Manure Spreaders

Manure

We bought our manure spreader over five years ago. The process reminded me that salesmen are the same the world over.

“Are you looking for a 25 or 50 bushel, PTO or ground driven, metal or wooden”, he asked?

Stalling, not sure of what he was asking and unwilling to admit that fact, I replied, “Well…we are not sure if the tractor can pull anything larger than a 50”.

“What size tractor?”

“We have a Kubota M4900.”

“Hell son, I’ve pulled a 125 bushel with a little old 8N!” “How many horses do you have on your place, anyway?”

Horses! With these guys it always comes back to horses. To accuse someone of horse farming is a dismissive and insulting thing to say, without the individual on the receiving end knowing they have been put in their place.

Translation: Hey, are you one of these interloping, dumb ass Yankees, spending too much money on land, driving prices up? You hobby farmer, raising horses, letting them eat the grass down, and not enough sense to know the difference between a 25-bushel manure spreader and 125-bushel spreader!

I said, “We raise cattle and hogs”. Which is of course a white lie; we do raise cattle and hogs. But, we also have two horses that eat the grass down to nothing when they have the opportunity.

After a little more banter about the weather and how glad we were for rain, comparing rain totals across the valley everywhere from Bean Station to Cedar Fork, Harriman to Kingsport, Stinking Creek to Ten-mile, I managed to slip in that I was from Lake Charles, Louisiana: Thus establishing the fact that I was not a dumb-ass Yankee. (Well…some might say I’m at least correct on the Yankee bit).

He allowed that he was from Houston, TX. Cindy stayed mum on her roots in the mid-west. American provincialism dictates that you play your home roots card with care when buying manure spreaders.

He lived up in Cosby on 170 acres, driving an hour and half each way to work selling farm equipment in Maryville. I said, “Owning land in Cocke County is a long way from growing up in one of the biggest cities in the US.”

Translation: Hey, are you one of those interloping, dumb-ass urbanites, spending too much on your land, driving three hours each day to stand here in your overalls, pretending to be a down home Tennessee boy? 8N my hat!

Subtle insults issued, still with smiles on our faces, like dogs peeing on tires; we talked of boudin and hurricanes. Cindy, above the fray, steered the conversation back to the spreaders. Oh, right, manure spreaders.

We did buy our manure spreader but not from him: A 75 bushel spreader, metal and PTO driven…in case you were asking.

Haymaking

“With tossing and raking, and setting on cocks,
Grass lately in swathes, is hay for an ox:
That done, go and cart it, and have it away,
the battle if fought, ye have gotten the day.”
Thomas Tusser

Haymaking is a battle, a war with time and nature, a struggle whose sole aim is to make “all flesh grass”. We no longer live a village life, an Amish life or a life with any real community where work is shared. Our farm workers now are the accumulated stores of long dead plant life burned as fossil fuels that power the equipment.

One man, with practice, can manually cut an acre of hay per day, rake an acre of hay per day, rick an acre of hay per day. That is steady physical labor, all day, for days on end, for the simple goal of having enough forage to feed his animals during the winter months. Fortunately or unfortunately I do not have that type of stamina or time to devote to the cutting of hay. Instead we have a 45 horsepower Kubota tractor with all of the necessary implements.

45 horsepower: think about that for a minute, the power of 45 horses harnessed by one man for any number of tasks. Remarkable! We all use machines of such incredible power but so seldom reflect on what the power represents if absent from our lives. Absent and the center cannot hold, as Mr. Yeats wrote. Absent and we do not want to imagine the changes in store, cannot imagine.

My 2012 haymaking was fairly uneventful. On a fair Wednesday evening I hooked up the ancient disc mower to the aforementioned Kubota and began cutting hay. A soothing, methodical process of moving up and down the field cutting the fescue and clover at ground level, mowing is a great time to think. Six acres cut in three hours.

The following evening I tedded the field. Ted is an old English word meaning to spread hay out to dry. In the 19th century a machine was designed to spread hay out and was called a tedder. The tedder I use is my four wheel hay rake. An ingenious piece of equipment, ground driven (as opposed to machine) I ted by changing the directions of the wheels. Instead of all four wheels pulling hay to a single windrow they work against each other and toss the hay around on the ground. This action speeds up the drying time. Time spent tedding six acres was two hours. Done by hand? Six days.

Friday afternoon I took off from work and raked the fields. Using the wheel rake it took two hours to rake six acres into windrows. It was easy work, with a real sense of accomplishment when completed.

Saturday: I woke early to find the sky heavy with clouds. The forecast had moved the incoming rain from late Saturday night to early afternoon. #%$&! A mad scramble to get the baler hooked up, tires inflated, chains greased, new twine installed and threaded through the machine. A quick trip to the co-op for some of that precious fossil fuel and I was ready to begin baling at 10. The first three hours were very slow. The dew still lay heavy on the dry hay causing the hay to jam the baling tines.

