Farming season has begun.....
 

Well guys, i started getting ready for this summer and field work by ripping the fields and burning one. Last night i was out ripping from 6pm until 1:30am and today from 10am to 4pm when it started raining. Heres a few pics from last night and today. I will get more as the season progresses.

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ewwwwwwwww dodge......that field isnt goin to produce shit....lol ;)

someones a smartass......lol Better than that thing called a F@$D

ya you could have went and got the new ford and left the matches at home

lol that is y they blow flames.....they made them for farming duh

Sigh.............................................. ....................

Ya planting any sweet corn :sen: :sen:

We been at it for a few weeks here. I'm just fillin in the shifts while they get some rest here and there. I decided I wasn't livin in a tractor cab this spring, that little bit o money just wasn't worth it.

sweet corn, sure!

man this is my first year in many that i will not be farming anything...i am very upset about this. people just do not understand the feeling you get from working the land and watching you crop grow...after a good day spent in the tractor going back and forth in the fields i am in the best freggin mood. so i am guessing i am going to be 1 grumpy SOB this summer....lol....i should not say i wont be farming anything i am gonna do about 50 acres of hay..hey at least it something.....and the worst thing is all the farms around me are selling out.....

I know exactly how you feel scarecrow. It has been hard for me to see my Dads place being rented out and then selling off the machinery. At least my Brother is buying the place and is planning to keep it in the Family and with hopes to farm it himself in some manner eventually. I miss not being out doing field work like in the past so I jump at the chance when I get asked to help some one else. And that is also why my wife and I are building up a herd of Boer Goats. Gives me some regular contact yet with farming. That saying is VERY true,,,,,, You can take the boy out of the country BUT you CANT take the country out of the boy. Unless you lived a farming lifestyle you dont totally understand the bond that exists to the land.

I've been involved with farming/agriculture ever since high school in one form or another. I enjoy having cattle more than anything and I'll eventually work back into it (when the price jumped a few years back my buddy/partner decided to bail and left me high and dry). For now I just help acouple guys out during the summer/fall and haul cattle when I get the chance.

I sold out of cattle last fall when hay prices went through the roof. I couldn't afford to feed me and them through the winter. I went from payin $22 for a 1500 pound round bail to $60 a piece. While market prices were still sittin pretty good I hauld em all in. Now all I'm feedin is these damn hayburners and already had the conversation with the wife that, that herd was gettin cut in half this summer to, so pick out which ones are goin.

AMEN to both you and Scarecrow!!!!!:c:

Yeah hay is becoming just a bit expensive unless you grow your own. Theres alot of that around here in what little farm ground there is and whatever isn't in feed/hay is in wheat that they graze off. 20-30 bushel an acre wheat is hard to make any money off of and is barely worth planting.

I am a huge believer in the ethanol movement, but I think more folks are gonna be run out of farming once it really starts rollin. I see the corporations movin in on the grain farmers next. They come in and make you a contract farmer, workin for them or they won't buy from you and when they own all the sale markets your stuck. It has already happened in the poultry and hog markets. Tyson took over the chicken and turkey markets, Cargill took over the hog markets, and now between Cargill and Nutreena they are workin on the cattle market. When grain becomes the hot commodity it will be next.

I can't wait for the day when alt. fuels get fully online and big oil takes it in the teeth.

I agree Nate...but since I am employed in the oilfield...can we wait until I retire???? lol

Even though this is where my paycheck comes from, there is a ton of animosity between the workers and the corporate offices...They keep gettin richer off our backs and the backs of the customers...no matter how it goes, it wont be long when we NEED alternatives...most of the reserves are getting very low for conventional oil and gas!

We will never be completely free from our dependancy on conventional fossil fuels, just not enough land to grow corn and soybeans to go around. The key will be to maximize the alt. fuels and sources we have to get the best effeicency out of them.

lets all raise turkeys
 

check this out

Ever seen world's dirties jobs? Show on Discovery. There is a garbage dump out by San Fran, I believe, that filters through all the trash to separate out the organic matter and is turned into some type of fuel that's used by the utility company in the area.
Manure is also being used but I think that's been around a few years??

Round bale of hay round these parts was around $120 last year :s: :s:

Ethanol actually uses more energy to make than they get back, so it's a loosing idea that's only alive due to HUGE government funding.

Same here....

i dont see why we havn't made a move on hemp the kind with the low THC level. they say u can get all kinds of energy out of it. ive heard it takes 1 tenths as much energy to make something equivalent to ethenol

I had no idea they could produce fuel from hemp.

this made for some good reading http://www.hemp4fuel.com/link.html

That is interesting..........I'm curious how they can get enough fuel from only 6% of the contental land mass to satisfy our diesel needs.

