Sunday, December 6, 2015
Saturday, December 7, 2013
Cultivator for the Farmall Cub
I have been slowly collecting the parts to have a complete set of cultivators for my farmall cub
This last summer is was able to get the universal mounting frame, front tool bars and some disc hillers that I found on craigslist. This is most of what you need for the undermount part of the cultivator.
Last weekend I was able to get the rear mount cultivator parts to match up with this from a guy I found on craigslist in Portland. I also bought from him six cultivator shanks, spring loaded. It is almost complete; missing some lift bars and and need to get sweeps for the shanks. No small accomplishment for 60 year old equipment. Now to borrow some "huge tracts of land"!
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| Farmall Cub ready for snow |
This last summer is was able to get the universal mounting frame, front tool bars and some disc hillers that I found on craigslist. This is most of what you need for the undermount part of the cultivator.
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| Farmall Cub universal lifting attachment |
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| Disc Hillers and front tool bars |
Pig Update
Well, I haven't written since September 15th. My professional life kicks into high gear from September through late May and no writing is the result...
The pigs are growing well. Most of them at least... They came from two different litters and then ones who are a couple of weeks older have been much more aggressive at the feed trough and look huge compared to the younger ones, especially the one that has Hampshire markings. I tell them to eat up, they just will get harvested sooner. I'm in no hurry.
Feed waste has been much better than previous groups of pigs and they ate all the corn I grew except for some I saved as seed stock for next year.
Deep litter bedding is working OK. I have opened up the wooden floored older pig house for them to use as well and they keep dunging in there. Every week or so I go in and scrape the manure out of there and put it in the deep litter area. The smell is not too bad as long as I keep up on the scraping. Not exactly how I planned it... Daydreaming time is spent on how I am going to build the next variation of the hoop house.
The grain bin was filled about six weeks ago which has been nice to not worry about getting bags of feed. This should last me to the end. 5360 pounds of 14% pig feed delivered to the bin for 19.6 cents per pound ($392/ton). If it does hold true that I don't need to buy anymore feed that means I will have raised 10 pigs on 7210 pounds of feed plus the corn I grew and various other garden scraps. I would be very happy with that.
It has been freezing here. The automatic waters have frozen so I have been hauling buckets of water out to the pigs. Not ideal as sometimes when I am at work they don't have access when they want it right then, but they seem happy enough.
The pigs are growing well. Most of them at least... They came from two different litters and then ones who are a couple of weeks older have been much more aggressive at the feed trough and look huge compared to the younger ones, especially the one that has Hampshire markings. I tell them to eat up, they just will get harvested sooner. I'm in no hurry.
Feed waste has been much better than previous groups of pigs and they ate all the corn I grew except for some I saved as seed stock for next year.
Deep litter bedding is working OK. I have opened up the wooden floored older pig house for them to use as well and they keep dunging in there. Every week or so I go in and scrape the manure out of there and put it in the deep litter area. The smell is not too bad as long as I keep up on the scraping. Not exactly how I planned it... Daydreaming time is spent on how I am going to build the next variation of the hoop house.
The grain bin was filled about six weeks ago which has been nice to not worry about getting bags of feed. This should last me to the end. 5360 pounds of 14% pig feed delivered to the bin for 19.6 cents per pound ($392/ton). If it does hold true that I don't need to buy anymore feed that means I will have raised 10 pigs on 7210 pounds of feed plus the corn I grew and various other garden scraps. I would be very happy with that.
It has been freezing here. The automatic waters have frozen so I have been hauling buckets of water out to the pigs. Not ideal as sometimes when I am at work they don't have access when they want it right then, but they seem happy enough.
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| Hey, we are starting to get a little crowded in here! |
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| You should fill our bucket, again. That is the runty pig on the right. He looks downright miniscule compared to the bigger pigs. |
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| More Straw, please. |
Sunday, September 15, 2013
Estimating Corn Yield
I've been feeding the pigs a little bit of ear corn. They attack it with great vigor! I thought it would be fun to estimate yield from our little plot. The national yield this year is predicted to be 155.3 bushels per acre. This, of course, is heavily managed hybrid corn. Gene Logsdon got 110 bushels per acre from the Open Pollinated variety "Reids Yellow Dent." I grew Nothstine Dent as I outlined in this blog entry. I picked and shucked corn from a 125 square foot area, it filled a five gallon bucket.
A couple were pretty...
A couple weren't...
Some were drier than others...
