy burnt up a 9770 and another a brand new 9260. Not sure what caused either but I'm sure chaff and neglect to blow off and inspect were the cause.

I'd love to come down and help move stuff around and make your beer disappear but we're still going hard at manure and other misc yet. Once the farming is done we can start playing with saws. I ordered a brand spanking new MS261 and a MS462R from Mastermind and am having Randy go through them and give them a proper work saw porting and other goodies. Sort of stoked about that. Not sure exactly when they'll be here but he said early November so we're getting close !

 

[sloeffle]

40k straw bales ?! That almost has to be small squares. If not that's an insane amount of bales !! I thought we made a lot at 2,000 4x6 roundies.

Yes, small squares. They have all the toys to make handling them easy.

 

[cumminstinkerer]

@sloeffle I got a mate down in queensland that will 75-100K smalls, 100-150K big squares, and 200K+ big rounds a year, thats some crazy baling there!

 

[brenndatomu]

@sloeffle I got a mate down in queensland that will 75-100K smalls, 100-150K big squares, and 200K+ big rounds a year, thats some crazy baling there!

Crikey man!

 

[cumminstinkerer]

No Bloody joke! It's pretty crazy, he does custom baling for a living. If I recall correctly he will basically wear a baler out in about 3 years! He has a least a FB page not sure if anything else, his business name is ME Hoopert Baling, PLC ( I think the last part is correct). Farming is a bit different down there for sure, it would be like Mike harvests for a bunch of us and he owns his machines and his ground, I do the planting for the same group and Mike harvests for me in trade, Scott has the tillage equipment and does the same trade stuff, @brenndatomu does the haying for all of us! Each one of trades our services to each of the others for their help.

 

[brenndatomu]

No Bloody joke! It's pretty crazy, he does custom baling for a living. If I recall correctly he will basically wear a baler out in about 3 years! He has a least a FB page not sure if anything else, his business name is ME Hoopert Baling, PLC ( I think the last part is correct). Farming is a bit different down there for sure, it would be like Mike harvests for a bunch of us and he owns his machines and his ground, I do the planting for the same group and Mike harvests for me in trade, Scott has the tillage equipment and does the same trade stuff, @brenndatomu does the haying for all of us! Each one of trades our services to each of the others for their help.

Kinda how it was back in the day when mechanized farming started to take over...the whole "neighborhood" (which was many square miles) helped each other, and shared equipment, just as you described. We still have some pics from my grandparents from that time...

 

[cumminstinkerer]

I do too, my grandpa custom combined for the whole area, 410 MF, then later a 510, in the later years of it he even had a 6 row head on the 510 diesel, Wow!

 

[brenndatomu]

I do too, my grandpa custom combined for the whole area, 410 MF, then later a 510, in the later years of it he even had a 6 row head on the 510 diesel, Wow!

I've thought of that many times, how much things have changed, especially since 1981 (when grandpa passed)
Their first corn planter was a 2 row...and harvesting 70-80 acres of corn was a multi week thing. (some silage, some ear corn)
But the other day I went to work and the corn was still standing on the 300 acres across the road from us (other than the field having been "opened up") I came home 8 hours later and it was gone, all of it, and no sign of anyone anywhere, other than a lil extra dirt on the road from the trucks...grandpa would be amazed!

 

[cumminstinkerer]

that is for sure, both my grandpas are gone and have been for a few years, moms mom went two springs ago and rode with a buddy when planting, he runs a 24 row case behind a 440 quadtrak, she was amazed at all of it, she bout filled her pants when he made the second and just let go of the wheel and turned and talked to her. She had used on old check wire Deere and the last one they had was a 494 deere, lol. Dads dad thought he was nuts when he bought the 7200 3pt 12row deere, things have changed a lot in my 46 years

 

[sloeffle]

@sloeffle I got a mate down in queensland that will 75-100K smalls, 100-150K big squares, and 200K+ big rounds a year, thats some crazy baling there!

I'd love to see his toys, and that operation. NZ is the best place on the planet to grow grass, and legumes. Consider myself a grass farmer (cows are the means of harvesting the grass), and I'm a little jealous of their growing season down there. I'm pretty sure it's all year or pretty close to it.

Wonder if they do grass silage down there?

 

[cumminstinkerer]

We sorta Derailed Mike's thread LOL, they do lots of silage as well, he doesn't chop it just mows for them, they have huge dairys near by. they live near the town of Bowenville, things are for sure different down there, they bale a lot of crops that we dont. I'd like to go down there but sadly my wallet says no. They are about due for another holiday to the states so maybe next summer i'll get to see them again.