It is time to start harvesting the orchard grass, rye, clover and oat grass from the field. We will mow, rake, bale and accumulate square bales from all of this. Being our first harvest with our new seed we are not sure how it will come out. But looking forward to having some bales very soon. Hopefully we can do this three times a year with good weather. This is the first of the year so there should be more harvests in 2024 as well.
Mowing is done using a tractor attachment that cuts the grass, it lays flat and I will need to come back later with another tractor attachment called a rake. All I have to do is drive the tractor and make sure I get it all mowed. I can listen to a podcast or an audio book while mowing. Its slow going around 4 MPH so its a pretty relaxing job.
My foreman mowed the immediate area so we can hook up everything without climbing through ankle high grass.
He hooks up the mower for me, I watch and eventually I should be able to do this myself.
Before I start mowing, we collect tree branches from the fields so the mower does not hit them. This takes about half a day to clear the fields.
I put down stakes for the 1 acre area where we plan on growing garlic. There were small stakes in the ground but the mower would have hit them, so I can to put some t-posts in the ground so I can see them and avoid when mowing.
Lots to mow, will take me about 1.5 days to get it all done.
There still is milkweed in the fields, we were hoping tilling would deal with it. Seems there is less, so we need to see if this will be acceptable for animals to eat. If not we will use the hay for the garlic fields and till it into the ground to raise the nutrient levels.
Its really cool seeing these tall grasses sway in the wind. I will try to capture it on a windy day.
Looks like what we planted last year is now flowering, perfect time to gather it.
1.5 days later:
With everything mowed, I go inspect my work. Seeing if I need to go over any areas again.
Looks good, soon I will rake it all up into windrows.
Driving the UTV around I look for rocks, I hit a few while mowing and want to avoid them next time if possible.
Some of them may be laying under the grass, so once I rake I will look again for more.
But once in awhile I find one, and chuck it in the back of my UTVs bed.
This thing can break my mower blades, or worse if it gets jammed it can break the gears inside the mower.
Building quite the nice rock collection...lol
With all the mowing done I am going to take a break and then get back to raking soon. Then my foreman will bale and accumulate them. Then it will be time to see if they are a quality product or not. If so great... if not we will probably need to do some improving in the fields. I will still use the hay for tilling into the ground, but hopefully long term it will be good animal feed.
Besides riding around on my tractor I also got to see a rat snake hanging around my garden.
You can see its head poking out from the garden bed.
More updates coming soon once the fields are raked.
Previous posts on this project:
https://peakd.com/hive-114308/@solominer/the-fields-are-waking-up
https://peakd.com/hive-114308/@solominer/running-the-seed-drill-on-our-fields
https://peakd.com/hive-114308/@solominer/tilling-the-fields-to-get-ready-for-new-seeds
Wow you guys did amazing job to remove all those glasses. With machine everything is simple. On like my side the is no road for a machine to go in, we do everything by hand. Weldone boss
Having a machine to do it really does help.
I feel ya, there are some places here as well we can only use hand tools.
For real it's so satisfying seeing the fruits of your labor come together. Harvesting sounds like a lot of work, but also quite rewarding. Hope the weather stays good for more harvests this year good friend
Thank you, it is quite the experience collecting it all from stage to stage.
You've done really well with it😍😍😍 it's super super impressive dear friend
Where I live, despite the long winter season, clover is harvested three times a year. Those who take good care can harvest 4 times a year.
The foreman seems like a talented person, he helps you with everything. He also helped you when you made a hunting ground in the previous post. I compared him to the Chinese.Hi @solominer, it's nice to be interested in similar topics and hobbies as you. You have a beautiful and productive field.
Much appreciated, my foreman is a great help to the farm here and I am thankful to have him here.
Oh interesting, we are growing clover as well but along with other grasses.
