Henry Rifle Forums

At the beginning of this tale, we lost the milk cow, she got sick after dropping her calf, and three vet calls later he put her down. Decided not to replace her. Sold the calf, then put the year old in the freezer. Took the donkey back to my daughter in south Oklahoma. No more large livestock, just chickens.

Tina had invested in this year's hayfield, fertilizer and weedkiller at the proper times and the fields looked great. We have had a 50 / 50 arrangement with a local farmer who would cut/rake/and round bale and leave half behind for us. The key was he lived less than a mile and a half away. No real transport costs for equipment.

Then, just before time for the first cutting, he blew his tractor. The dealer where he bought it went out of business several years ago, and this is peak hay season, tractor dealers are only working on whst "they sold." The fields kept growing. We told him to talk to our guy... He told us our mechanic agreed to work on the tractor when he could work it in. The fields kept growing. No one else is available to cut the hay, pre booked for months. And... The field grew taller.

Went to check the fences last week, hay was over the hood of the UTV. Called our mechanic and he said what he told the farmer was it would be November / December on his tractor IF he could find parts. His tractor was an off brand import, no longer made.

So, it broke her heart, but after talking with a friend of ours, one of the top three go to guys for cutting hay in the area, Miss T hooked up the bush hog and started on our fields, before it was too late. If she waited much longer to cut it, leaving that much laying on the ground would ruin the fields.

* Before anyone asks, our "top three" guy couldn't cut the fields even if he had an opening in his schedule. His equipment is sized for big jobs and won't do smaller hayfields. Ours is beautiful, but the larger north pasture is just ten acres. The middle pasture is probably four, and the open pasture in the orchard, two or three. So, not one bale, but we no longer need it. We tried to get someone to cut it and take the hay...

Sad...

Pics when I when I get a chance

Wondering why he couldn't have bought a used second tractor for now and use it for a spare once his got fixed. Around here you can still buy something that will get the job done for no more than $3,000.

Cowboy Gun Fan wrote: ↑

Tue Aug 27, 2024 12:17 pm

Wondering why he couldn't have bought a used second tractor for now and use it for a spare once his got fixed. Around here you can still buy something that will get the job done for no more than $3,000.

The tractor had to be at least fifty HP and have hydraulic connections front and rear to run his equipment. Those, even used, aren't cheap, and any decent tractor during hay season brings a premium. Our Kabota wouldn't run the equipment, not enough HP, no rear hydraulics.

Miss T hated to see the hay wasted, but she had to protect the fields. The AG office tells her she should bushhog it once a year if she plans to keep it as a natural prairie grass meadow from now on. Gives the deer and other wildlife a place to hang out, and a buffer from civilization.

BrokenolMarine wrote: ↑

Tue Aug 27, 2024 5:15 pm

...The AG office tells her she should bushhog it once a year if she plans to keep it as a natural prairie grass meadow from now on. Gives the deer and other wildlife a place to hang out, and a buffer from civilization.

Good to know. I was wondering about whether to annually cut or not. I let my backyard (hidden from the street) go completely wild these last two years. It hasn't been mowed in that long.

Because of the watergarden and a huge assortment of wildflowers mixed in with the tall grasses, I get a lot of birds and butterfly/pollinator traffic along with the usual parade of deer, raccoons, possums, foxes, feral cats, chipmunks, etc.

They told Tina to cut half of the prairie grass meadow one year, the other half the next. The half you cut, you cut only down to one sixth of the total height of the grasses. You leave half the meadow for habitat and for natural seeding.

As promised, we took Fiona for her nightly Zoom in the UTV, I took some pictures. It was close to Sunset, but the pics came out okay.

Here is a picture of the north pasture after it was cut (topped) after the hay had been cut the first year after we bought the farm and started fertilizing the pastures... It looks beautiful.


This is the difference, what it looks like when you have to bushhog the hay standing over the top of the hood of the UTV.


Here is the middle pasture


A closer look at the pond, the water level is down six or eight feet due to the lack of rain and the 100+ degree temps for the last three weeks or so. We feel lucky, many of the area's smaller ponds are completely dry.


This is the orchard, from the roadway, it's getting close to dark now, but the open area has been clipped about a week and the grass is standing back up. There is an eight point buck that hops the fence just after dark and comes and lays in the grass, and goes over and eats his fill of pecans every night.


Looking down the fence line you can get a feel for our road frontage, that dark cluster Way down the fence line is the line of mailboxes. Miss T mows the road frontage. Not many of the owners around here do that. I'd say about a third take the time and effort to keep it nice.

In a couple weeks, especially if we get some good rain, the tire tracks from the tractor should go away as the grass stands back up and turns green again. Tina bought some wildflower seeds to plant on the fence lines to attract various birds and butterflies now that we aren't putting large animals back in the pastures and not worried about shorting the electric fences. No more weedeating the lines... ... Yup, a lot of work many people didn't think about.

My property has what can be called 4 or 5 fields, depending upon where you want to draw a line to divide one field and call it two. We have a deal with a local dairy farmer that will hay the fields, and that gets us an "agricultural exemption" which reduces the property tax. That Ag Exemption is a very detailed process to get set up, with a few hoops to jump through for both the land owner and the farmer, and it takes into account what NY calls Mineral Soil Groups, and a host of other factors. Once in place, it seems to just continue forward with annual renewals, and every 5 years, re-establishing the lease between the farmer and the land owner. The strange part, is that I have no idea exactly what the value of the exemption is. When I paid my taxes this year, I went to our local municipal building, spoke directly with the tax collector, showed her my tax bill, and asked her what my exemption was, and also asked what my taxes would be if there was no exemption, and she couldn't tell me.

Anyway, once that exemption is in place, the farmer has the ability to come and cut at his own discretion. Last year in the fall, he fertilized two of the biggest fields and has come and cut those twice so far, I think he uses that for feed. The others he usually cuts just after labor day and uses those for bedding. I'm saying all this like I understand it, but I don't. I like picking my farmer's brain about stuff, but he's got limited time to stand and BS with me when there's a couple tractors and then a bunch of trucks getting filled and carrying it off.

I do notice that the deer and turkeys like those cut fields. Usually have a bunch of crows and some hawks too when the fields are first cut, so I guess they're cleaning up the carnage from the haybine.

So it sounds like you're a much better land manager than I am, knowing what the fields need and when. The fields look fantastic in those pics, so whatever you're doing is working. The tractor breaking down is unfortunate, but hopefully just a small setback for this year, and it'll work itself out.

Most farms around me grow corn or soybeans, and there are companies that cut the corn as a business, with dozens of trucks and some very large tractors or combines, or whatever they are. They run round-the-clock at harvest time, and you can see the lights out in the fields at night. From what I'm told, it's almost all silage for feed, and all the dairy farms use that. I never knew just how big of an economic reach farming had until living here, and I can only imagine what Iowa or one of the plains states is like.