It's been a while since I've posted anything here; primarily I've been putting up short videos on the farm youtube page.
The bin is up and site is graded. We're waiting on an electrical inspection and then the electrician will bury his lines from the panel over to each of the motors. I'm not sure if everything will be done in time so I can use it for the soybeans. Several things have to go right for that to happen, and there have been a lot of scheduling delays already, so it's difficult to make plans.
It's good to see some movement on this project. My dad was out there as well and we chatted a bit while I filmed.
The concrete will cure for a short time and then another crew should be here to put up the bin. It will be a 36 ft. diameter, 34 ft. tall Sukup bin with a full air floor. There will be an elevated unloading auger, a power sweep inside, stairs on the outside leading to the top of the roof, an electric grain spinner, sensors to control moisture hooked up to the fan. A 20 hp motor on the fan. The new 600 amp electric service is hooked up, and is visible in the background of the screenshot of the video shown below.
I decided to wait until prices were at all time highs before getting this thing built.
: )
To date it's been almost 3 years since we first started talking about putting up the bin.
You can see what I've written about it so far, here.
I've run about 300 feet of water hose out there and will be watering it a couple times a day to help the concrete cure properly; basically as slow as possible.
I remember when I was in my early teens checking a book out from the library on how to make Indian Spice recipes. The ingredients were totally unknown to me, though I found many of them in the tiny McCormick spice jars at the local grocery store. Though, unsurprisingly, I could never make anything that tasted good to me.
I think it's been almost 20 years that I've been using spices like this. My goal was to be able to cook like a country grandma, from any part of the world and I've come close, not needing a recipe for most things. Primarily Indian, North African, Caribbean, Mexican, Middle East. I'd like to learn more, and no doubt a native would take issue with how I make things compared to their grandmothers, but I'm happy with the results.
The house is still a collection of partially finished projects. The farm work is all consuming (a good thing, I think) and I'm not all that interested in working on the house, even if I had time. Living here is like being on a long term camping trip. You have to change your perspective on a lot of things or you'll go nuts.
Hiring someone to do the work was difficult pre covid, now it's next to impossible. A perfect example of this is my grain bin. We are a couple years into it (including planning/procurement) and they finally pulled up with a truck to construct the forms for the concrete pad. They might start putting them up in the next few weeks. Everything takes a lot longer than you'd think, and ends up costing 50% more than the (non-binding) estimate.
I've still got snow here (and it was -10ยบ F a few nights ago) but its warming up which means we can start working on some farm projects.
A contractor has started excavating for the new grain bin pad, it'll be a 36' diameter by 35' foot to the peak bin holding 22,000 bushels. The concrete should get poured around mid April, the bin will go up the first part of May.
I wrote a little bit about the reasons why I decided to have this bin built, here.
I'm putting my new (to me) broadcast seeder to frost seed winter camelina on about 75 acres of corn stubble; the camelina is intended to be a green manure that'll be mowed then disced ahead of planting soybeans in the first part of June.
Winter camelina is a "new" seed. It is primarily used around here as a cover crop and is typically applied after the harvest in the fall. That didn't work for me. Instead I'm using its ability to grow in the cold to take advantage of the roughly 2 months of growing weather starting now and ending at the end of May. It will be an experiment in building soil biology. Other farmers have tried it with acceptable results. I'm interested in how I can use plants at a farm scale, even if they don't "make" me money.
[some background, possibly incomplete, on what I'd like the camelina to do below the ground.]
Plants need nutrients, many of them are already in the soil, just not in a form that the plant can digest. I have turkey litter applied for some of those nutrients, but I'd like to reduce my dependence on this input. By having something growing in the ground, once it decays/dies, beneficial microbes and fungi will eat the residue. What those small organisms excrete becomes, among other things, nutrients and minerals that are in a form that is digestible by future plants that are grown there. Instead of cows or sheep I'm raising microscopic critters.
