Building a Hobby Farm- from woods to eggs

[barneyrb]

Originally Posted by Happyman

If my bear becomes a nuisance, I can call my local game and fish warden and they will either trap it or give me a permit to shoot it. Same with deer out of season. If they become a problem i can get a permit to cull the heard in the off season.
Virginia is pretty good about working with the local farms and residents on this kind of matter.

Yes, I wish it worked that way in Louisiana but, they are trying to RESTORE the bear population. Sorta sucks to be here....

[tony123]

Thanks for the encouragement guys. I 'm not really down on gardening, but just have too many other things on my plate right now to fool around with the wildlife. Remember, this is a "hobby" after all. There have been no signs in the last several days.

By next season, I will have the fencing project done, which should help out somewhat. I'll likely be running a live wire or three for our animals. I can't help but believe that our drought has motivated some animals that otherwise might not come around.

On a brighter note, the chickens continue to average about 5 eggs per day!

Look back a few pages and you'll see the fescue seeding project that we did last spring. Well, our best seeding window is about to happen here in the fall, and we have many places that it didn't take too well. So, I have some more tractor and tiller work! Looking forward to that.

[Oleozz]

Groundhogs love watermelon and can do quite a number on a patch.

[theonlybull]

wow. quiet a read. great work on your "farm" definatly inspriational. with 3 yo twins, i don't know how you do it. i do good to get the lawn mowed with a 4yo daughter, and 18mo son.


one thing i haven't seen in your pics yet...... a rops for your tractor?? seems like the 50 hour mark came, and went :P

for turf tires, look into some truck tires, and rims. and get a machine shop to make some centers to fit your tractor and weld into the truck rims. should be able to get some for less then the cost of turf's, even if you need to buy used tires

[tony123]

theonlybull, thanks for you concern on the ROPS. The truck tire and wheel idea sounds great, but the tractor is 4wd, so I doubt I could find something that keeps my front to rear ratio the same. But its worth a few phone calls. (my rears are 22").

So I fell to page four this time....is this the natural progression in the death of a thread? slow and painful?

I've had 5-6 hours of seat time on the tractor in the last week. Its fescue seeding season here, and I still had roughly 3/4 acre of mud showing and I wasn't going to miss an opportunity to cover it up!

The plan was to use the tiller to 'scarify' the ground again, like I did last spring. But I ran into a real headache...since installing the PTO clutch, my tiller shaft was too long. First, I tried to take the clutch off. It's the roll pin type though, and I quickly decided that was a pain in the ***. So I tried to cut the shaft. The hacksaw wouldn't touch this thing, I had to take it to a welder friend that could cut it down. Three trips back to him to get it right, and lots of banging and pushing on the tiller and I finally got the darn thing to work with the clutch still in place. I'm telling you...I spent about 5-6 hours on this "project".

Good news, all my current implements now work without removing the clutch. Bad news, this tiller shaft is now cut down to about 2.5" of overlap! There is only a quarter inch of travel needed for the tiller, and the welder friend feels confident that it's a high grade steel and will not fail. I figure, even if it fails it was worth the attempt.

Here's a shot of the shaft before cutting down. I never said it was pretty.



And here's a shot showing the tiller on the tractor. You can see, it's darn near direct drive with the clutch on!



With the tiller finally back in place, I was able to start my seeding. When I did it last spring, I had set the tiller to about 2" depth. That proved to only be about 50% successful. This time, I decided to till all of it down 4". The hard clay beat the **** out of the tiller, but it did a great job! Here's a tip from your uncle Tony, a benefit of a $250 japanese tiller is that it is much easier to beat on than a $2000 tiller!

I tilled down 4", used the walk behind seed spreader to spread and since I don't have a chain harrow, I just made another pass with the tiller to "cover" the seed.

Here's a few shots of working up the lower pasture area. Eddie, if you're still reading, I remember you asking for an action shot of this. 6 months later, here it is.