Is that a Kubota or an Allis Chalmers? With that orange and the size I would guess a Chalmers. Milkweed is about the worst! I used to have to spray it special in the fields when I was hoeing beans. It seemed like nothing would get rid of it!
Its a Kubota tractor and a Krone mower.
Sure is awful, I may need to get rid of it here as well.
Good luck with that!
WOW, wow wow this is a nice work, I can see a very serious work over there, with the look of it I guess is very hard, your foreman did well to hook up your mower and that will help you to hook up yourself, I remember once I drive a vehicle and I jammed this size of stone and I felled down then the travigator broke and I got wound since then I realized that stone is very dangerous on the road, you did a nice work, i must say sorry for the stress, well done
He sure does well and yeah stones in the road can be quite dangerous, glad you understand.
thank you
How great to see that the great work they have done sowing is showing results, the cutting area is really large and there is a lot to collect. I hope that by raking you can obtain a very good quality product.
It is incredible how many stones you found in the cutting area and were able to remove them before they did any damage to the cutting mower.
Excellent work, I wish you much successHow are you dear friend @solominer good afternoon
Thank you, I hope the raking goes well. It will be the first time I have done it so we shall see how it goes.
Yeah those darn rocks.. glad to get some of them out. Thought I doubt I got them all.
The work you are doing in your field is wonderful. What a great idea it is to have shaded and then collect and store them. I hope they can meet the objective of sowing and harvesting three times a year, and above all that the material they obtain is of very good quality.Hello @solominer
Thanks, me too.. we can hope to get there but we shall see how the year plays out.
How amazing! Someday, you can reap the fruit of your labor. Salute to all of you who are so hardworking.
Much appreciated, I am looking forward to reaping those fruits soon.
Love this. Even though I experienced the activity only in simulator video games, it always seemed pretty satisfying and relaxing. I bet it's not that easy in real life but must be so pretty to be able to take care of everything on your own :)
Hah, well I am just glad my equipment does not do this in real life..
Those farm simulator glitches are crazy funny.
Hahahaha. I know! Right? lol
It's great to see the effort and care put into maintaining the fields, and your narrative brought the experience to life. Keep sharing these wonderful insights!
Much appreciated, will do.
Agriculture is the hardest work. There are many benefits of farming people do not have grain to eat, the farmer provides the grain to the people. If farming is done with technology, it is very efficient. Your post is really good. @solominer
Thank you, glad you liked my post.
Reminds me of when I worked on a farm. Tilling grass for hay way so much fun. So was harrowing the ground.
Basically just any job that I got to drive the tractor around was fun for me.
I used to feed the cows by tying the baling twine around the steering wheel and using them to turn the wheel from the back tray where the hay bale was.
It has been a lot of fun using the tractor, this is my first one so its all new to me. During the summer I am always thankful to drive the tractor as mine is enclosed and has air conditioning. Feels like a little office to me.
Oh cool, sounds like quite the experience.
I do miss working on the farm. I’d like to return to it one day.
It was my first job out of school but unfortunately I wasn’t built for it back then. I was a townie so was super green.
We were a 220 herd on 220acres. It was a beautiful farm but we had a lot of gorse and spraying sucked.
Hey, new follower here,
This content is satisfying to watch... Job Well Done.. Yeah.. That grass ripper truck is a bad ass..
Hey there, oh cool.. well glad you liked it.
Ohh dear, so one has to be really careful when mowing. This land is really big though, do you sometimes get tired of tending it though?
Good job friend!
Yeah you got to be careful. Sometimes I am tired at the end of the day, and I take a day off. But I just get back to it a day or two later.
thank you
Ohhh I see. I wish you all the best
Attachments significantly enhance a tractor’s versatility. Common attachments include loaders, mowers, backhoes, and tillers. Determine which tasks you need to accomplish and choose attachments accordingly. Investing in the right attachments can transform your tractor into a multi-functional machine, making it more valuable and efficient. Because of that I prefer to use ls mt225 tractor