I am not all up to date on the info as such, BUT I am not so sure it takes more energy to produce than you get back. As of now all the reports I have read saying that are ones from the oil producing supporters. Thing is BIG OIL likes making BIG EASY PROFITS and they are able to do so sticking to current energy sources. Think back at all the times you may have heard of a carborator being developed that can produce MPG numbers around 100mpg. I heard of a farmer in this region who had done that. He was an average farmer but all at once the talk of his carborator ended and he suddenly had PLENTY of money. Word eventually leaked that some BIG OIL company bought his idea and rights and then shelved it.Big Oil doesnt like any form of competition, and that is what ethanol is. Think of what other industry that only has to pump their product from the ground and sell it with very little investment in the manner of aquiring the raw product. Yes there is a major investment in the platforms and wells, BUT for the amount of raw material being handled I would bet the cost to profit ratio is much greater to the profit side than most other energy sources. Brazil is capable of producing ALL the fuel they consume from ethanol. We rely only the idea of using corn here to produce it. Sugar Cane, Potatoes, Hemp, and many other Agricultural Products can be used to produce ethanol. Do I think we will ever be completely free of using oil, no, but until we are willing to allow other forms of energy to be tested in a REAL market setting we will NEVER know what can be produced cost effectively. I still recall people saying the same things about SYNTHETIC OILS,,,,,,,,,,,,,How many of the members here swear by it? I dont see why when there is a real chance for America to rely less on Arab domination we are not willing to research that avenue with a positive mind set. I would love to see nothing better than to one day the USA tell OPEC WE will PAY YOU this amount for your oil and not have them TELL US what they are going to charge us.
Its time we turn the markets around from a sellers market to a buyers market. Just having the influence of ethanol production on the corn market has raised land prices here as well as rent on farm ground. It is good to see some real profits being turned raising grain and I see ethanol production helping to fuel that. Why not put the money in a fellow Americans pocket and out of a Questionable Foreign Regime.

There is yet another way to see this as well....I have been involved in some of the ethanol plants here in Canada, mostly to due with the construction and design of the feedlot portions. Right now conventional shallow gas reserves are running dry, but only 30% of the actual gas content has ever been recovered due to current technology...

The energy companies are now using CO2 to stimulate these wells and have many of them producing again...the problem, no CO2...most of ours comes from the US by pipeline into Canada at a very high cost. We have 4 Ethanol plants in Alberta now, and CO2 is a waste byproduct from the Ethanol production yet no one is capturing it since the Ethanol and Energy companies do not get along and see each other as competitors....

If they would get their poop in a group they could co-generate the Ethanol and the CO2 for mutual benefit, and this can be done quite econimically.

We just need to get these 2 groups together...

Looking down the road, McLaughlin believes switchgrass offers important advantages as an energy crop. "Producing ethanol from corn requires almost as much energy to produce as it yields," he explains, "while ethanol from switchgrass can produce about five times more energy than you put in. When you factor in the energy required to make tractors, transport farm equipment, plant and harvest, and so on, the net energy output of switchgrass is about 20 times better than corn's." Switchgrass also does a far better job of protecting soil, virtually eliminating erosion. And it removes considerably more CO2 from the air, packing it away in soils and roots.

Switchgrass offers excellent habitat for a wide variety of birds and small mammals.
http://bioenergy.ornl.gov/papers/misc/switgrs.html

http://www.google.com/search?sourcei...chgrass+energy

heck one of the larger farms around me just got sold and they are puting a ethanol plant in its place....the rate things are going around here in less than 10 years there will be NO farms left. it will be all shopping centers selling the same damn stuff and housing developments full of imigrants....there is going to be no history left for my kid. that is why i started taking pictures of old houses , farms , fields , buildings. kinda like a scrape book for my grandkids to look at.......

We are having much of the same issues here too. The number of the Big Barns that have been torn down in the last 10 years is almost hard to imagine. That is one reason why I am active with the local historical society here at least helping to preserve some of our past farming and logging heritage here. The prices being paid for Farm Ground is almost unimaginable. It isnt uncommon to hear of ground selling to be farmed for 4,500-7,500 an acre and rent prices at 200 an acre. I am sure there are places that have higher land prices than that, BUT based on production potential, that is HIGH. The thing is the cost to maintain many of the farm buildings is getting almost unaffordable if you arent using them actively. When it costs 10,000 to reroof a barn and its sitting empty,,,,,, seems like a might poor investment over all. I dont like seeing the barns come down but I do understand why. Agriculture is always changing BUT the last 20 years it has changed MORE than at any other point in history. And the American Government is helping to fuel that change too. They do prefer dealing with large farming companies over the small family farms. The larger you are the better break they give you. The environmental policies they enact make it next to impossible for a small farm to be able to comply let alone to even be able to afford the upgrades. And as for housing, well seems like everywhere you turn there is a new development going in and they arent building houses on common sense size lots or houses. They are building $450,000 homes on 3-4 acre HOUSE lots with huge connecting ponds to each of the lots. And once the development is in then they have to annex that land and the adjacent lands in the city and make the farms that are left there to pay city taxes too. I just hope one day before its too late Society wakes up and sees land is more than just a place to build but also our FOOD producing resource. Sorry if I have had some LONG winded replies today, its just some of the topics are ones I have strong opinions on.

My neck of the woods is relatively untouched from the strip malls and housing developments. There have been a few new homes spring up along the county road but thats about it. I wouldn't be surprised if it catches up someday but the city has along way to go before it reaches here (if it ever does). Where I grew up is almost the opposite, but it was alot closer to town (3mi. vs. 15mi.).

I think society as a whole has become far to dependent upon luxuries. I mean c'mon, how many fast food joints, general merchandise stores, or gas stations does one town need? None if your a health nazi I guess but ya get my drift.