Take Care of That Tractor

A tractor is one of the key tools on the farm.  One hundred years ago, the horse was the means of power but today it is the tractor.  Mine are not new, in fact they are 11 and 22 years older than me!  But this does not mean they are poor quality or ineffective at what they are meant to do.  In fact, these machines have some extraordinary ability with pulling a plow, disc harrows, haying equipment and the like.  That being said, these tractors need care, more than just changing the engine oil or checking the tire pressures.

Foremost, one should find any books or manuals that can help maintain the equipment.  Having accurate measurements and specifications, instructions and advice on operation as well as part numbers makes keeping your tractor in good shape easy and economical.  Oil types, quantities, filter types, maintenance cycles or how often to check/grease/oil the machine are usually in a table in any shop manual and following the schedules pays dividends!

If there was one rule I could pass along about any equipment it is that you keep it sheltered when not in use.  A large, insulated shop with good lighting, a heated concrete floor and good work benches would be ideal, but not necessarily affordable.  But even a three-sided lean-to is an excellent option and often the best solution on a farm for sheltering any equipment.  I started with a 12 x 14 shed for the tractors.  the tractors sit quite tightly together in that space.  Each side has a rolling door which when both are opened gives a twelve foot wide open side.  It is a pole shed made with new and recycled material.  It has a sandy floor that stays quite dry and I installed lighting and a few receptacles for convenience.  As needs arose, I added a 20 x 20 shed onto the back of this shed for other smaller equipment - tiller, snowblower, ATV, etc.  The key to effective use of the shed is space management...having assigned spots for each item.

During the busy farming seasons, it can be costly to have downtime or unnecessary maintenance to deal with.  A bit of planning with the maintenance schedules before it gets busy can be helpful.  Sometimes it doesn't work out, but if you have downtime in the early spring or late fall, you can go over all necessary aspects of the maintenance schedule and have that tractor ready for work when the time comes.

For us this year, our second, newer tractor spent 2 weeks in the shop so we could check out everything.  It took about 70 shop hours to complete the work as much of the sheet-metal was repainted and a snowplow blade was fabricated for the loader frame.  This was also a good time to do a few upgrades - the power take-off (PTO) handle was in an inconvenient spot behind the seat, so a linkage was made to have it repositioned beside the seat with the three point hitch control.  New LED lighting was installed.  The rear tires were worn down alot so the tread was re-cut to increase traction.

Future plans for this tractor include replacing gauges, upgrading the quick-hitch components to handle the newest type of three point equipment, installing a front bumper/weight hanger and adding a  72 inch, 1/3 cu. yd. bucket to the loader to improve material handling.  A rollbar with canopy should also be added to give extra protection to the operator, if not an entire cab!  Appreciating and enjoying the tractor you have means caring for it.  It is worth the effort!

Marketing Markets

Farmers markets and the like are a funny thing to work with.  The vendors are typically small businesses or farmers, with the latest trend being to bring home-based businesses into the mix when allowed.  Allowed?  Yes.  Many markets specify hand-made or locally produced only, but make exceptions at times.  Anyway, it is typically grass-root or local vendors.  Customers that love markets love the local feel, getting to know their neigbours who have committed much of their life into producing items and they also tend to enjoy the stories behind the products, the vendors, the farms, shops and the like.

Social media has been a good tool to market our markets!  Consistency is key, interesting, unusual or exciting posts bring attention with shares and comments, but repeat, dedicated customers are still the best advertising because of the very reason they are good customers; they love your products!

Booth presentation and consistent look help market your brand, signage is important, sometimes signage placed a distance away from your booth helps you stand out as well.  With repetative, pop-up markets, having a market co-ordinator in charge to keep you in your regular location amidst other vendors is important as well as keeping to the rules set out by the market admin.  The biggest problem we see is selling out of the set time frame.  It is unfair to both vendor and customer.  For a vendor running late to the market, they miss selling if the other vendors start early.  For the customer, they risk missing a product if selling starts early.  Outdoor markets don't have locked doors to control the crowd, so it is an important rule to live by.

We enjoy the entire scene as a regular market vendor.  You learn alot about your community, your neighbours and what is happening at the grassroot level!
You also get to enjoy the perks of knowing other vendors and sharing leftover products or trying samples or getting the inside scoop of what products will be available as the market season goes along.  It is a good time!

Busy Times on the Farm

Recognizing there has been no post activity on my part for over a year, I was debating whether or not to continue to post.  Noting my last post was about haying, maybe I'll skip a year, speak to this year's haying, then move along.

Haying this year was not an easy thing to do.  Having left my full time work to farm full time, one might expect it would be easy to follow the weather and hay while the sun shines.  Not so!  The haying season of 2019 was adversely affected by very strange weather from April to August!  When the snow disappeared, we had our classic dry spell, perfect for drying out fields and preparing to plant crops.  We waited for rain until July where we recieved almost 7 inches of rain over three weeks!  Grasses?  Well, not very much grass but more wildflowers that were drought tolerant.  The rain caused the grasses to grow up, but a few weeks behind schedule.
So haying was patchy at best as we could only do select work where the fields were allowing.  This gave us about two tons of hay by mid July.

Once into August, it was very difficult to find a three day haying window.  In fact, we raked a field five times because of rain showers that didn't allow for suitable drying.  This caused the hay to rust, drove the tractor time and cost up for what ended up being 1.5 tonnes of low grade feed hay.

Our final shot at haying gave a very nice quality of hay, about 5 tonnes of high grade feed hay.  Normally, the same field would give 6 - 7 tonnes per cut, so hay is an in-demand product this year.  In this particular field, we switched brands of Sisal twine (biodegradable twine made from plant fibre).  The new brand would not run through the baler needles unless it was started by hand.  This cost alot of time in the field.  The upshot was, our neighbours wanted to watch the bales being made, so when things came to a halt, they both got out of the car, rolled up their sleeves and helped get things going again.  He is a retired dairy farmer, so not a stranger to baling hay!  Thanks Bernie and Cris!

Next article will cover our market experiences, thanks for reading today!