You getting ready for 2023?

[Hay Dude]

I don’t know about you, but I am trying to get ready, but still have some unanswered questions.
1. Need to find a rake. Still can’t decide between wheel & rotary. Would like a Krone or Claas rotary.
2. Waiting for sprocket & chain replacement on Krone baler pickup. Chains are stretched to limit and sprocket teeth look like toothpicks.
3. Also just finished getting monitor recalibrated and software updated. Found a couple fractured pins in harness, too. One bad ground.
4. 2 tractors need oil changes & lube. No big deal.

Still looking for a replacement for the Kubota M126X. Used tractors cost about 30% more than they did 4 years ago.

Other than that, bring it on!!

 

[Yander]

I'm trying to find a used land plane 60 inch but they're hard to find around me. Probably going to have to buy a new one.

 

[tacticalturnip]

Everything is liquid **** around here.

 

[oldnslo]

Seen the neighbors going through corn planters and spring tillage equipment. Guessing be 3 to 4 weeks before spring field work and planting starts around here.

 

[ThelmaLewis]

I am excited about this one.

 

[thebonepile]

I did go and get 4 bags of pasture grass seed the other day -
now if the snow would quit.....

 

[Yander]

I'm going to pick up a 5' Land Pride Heavy duty RCR 1860 Bush hog ($1500) tomorrow looks like it hasn't seen a lot of use. I'm going to sell my 4' medium duty Land Pride.

It is 2.5 hours one way but I'm ready to get out of the house.

 

[wmonroe]

Have fertilizer ready to go for the hay fields and if the weather cooperates I’ll get it spread this coming week. Might try and put in a first round of sweet corn this week also. It will be a risk as it’s very early for sweet corn here but the weather looks warm enough.

 

[Yander]

Yeah if you put the corn in the ground before soil temps are 50°, you might as well be feeding it to the birds. Ask me how I know.

 

[Rockbadchild]

the snow melt is getting me overwhelmed already …

1- i got a burn pile to finish burning and grass burn the field
2-need to plow 1/4 of a field once it’s burned
3- installed windows in the gazebo
4- built a water tower for the camper
5- built a wood shack, and stack the wood in it
6-need to plow and disk a 1/4 of a field
4- I have some patch seeding to do on my main field
6-built a fence for the horses
7-my rotary rake need attention some bearing to change

will try to do as much as possible before the mosquitos comes out

 

[Yander]

I don't want to build a list of all the things I have to do I'm afraid it would just overwhelm me.

I've been having back issues in my list is piling up

 

[mo1]

I did frost-overseed an area that was getting thin over the winter, now I just need for things to dry up enough I can get in the fields to apply fertilizer. I am "on the list" to get lime too but that's probably not in the near future. Fortunately I don't need much nitrogen on the grass-clover mix as nitrogen is stupidly expensive but I do need some phosphorus and potassium. Soils are pretty acidic here and most people are liming to increase yields rather than apply nitrogen due to cost, and unfortunately that means the co-op is swamped with people wanting to get fields limed. I don't have a lime truck nor have a buddy with one (if I did I could just go buy ag lime from the quarry less than 10 miles down the road and spread it tomorrow), so the co-op will have to do it.

Other than that, it's just greasing about a hundred grease zerks and airing up a bunch of implement tires that have been sitting since last summer. There's nothing that I know needs fixed as everything worked fine when I put it away at the end of last summer. But you never know what pops up when you bring things out the next season, and something often does...

 

[Hay Dude]

I did frost-overseed an area that was getting thin over the winter, now I just need for things to dry up enough I can get in the fields to apply fertilizer. I am "on the list" to get lime too but that's probably not in the near future. Fortunately I don't need much nitrogen on the grass-clover mix as nitrogen is stupidly expensive but I do need some phosphorus and potassium. Soils are pretty acidic here and most people are liming to increase yields rather than apply nitrogen due to cost, and unfortunately that means the co-op is swamped with people wanting to get fields limed. I don't have a lime truck nor have a buddy with one (if I did I could just go buy ag lime from the quarry less than 10 miles down the road and spread it tomorrow), so the co-op will have to do it.

Other than that, it's just greasing about a hundred grease zerks and airing up a bunch of implement tires that have been sitting since last summer. There's nothing that I know needs fixed as everything worked fine when I put it away at the end of last summer. But you never know what pops up when you bring things out the next season, and something often does...

