Farming - What Would Your Dream Farm Be?

I’ve been thinking I needed to ask @Montegriffo if the wheat recovered at all from the early wet weather you had or not.

I’m happy to share my experiences. I’ve been no-till and minimum till farming for over 20 years now.

I suppose the best answer in general on whether no till is good, bad, or inconsequential is “it depends”. I’m sure some fields in @Montegriffo’s area would see compaction from no till because they get waterlogged often and I’m assuming sometimes field operations have to be done when soil moisture level is still above optimal for planting, etc. Please correct me if I’m assuming too much, all my experience is on the other side of the pond.

Here in the Midwest US no till (unless you do something stupid) results in much less compaction overall than conventional tillage. The principles of tillage and compaction are mostly physics. Tillage creates a very compacted layer where the tillage tool “scrapes” across the soil under the layer it is turning or displacing. So here, the less you till, the less “hard pan” compacted layers you get several inches below the soil surface.

The other ways no till fights compaction here is by increasing soil organic matter and biological diversity in the soil. Organic matter adds soil structure allowing better root growth as well as increases the ability of plants to take up nutrients. Biological diversity resulting from no till includes everything from increased earthworm populations to beneficial fungi.

@Montegriffo has already mentioned less work which is huge for me. I would not have time to till all my ground—I barely have time to shred crop residue when it needs done on gravity irrigated ground and plant. Besides saving labor, not tilling saves a lot of diesel fuel, tires, and lubricants—all of which are an environmental concern. So no till not only sequesters a lot more carbon than conventional tillage, it uses far less fossil fuels. Even the decreased nitrogen use on continuous no till cuts fossil fuel use as commercial nitrogen fertilizer is mostly still produced with fossil fuels.

Further environmental advantages to no till are drastically reduced soil erosion by wind/water and if global warming is a concern, the increased crop residue on the surface reflects more heat energy back into space than bare earth.

One downside of no till can be more difficulty controlling weeds. In a commercial operation if you aren’t careful you may end up using a bit more chemical weed control. However we are starting to get away from this by utilizing cover crops as early season weed control.

No till can also result in some increased crop diseases/pests, but decreases others.

As far as fertilization specifically, over the long term no till will decrease fertilizer use. But since you don’t incorporate the fertilizer by tillage you have to ensure soil levels are adequately maintained. You can’t fix a problem with a shortage of phosphorus “in season” or early spring “pre season” because phosphorus doesn’t leach into the soil quickly like nitrogen does with rain or irrigation.

On spraying, here we use large 100ft boom sprayers typically. Some aerial spraying is done but usually only when crops are too tall (corn) or fill the row space too much (soybeans) to fit a sprayer. Aerial spraying is almost always fungicide or insecticide, not herbicide. Herbicide applications are almost always complete before too much crop canopy exists for a terrestrial sprayer.

If anyone has questions I’m happy to go into more detail. But where I live, no till is preferable to all other systems in my opinion. Some people have higher yields with strip till where only a narrow strip for each row is tilled. In these operations nitrogen and phosphorus are injected a few inches directly below where the seed is planted. This gives the young plant a good boost. Strip till also warms the soil a bit for better germination. But to me the extra work, fuel usage, equipment cost isn’t worth the benefit.

 

Well Paul managed to drill all the acres he wanted in wheat. It was touch and go as the fields were very wet. The wheat got a poor start though ''wheat doesn't like getting its feet wet''. Yields are going to be low for the second year so the thatchers are going to be fighting for the limited straw. Unfortunately, with a fixed price set by the Thatching Straw Association Paul isn't going to benefit from higher prices.
In good news, Paul managed to find a new threshing drum on Ebay.
It's actually older than the current one, 1949 instead of 1951. It has had an easier life though, only been used for demonstrations in recent years so it is in much better condition. Still in its original Suffolk pink paint it's the same make and model as the old one. A Ransome made in Thetford, Norfolk.
It will need a little work before it can be used. The straw walkers still have their hooks attached which will have to be removed as they tend to turn the straw so that it doesn't go into the buncher nice and straight which is better for the thatchers because the straw can be damaged if it goes in at right angles. The gap between the drums will have to be fine tuned too to get the perfect compromise between knocking the most corn out but not crushing the straw.
We've still got one more day's threshing to do from last year's harvest which will probably be done with the old drum.
In other news a new barn is going up in the stack yard. It will have a concrete floor and well sealed concrete walls which means we will have a rodent proof grain storage area for the first time. This means we can grow a bit of milling wheat and keep it clean rather than use it all for feed as we've had to do in the past.
The first hay crop has been cut and bailed now and was turned when we had some really hot weather and bailed just before the rain returned. Unfortunately it is shorter than usual due to a lack of rain when it was growing.
Sheep were sheared last week by a new shearer who managed to nick nearly every one of them. Nothing serious though and no maggots in the fleece.
We're still waiting to hear whether the camps will be able to go ahead this year. Covid restrictions were supposed to be lifted tomorrow but the Delta variant has put this back at least another 4 weeks.
I think that's everything.
Oh, the Montbeliard brought in to suckle on the mother when one of the Red Pol calves died is settling in well and Paul says he's a lovely beast. Very pretty in its brown and white livery.