Hopefully, mother nature will cooperate more this fall than she did in the spring... We've had a rain cloud over the house for a week now with not a drop of rain. I'm not going to be stingy with the sprinkler this time though.

On another note, the battery that came with the tractor gave up the ghost. It was junk from day one, as most of the Yanmars are probably sold with. So I had a deep cycle battery here for my boats trolling motor. I put it in as a temporary solution. Wouldn't you know, it seems to have solved what I thought was a bad regulator. Seems like a junk battery was my issue all along. So, I'm going to stick with this one....the boat doesn't get out enough anyway!

[scgargoyle]

Tony- Thanks for the update, and action shots. Some of us have to live vicariously through the projects of guys like you! Someday, I'll have a thread of my own

[Taylortractornut]

Tony thats a great job on your farm. Ive been aorund gardening all my life. Dad got me into it when I was young as that was 95 percent of the work here. I make alot of my own implements. I have a 3000 Yanmar and an RS400 Tiller. I made a reciver hitch on the back of my tiller gage wheel mounts to hold a small middle buster foot to make a furro behind the tiller. good for my potates to allow for hilling. I als hve a rig I made out of cultivator teeth for making smaller rows for my close row plants. One thing Ive found great for potatoes is middle bust a deep row and get some good compost or old rotted saw dust and pile up on that furrow. Hill the compost and pant seed taters on top then cover with a good 2 inch later of soil. this gives the taters less resistence and they push through the compost. Plus you can reach in and feel around for small new potatos fro a treat. This wont hurt the others. It boosted my production 3 times the normal. Plus it made picking easier. Dadand I plant motly with a Covington one row planter. and we cultivat with my Farmall cub or one of his 140 Offsets. I planted 5 430 foot rows of Clemson spinleess okra. I m still making4 5 gallon buckets a week of okra. and also had 95 straight neck squash plants. that kept that feild busy. Again great job on your farm.

[KarolinaKubota]

Great job Tony!

Looking to "rake" the ground with my tiller this coming weekend then borrow my uncle's 3-pt spreader to spread some fescue and then re-till to cover. Want to buy a yard rake but we are house poor right now.

What type of Fescue you put out? Ky 31? Creeping Red? Other?

[tony123]

SC, glad you're enjoying the thread.


Taylor, Thanks for all the info. I'd love to see some photos of the plow attachment on your tiller. Please post here. Mounding was about the sweatiest part of the garden this year, and...well, I could do without it. I do want to try potatoes, and next year will be the year.

Michael, I know all about being house poor. There's so many places to spend money after you move in. My tractor projects get funded with the change that trickles down to the bottom. Heck, I've got 2000sf of unfinished basement that I'm finishing myself. Talk about a money pit! Buying a yard rake would be much more fun than spending the months "fun money" on a roll of romex.....

I put down Kentucky 31, tall fescue. I think it's going to end up more like a pasture look than a "lawn", but that's all we're after. I don't worship the lawn gods.

WE ARE GETTING RAIN THIS MORNING!!!! Finally, all the pieces may fall in place to give us some relief from all this red mud!

[KarolinaKubota]

Tony!

Thanks for the info! I think too I'm going to go with the 31. Had hoped to get some down this past weekend and with the sprinkle this morning I wish I had! Maybe this weekend (along with some radishes and spinach!).

Originally Posted by tony123

Michael, I know all about being house poor. There's so many places to spend money after you move in. My tractor projects get funded with the change that trickles down to the bottom. Heck, I've got 2000sf of unfinished basement that I'm finishing myself. Talk about a money pit! Buying a yard rake would be much more fun than spending the months "fun money" on a roll of romex.....

I put down Kentucky 31, tall fescue. I think it's going to end up more like a pasture look than a "lawn", but that's all we're after. I don't worship the lawn gods.

WE ARE GETTING RAIN THIS MORNING!!!! Finally, all the pieces may fall in place to give us some relief from all this red mud!