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!

Haying While The Sun Shines

With farming, you find there are plans, best made plans, unexpected interruptions and outright chaos!

OK, maybe chaos is a strong word, but when you are haying with weather as the master, breakdowns are, as my friend Greg would say, "Highly Unnecessary".

The first field next door is only about 2.5 acres, so quite easy to manage with our small tractor and aging haying equipment.  Cut one day at a rate of an acre per hour, rake the next with a beneficially hot and breezy day, then bale and haul on the third day, 90 bales total.  Easy.  Ideally, I would have expected about 150 bales from that field, but it needs some input - manure, seed, maybe some irrigation in the dry part of early summer.  In any case, it was nice to be able to take the hay as offered by our neighbour.

The second field is about 3 kilometers down the road.  It is 6 acres in size and sits as 2 pieces separated by a natural low spot that drains the field.  The West end is poorer quality grasses, lots of heavy stemmed grass and flowery weeds.  The East end has much nicer grasses.  Cutting and raking went as expected, but the weather was not giving a big window to bale and haul.  Baling should have taken around 5 hours, but the baler had different ideas.  Some things you can control or take preventative measures.  Other things are really unexpected.  I should have sharpened the twine knives.  The twine stopped tying properly about half way through baling the field because the knives were getting dull and causing the twine to have to rip away on a few strands rather than simply pull off the knotter during the tying cycle.  Fair enough, sharpen the knives.  But just as things were back into full swing, the safety stop mechanism broke and the baler stopped!!  And did it stop!!  One loud, metallic thud and nothing was rotating, plunging or baling!

With a decidedly necessary supper break, I found the broken pivot link, took it out of the baler and got busy with the welder in the shop, recreating the appropriate shape and angles to the link.  Keeping in mind I started baling after lunch hour to ensure the windrows of hay were dry, the time is now about 8 p.m.  We have another 60 bales to make before sundown and the dew setting.  As it was, the baler was back up and running by 8:30 and we did make it off the field by 10 p.m. without any dew setting.

The next day was a forecast of thunderstorms and we were not let down.  Lost about 30 of the bales in a severe soaking thunderstorm that gave a record 2.6 inches in less than 45 minutes!  Some other bales got a bit wet as they were only tarped on the wagon, but we were able to successfully dry them with minimal degradation.

It is always interesting to work with the schedule that is given by the weather.  9 to 5 is one thing, sun, wind and rain quite another.  Oh yes, there was post haying maintenance to do.  Hopefully it will ensure minimal problems for next year.

Bales That Got Wet

Bales for the Hay Mow

The Breakdown

A Deer Resistant Field

Once we had completed our field seeding, given the seeds a first drink of lake water, we knew it would only be a matter of time until the deer found the new, tender vegetables starting to grow.  We had already experienced a loss last year with the deer almost completely wiping out a few rows of vegetables.  With that issue at hand, we purchased a quarter mile of six foot, black mesh style deer fence.  It wasn't too expensive, considering all the loss potential with growing vegetables outside.

The fence requires a top wire to hang from, apart from the posts to be fastened to.  The job of installing the fence suddenly showed it's problems; where do you get posts long enough to fasten the fence to?  What about gates that will match, wide enough to get the farm equipment into and out of the field?  The gates were easy enough as we had leftover steel mesh panels from another building, so we added hinges and they became gates; we had a bunch of salvaged steel pipe that were nearly ten feet long which became fenceposts and for the topwire, we ran electric fence wire and as per the fencing manufacturers recommendation, we used zip ties to fasten the fencing to the posts and top wire.  We had to get a few cedar posts that were nine feet long for mounting the one gate and those posts helped to define the one corner to give extra strength to the fencing as a whole.

Once the fence was unrolled along the ground, we pulled the top edge up at each post and without any traditonal stretching of the fence, fastened it and just kept it tight enough to prevent any sagging.  The fencing, being black is nearly invisible.  We added ribbon along it's length to give warning of it's presence, but one of the keys to the success of this fence is that it is hard for the deer to see.  Since it is hard for the deer to see, they cannot judge the jump they might have to make to get over it.  Time will tell if this fence is worth it. 

The last few days and probably the rest of the week is the task of weeding and making green compost out of the weeds.  The old garden tiller is getting a workout with having to make several passes between rows to successfully bury the weeds.  With this field being carved from the wilderness, there is quite a variety of weeds, including some really robust thistles.  We will leave you with some photos showing the fencing, the weeded and the unweeded sections of the field.

The Beginning of June

Wow, first week in June and we are taking a salad for ourselves as we carefully thin our early produce!  Fresh lettuce, beet tops and onions!  What a treat!  It is nice to see the early fruits of our labour, having contended with an extended cold season, having to switch frequently between heating and ventilating the hot house, ensuring there was adequate moisture in the soil one minute to venting out the extra humidity the next.  Am I complaining?  Not at all!  It is just part of the lifestyle called farming! 

So this is a quick post to give a glimpse of what we've got going on.  Cucumbers are into the 4th leaf today (only the third leaf in the photo), tomatoes, peppers, beets, lettuce, and a scattering of self-seeding dill which seemed to get everywhere!

Our previously flattened greenhouse is now up and in service, but 10 feet shorter due to the extensive truss damage.  It will still serve us well and there is still some space left in it to trellis a few cukes and squash.  Enjoy the photos and we will be back in a week or so.  Farmers Markets are coming up soon!

Out West in the Canadian Plains

I might consider this a bit of a "cheater post", however it was really exciting to see where some of the big farms are and to get a bit more scope on feeding the world.  

To see the vast expanses of grain farms, going literally for hundreds of miles along the highways in Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta was really eye-opening.  Of course I realize that my acre or two can sustain more than my family for a few months, but when you consider Canada alone, at a population of 36 million people, the field sizes out west start to make sense.  On our trip, we also saw the beginnings of the season in Eastern Saskatchewan and Western Manitoba where farmers are already positioning equipment, harrowing fields and getting ready to sow seed.  Once again, the scale of the operations are extreme.  I pull a six foot wide disc harrow, these big machines are pulling anything from an 18 foot to 60 foot wide cultivator!  To add perspective to all of this, visiting the Reynolds Agricultural museum in Wetaskiwin, Alberta and seeing the 100 year old technology they used to do field work is very humbling.  We've advanced technologically alot in 100 years!

We also noticed the great number of cattle farms.  Being mid-April, the calving season was in full swing.  We saw so many new calves we lost count, and we were only scratching the surface in terms of seeing farms.  We visited one small farm in Claresholm, Alberta and got the up close and personal of that operation.  The owner said that the calving season seemed to be delayed which was a blessing in disguise as southern Alberta got a horrible snowstorm around April 9th.  This would have killed any newborn calves.  All his calves were born around the 14th and on - he was waiting for three more on the 21st.

Scenery in the west is amazing when you're used to forested areas.  True, a field is pretty plain, but there are more rolling areas of Saskatchewan than one expects, so we did experience a really amazing side of the great plains.  Will leave a few pictures for you to view.  Back on our farm, the work is about to begin.  Stay tuned!