The round baler has revolving tines that pick up the hay and feed it into a chamber. Inside that chamber the hay begins to turn. As it turns it creates a round bale that measures four by four feet and weighs several hundred pounds. When the baler reaches capacity an alarm is triggered. I pull a rope that engages the twine which wraps around the bale securing the hay, a pretty nifty and simple action. A lever activated by hydraulic power raises the back of the baler depositing the bale on the ground. It looks like a large metal bird laying an egg.

Sometime between 12:30 and 1 the dew dried and the baler began cranking through the windrows. Loud, dirty and jarring, riding for hours on the tractor while baling the hay is not pleasant. Finally at 4 in the afternoon, the rain still holding off, the baler squeezed out the last bale and I turned to home. Six acres of hay baled in six hours.

Four inches of rain fell on the farm the next 24 hours.

A lot of work to get the forage we need to feed the cattle this winter. But, it could be worse without fuel…indeed, much, much worse.

Five favorite hand tools

We have tools for almost any need or use on our farm: from the large pieces of equipment to tweezers to remove splinters from flesh. But there are some tools on the farm that get heavy use. Tools that are general use rather than task specific are the most valuable. These five tools are, in my opinion, necessary for any aspiring farmer.

1. Fence pliers: Here is true multi-purpose tool. The tool clips barbed wire. The “beak” is used to dig out fence staples. It has a hammer on one side to pound in fence staples to secure the fencing. And the plier action can be used for any number of actions. (Seen on the right with the orange handles.)
2. Garden mattock: This is one of my favorite weeding tools. The handle is 16 inches long which gives the user significant swing with one arm. When you have pigweed threatening to overtake the watermelons a swift chop with this beauty sends the thorny weed into the afterlife. A mattock anvil on one end and a fork on the other both useful for grubbing out or chopping off. I bought it at a hardware store on their clearance table for $1.99. (Second from the right)
3. Japanese digging knife: A six inch shovel blade with a serrated edge on one side this knife is designed to dig in soil. We use it to transplant, weed or cut roots. We routinely have fights over who gets to use it. A carbon steel blade it holds a terrific edge but needs oiling after each use to prevent rusting. (third from the right)
4. Grafting knife: A German Solingen knife that I carry everywhere but on planes. If I could buy a dozen to hoard I would. There is simply no better all-around knife in the world. And it has a beautiful dolphin shape to the design. This knife is beveled on one side of the blade and easy to sharpen. The blade is curved like most grafting knives. It is used for any farm activity that requires a knife. I’ve cut hay bales, harvested asparagus, gutted rabbits and whittled a fork. I love my Solingen! (base of the Japanese digging knife)
5. A magnet on a handle: We are constantly dropping nails, fence clips, bits of wire in the grass while working on projects. Just yesterday I stuck a rusty fence staple in my shirt pocket. After mowing I pulled my shirt off while walking back up the drive and heard the staple hit the drive. Unable to spot it I retrieved our handy magnet. Shaped like a golf club with a magnetic disc on the end it is indispensable in preventing punctured tires and feet. A few swings back and forth and I heard a “click” as the staple hit the magnet. Problem solved.

Spring Fencing

A note from early April:

A classic spring day is in the making on the farm this Sunday afternoon. The clouds are running fast from the southeast, a direction only seen in spring and usually signifying fierce weather. The sun is making appearances in hurried fast moving bursts of light illuminating an acre patch of pasture at a time before cresting a hill and vanishing.

The past few hours were spent walking the fence line on the back pasture repairing breaks in the barbed wire. Tip, Becky and Robby accompanied me as I made slow progress along the fence, deep in the woods on the west slope of the field. They remind me of childhood, no real obligations, curiosity and amazing bursts of energy, as they dash away to examine a box turtle and back again to rest underfoot while I work.

Methodically I remove limbs that have blown across wire. Using fence clips I raise the wire back to its proper height then reattach. To relieve the sagging of wire due to either age or deer pushing between the strands, a pair of fence pliers is used to crimp and tighten each stand. Working in the woods with only the dogs as company gives me great contentment. It allows me to slow down, distractions restricted by a wooded worldview. Sounds limited to excited barks and the creak of a dead pine leaning against a tulip poplar, waiting for the push of the wind before breaking the embrace and falling to the woodland floor.

Wild violets are spread across the ground, usually clumped around the base of a tree. Oyster mushrooms grow in shelves on a stump where I harvested a pound or more during a false spring in January. I’ll harvest them later this evening, dry them and use them with our pork roasts.

The dogs and I move out of the woods and follow the northern and eastern fence line, then back down the southern edge onto a fire lane and then to the lower fields and back to the house, pausing occasionally for an extra little crimp to the wire. Out in the field proper the fence stays in better shape and requires less maintenance.

With the field now certified for occupancy, the cattle will be moved in the next few days off their winter pastures.