 

Well I’m glad there will be some wheat. From what you and @Tigger2 told me about spring weather I was afraid it all drowned out. The wheat looks average here this year from the road. I didn’t drill any wheat last fall so only observe the neighbors. We are hot and very dry so if we don’t get rain in the next few days the grain yield won’t be good. It’s almost too late now. My friend has some irrigated wheat under a pivot. I haven’t seen it but he says it looks really good.

We sheared today. Or we had the shearer come today rather. It seems we may have had the same one as you. He nicked every animal, nearly cutting the testicles off a ram and leaving several ewes with 6-8 inch long cuts on the neck/brisket. Now we will have to keep then in close for several days to spray nicks for flies. Last year we had a really good one. He runs a sheep research lab for the University of Nebraska and shears as a side gig on the weekends. Unfortunately we couldn’t get our schedules to match up this year. Bummer.

That’s awesome Paul found a drum for the thresher. I know you said the old one was getting rough. Lucky find!

I have two fields of first cutting alfalfa baled. One to go—will bale tonight after the dew comes on a little. Too dry now—90+ F with 30 mph wind. It will be time to start ridging corn on gravity irrigated ground end of this week or first of next.

I hope you get to have juggling convention. I’m looking forward to hearing about it if it happens.

Interesting you have to modify the straw walkers. I would never think of that but it makes perfect sense for straw quality.

 

Yeah the drum was a really lucky find. Only a couple of thousand pounds too, plus another 300 to have it transported up here from Surrey.
The old one is really getting worn out. Never had a year off in 70 years. Reckoned to be the hardest worked drum in the country.
Don't know what will happen to it now. Probably just be mothballed for spares. The pulley wheels are really hard to get a hold of.
You can tell how little work the new one has had by the hole in the tow hitch. It's barely worn. Probably never left the farm it was on. The old one is nearly worn away. It was used for contract threshing for 50 or 60 years, dragged between farms by the old Field Marshall tractor the owner bought new at the same time in 1951.
It's been on loan to Paul for a decade or more. The owner is still alive but in his late 80s now.
Yeah, our shearer was much better last year too. A cute little 20 year old lass from Yorkshire. Not available this year unfortunately.
We're lucky to get anyone to come out for such a small flock really.
The fleeces went to a local spinner to be hand spun into yarn.
The fleeces fetch less than the cost of the shearing but I imagine that's the same the world over these days.
What's the problem with the alfalfa being too dry? Does it make the cattle cough like dusty dry hay does for horses?
Our grass gets made into haylage rather than hay.

 

We have a hard time getting good shearers because we don’t have many sheep either. The good professionals work out west on big flocks. This guy today came up from Kansas. It’s a part time thing for him on the weekends as well.

My dad and I tried to learn to shear when I was about 10. He bought a set up and already knew how to sharpen blades so thought it would go well. We trailered a couple ewes over to this old Mexican’s house we knew. He was a long retired professional shearer, probably 85 years old. He made the whole process look easy showing us all the tricks but when we tried it at home it took all morning to shear about 5 head. Then the ram had a heart attack and died halfway through shearing him. So ended our foray into shearing. LOL

Yes, in rare cases you can have dry alfalfa cause problems with coughing and even contribute to respiratory diseases. Generally only if the hay is fed after being ground. We had problems years ago once with very dry ground alfalfa fed to newly weaned calves that were not acclimated to enough corn silage to cut the dust in the ration. We ended up hosing it down in the feed mixer wagon with a garden hose. It takes a lot of water to moisten 3-4000 lbs of bone dry hay! Now most people feed at least some wet distillers grains and that completely eliminates the problem. If you can cut the dust with silage or distillers dry hay is much easier to grind than hay with higher moisture content.

The main reason we try to avoid baling alfalfa too dry is it loses a lot of leaves during the baling process and leaves are the plant part with the highest nutritional value. Also, for goats, the leaves must remain attached to the stem or they will waste most of the alfalfa when fed out of a bale. Cows prefer leaves attached as well, but will still clean up leaves that are detached. Goats seldom will.

A rule of thumb for my operation is if it’s hay that will be ground I bale it pretty dry. There are less pounds to transport, lighter bales are easier on loaders, and dry hay is much easier to grind. I feed enough silage and distillers the dust isn’t an issue.

Hay that will be unrolled on the ground or fed in hay feeders (we bale most everything with a large round baler except a few hundred small squares) is baled wetter so leaves stay attached to the stem better.

It is easier to bale alfalfa dry now than it used to be. Baler technology has improved so we can bale at 10-13 mph instead of 5-8 mph. This means each bale is spending less time turning in the baler losing leaves. Also we net wrap now so a bale only makes 1.7 revolutions between when it is fully formed and ejected. After the first wrap very little loss can occur because the entire surface of the bale is covered. When we twine tied, the bale made up to ten revolutions between being fully formed and ejection, losing leaves and even stems during that entire wrapping process.

Here’s what it looked like about 10:00pm last night when I started baling. I finished about 3:00 am. When baling more than 10-20 acres you always end up starting when the hay is too dry, having perfect bales somewhere in the middle of the process, and ending with bales a little to wet at the end. This is if you bale at night with a dew coming on. If you bale in the daytime it’s the opposite—too damp when you start and too dry when you finish.

 

Interesting, I buy a few round bales every year.