Row Crop Question(s) - Help me Plan my Project

[Greyfields]

Project:
Plant one acre each of Corn, Fodder Beats and Oats (or potentially barley)

Equipment:
JD 4120 - 42 HP / 35 PTO
6' Wide 3-PT Offset Disks (Rankin)
6' wide Rankin Subsoiler (7 shanks, 14" deep snaks)
6' Box Blade
6' JD Rotary Tiller
8' wide, 6' deep chain blanket harrow
6' wide water filled roller
2-Bottom Plow (Furgeson)
6' Rotary Cutter (Frontier)
6'8" Disc Mower (Hesston)
Baler (Hesston)
54" Tye Seed Drill w/8" spacing (Tye)
Broadcast seeder (I think it's 400 lb capacity)

Here is what I think I should do, please freely correct me or give me better ways of doing things!

1) Clear the ground which is currently pasture.
a) Run the disks over it twice, in 90 degree directions from each other.
b) Hit it with the subsoiler once.
c) Wait 2 weeks for grasses and weeds to regrow.
d) Disk again.
e) Box blade to level out areas which need it.
f) Lime at 1 ton per acre using broadcast seeder.
g) Fertilize with home made organic fertilizer (seed meal + dolomite + agricultural lime + bone meal + kelp meal) at 1 ton per acre using broadcast seeder.
h) Till in the lime, fertilizer.

2) Plant the seed.
a) Drag the field with the blanket harrow to break up any clumps or dead weeds.
b) If time has elapsed from above, till again.
c) Load up the seed drill with correct spacing.
d) Plant the corn with 3' row spacing.
e) Plant the fodder beets with (help me pick) 8" or 16" spacing?
f) Use a broadcast seeder for the oats.
g) Roll all the seeds? Or just the ones I used the broadcast seeder on?

3) Weed.
a) Here is where I'm lost. Do I take some of the disks off and run down the rows? Or with my equipment, do I have to walk a rototiller down the rows? Is this what's referred to as "cultivation"??
b) Once weeds are beat down and seedlings are ~ 6" high, thin along the rows to optimal plant spacing.
c) Weed again at some point.

4) Havest.
a) Corn. How exactly do I do this? I want to feed it to my cows over the winter. Should I hand pick and dry the cobs, then use a machine to break the kernels off the cob? Or do I just store the whole cobs in a cribb and feed as needed? What about the aftermath? Can I cut and bale the stalks as silage?
b) Beets. Pretty easy I think. I use the plow to pull up 1 row at a time, then hand pick them off the surface and bring up to the barn for feed. The beets can stay in the ground all winter and I just dig them up as needed.
c) Oats. It seems I could mow and bale these as "oat straw" and just feed whole to the animals. Or, is it best to mow and try to find a PTO driven thresher to separate the seed? I'm pretty sure a combine is out of the question for my 15 acres + 30 rented. What is a "pull type" harvester? Anyone have links to PTO operated threshers?

Thanks in advance. Feel free to be voluminous in your responses.

 

[schmism]

3) Weed.
a) Here is where I'm lost. Do I take some of the disks off and run down the rows? Or with my equipment, do I have to walk a rototiller down the rows? Is this what's referred to as "cultivation"??
b) Once weeds are beat down and seedlings are ~ 6" high, thin along the rows to optimal plant spacing.
c) Weed again at some point.

i thought that is what you use a feild cultivator with sweeps to do this.... you adjust the spaceing of the and the size of the sweep based on the size and spaceing of your rows....

4) Havest.
a) Corn. How exactly do I do this? I want to feed it to my cows over the winter. Should I hand pick and dry the cobs, then use a machine to break the kernels off the cob? Or do I just store the whole cobs in a cribb and feed as needed? What about the aftermath? Can I cut and bale the stalks as silage?

sounds like you need a single or 2 row corn picker .... one that picks, but doesnt de-kernal

 

[BTDT]

I didn't see a still listed. With your selection of crops sounds like somethings brewing . My wife is the only one in our family that is voluminous.

 

[Greyfields]

I didn't see a still listed. With your selection of crops sounds like somethings brewing . My wife is the only one in our family that is voluminous.

I pressed 45 gallons of cider last fall. It peaked at 13% alcohol. It was a very very warm winter.

I also would like to malt some barley for brewing. But mostly, I wanted to feed it to my piggies.