Kaya

New Equipment

Here are the new pieces of equipment that I recently bought. I still have a few more to get. A gravity box/seed tender. Three headers for the combine: corn, beans, and pick-up head for grain. Header carts for the corn and bean heads. Maybe a new grain cart.

Most of this will eventually be stored/over wintered in the new 50' x 80' pole barn that should start being built in 6 weeks.

2007 Deere 9560 STS Combine

Deere 9560

John Deere 590 Pull Behind Swather

2011 Krause 8200 Disc Harrow - 25'

Krause 8200 Disc. Case 7140 and Ford F-250 in background

2019 Hatzenbichler Tine Weeder - 30'. M&W 1815 Rotary Hoe in background

I bought a second Deere RM6 row cultivator. It's the one closest to the camera in the pic above and is in better shape than the first one I had. A couple reasons for having two. One is that new replacement parts are expensive and used are hard to find, short of buying the whole thing. With two of the same model I can "borrow" parts from one to get the other to work. More importantly is that I can adjust one cultivator to cut closer to the row and the other one to stay away from the crop I'm cultivating. They are time consuming to adjust.

Seeds

Spring is coming, despite it being 18º F last night.  A little over a week ago I took delivery of the all the seeds I'll be planting on the farm this spring: Oats, medium red clover, and soybeans. About 15,000 pounds.

Walking the Dog in NM

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Percha Creek

Small Repairs: Implement Jack

I try to repair as much as I can around here, even when it doesn't make economic "sense". One of today's little projects - fix a seized acme thread on an implement jack. 

I made little copper soft jaws from pieces of old pipe, heated up the nut with the torch, then turned the nut. Put grease on the thread and reassembled the jack before reattaching it to the implement.

Site Prep for the New Pole Barn/Machine Shed

The site preparation for the new pole barn is done. It will be 50' x 80'  with 18' ceilings. I need more space for equipment, in particular the new combine - probably going to buy a used John Deere 9560 - (update 11-20-19, I did) which will be too tall for the old shed (which is seen in the back of the third picture).

The contractor used his bulldozer to make a new level pad in the field adjacent to the existing buildings and then covered it with gravel, compacting as he went. I'm now getting bids from contractors on the building itself.  I had hoped to have it built this year, but I ran into some zoning issues which took a while to resolve. The plan now is to have it built next spring/summer.

(Click on any picture to make it bigger.)

Looking south at what will be the main entrance to the shed. There will be three sliding doors: one, measuring 25' wide x 18' tall, on each gable (north and south) end. Also a larger, 32' wide x 16' tall on the east side (the left of the above picture).

Looking west. The building site is behind, and to the left, of the pile of gravel that is in the upper right corner of the picture. The old silos are buried below the exposed dirt on the left side of the picture.

Looking southeast. I had to add some 1 1/2" gravel to the old easement to firm it up.