We did a LOT of lime last fall when it was less busy for those exact reasons you listed. I like to fertilize in the fall so the material works it way into the soil ahead of the next growing season. There’s some drawbacks to applying then, too.
Do you have any poultry houses to get litter from?
The cost of nitrogen and fuel put many farmers over the edge on profitability.

 

[MichiganIron]

We did a LOT of lime last fall when it was less busy for those exact reasons you listed. I like to fertilize in the fall so the material works it way into the soil ahead of the next growing season. There’s some drawbacks to applying then, too.
Do you have any poultry houses to get litter from?
The cost of nitrogen and fuel put many farmers over the edge on profitability.

We are trying "Hay-Now" this spring. Have been using 10-10-10 for liquid treatment, first time with Hay-Now. Little less expensive, and need to keep the cost down. Alfalfa-Timothy mix, so we are careful of what we use for fertilizer and herbicide. If anyone has experience with Hay-Now, would certainly be interested in any comments, do's and don'ts.

 

[Tinhack]

Either I'm early or you're late. It's been 2023 in my part of the country for four months. If it wasn't for the wildflowers, I'd already be mowing. Was hoping for more Bluebonnets last month but it didn't happen. I thought we had enough rain, but I guess not. The trees are in full bloom now. Oak pollen is over 5,000. Temps hitting the 90s already the last few days but dropping down to the 60s & 70s due the rain coming this week.

Edit: Oh yeah, the Yellowjackets are in full bloom already too.

 

[Lineman North Florida]

I cut down a field of oats last Thursday, been letting it bake until today I put them up in wind rows will probably try to roll them this Thursday and maybe some tomorrow if it works out. It's rare that everything works like it should after it's set up all winter, but we will see, I need some cow feed as I have sold every roll I had or fed it.

 

[Hay Dude]

We are trying "Hay-Now" this spring. Have been using 10-10-10 for liquid treatment, first time with Hay-Now. Little less expensive, and need to keep the cost down. Alfalfa-Timothy mix, so we are careful of what we use for fertilizer and herbicide. If anyone has experience with Hay-Now, would certainly be interested in any comments, do's and don'ts.

Let us know how it goes!

 

[mo1]

We did a LOT of lime last fall when it was less busy for those exact reasons you listed. I like to fertilize in the fall so the material works it way into the soil ahead of the next growing season. There’s some drawbacks to applying then, too.
Do you have any poultry houses to get litter from?
The cost of nitrogen and fuel put many farmers over the edge on profitability.

My field will get limed over the summer. The co-op basically said they are too busy with fertilizer in the spring to do any liming. They've also gotten lime trucks stuck in low/wet spots in fields in the spring so they said they only lime in July and August when it's bone-dry out.

There are few poultry houses in this area. The vast majority of ag around here is cow-calf operations on hay-supplemented pasture. There are a few people who row crop beans and corn, some who raise fescue for seed, a few dairies that are still left over from when this state used to be the #1 dairy state in the country, and a handful of people raising sheep (most all of which are Dorper cross hair sheep.) Basically only the guys having the dairies will have much manure to collect and spread. The people who can rotational graze everything don't buy much if any fertilizer as the nutrients have been "recycled" back onto the fields. Many around here can't rotational graze everything as they have separate pieces of ground and only want to put good fences and waterers on one of them, so they stock one piece of ground, hay the rest, and haul hay to the one piece they stock. Those guys have to buy fertilizer for their hay fields as they can't really collect manure out of the pasture they stocked and spread it on their other fields.

The price of all fertilizer has gone up, not just nitrogen. Potash (0-0-60 potassium chloride) also went from $500/ton a couple of years ago to $800/ton.

 

[Hay Dude]

And now Russia and Saudis have announced both are cutting oil production by 500,000 barrels per month, so fuel prices are going to be very high again this summer.

 

[Lineman North Florida]

And now Russia and Saudis have announced both are cutting oil production by 500,000 barrels per month, so fuel prices are going to be very high again this summer.

Filled up both of my big tanks today just in case off road diesel goes up. got my oats all rolled, baler was almost perfect, gave me one NO NET alert which I knew couldn't be accurate but got out and checked everything which looked good, turned monitor off and back on and alarm went away and never missed another beat, one of the best first starts of the year for me since nothing broke.