Now for the math to figure out bushels per acre. A bushel of shelled corn, corn that is no longer on the cob, weighs about 56 pounds. To get a bushel of shell corn from ear corn, what I have, you need 70 pounds of ear corn. That five gallon bucket weighed 23 pounds.
23 pounds of ear corn equals .328 bushels of shell corn.
.328 bushels per 125 square feet. 125 square feet is .00287 acres.
.328 bushels per .00287 acres.
Time for some algebra:
.328 bushels/.00287 acres = x bushels/1 acre
114 bushels / acre
Pretty respectable for open pollinated if this method of estimating is at all reliable. I imagine I am not acounting for lots of variables. How accurately did I measure the sample area? Not very... How does the moisture content of the corn play into this? I don't know...
Regardless, The numbers suggest this was worth doing. This means I will get about 11.5 bushels of corn. The price of corn today is 4.59 a bushel. Sweet! I raised $53 dollars worth of corn. Of course I spent about twice that on fuel, manure, seed and urea...
These folks a couple hours south me got 60 bushels / acre with Nothstine.
Now this is better corn than from the feed mill. Open pollinated is supposed to be higher in protein than hybrid corn. It is definitely non-GMO. The pigs enjoy it fresh. The nutrients and organic matter from the manure will benefit the soil for many growing season beyond this one. Since it is open pollinated I can reuse seed and I only used a small amount of the urea which I can save for future years. So we will call it a wash... Just like what they found in the movie King Corn! I need to sign up for my subsidy ;)
Maybe I will try this corn yield estimate on a different part of the field on a future date this fall.
On a different note I found this pile of poop near the corn. We have had a black bear sighting near our house recently. Is that what this is?
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| The sacrificed area |
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| 5 gallon of ear corn |
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| The best looking ear of the group |
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| The worse |
A couple weren't...
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| Dent corn |
Some were drier than others...
Now for the math to figure out bushels per acre. A bushel of shelled corn, corn that is no longer on the cob, weighs about 56 pounds. To get a bushel of shell corn from ear corn, what I have, you need 70 pounds of ear corn. That five gallon bucket weighed 23 pounds.
23 pounds of ear corn equals .328 bushels of shell corn.
.328 bushels per 125 square feet. 125 square feet is .00287 acres.
.328 bushels per .00287 acres.
Time for some algebra:
.328 bushels/.00287 acres = x bushels/1 acre
114 bushels / acre
Pretty respectable for open pollinated if this method of estimating is at all reliable. I imagine I am not acounting for lots of variables. How accurately did I measure the sample area? Not very... How does the moisture content of the corn play into this? I don't know...
Regardless, The numbers suggest this was worth doing. This means I will get about 11.5 bushels of corn. The price of corn today is 4.59 a bushel. Sweet! I raised $53 dollars worth of corn. Of course I spent about twice that on fuel, manure, seed and urea...
These folks a couple hours south me got 60 bushels / acre with Nothstine.
Now this is better corn than from the feed mill. Open pollinated is supposed to be higher in protein than hybrid corn. It is definitely non-GMO. The pigs enjoy it fresh. The nutrients and organic matter from the manure will benefit the soil for many growing season beyond this one. Since it is open pollinated I can reuse seed and I only used a small amount of the urea which I can save for future years. So we will call it a wash... Just like what they found in the movie King Corn! I need to sign up for my subsidy ;)
Maybe I will try this corn yield estimate on a different part of the field on a future date this fall.
On a different note I found this pile of poop near the corn. We have had a black bear sighting near our house recently. Is that what this is?
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| Bear scat? |
Sunday, September 8, 2013
Deep Litter Bedding, Week two update
I decided to dig the manure fork in further and really churn things up. That only made the ammonia smell stronger. Time to hit the Google search engines and see what I could learn. Lots of academic research to read on the subject. Chose not read that, too much like the day job... I found the chicken raising message boards the most encouraging. Ammonia smell is bad. Earthy smell is good. If you smell ammonia you need to add more carbon. I added two bales of straw and fluffed it up really well. We'll see if that helps with the ammonia smell, it sure did initially!
This method of deep litter bedding is more similar to chicken type systems I have read about, adding litter so you end up with a deep litter The pig systems I have read about seem to focus on starting with a lot of carbon and keeping it fluffed up. I wish I could smell things over the internet to see what these other barns smell like! This blog entry for example!
This is a good clean out story and how he prepares his barn for the next round.
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| After churning up |
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| Straw touching hot-wire |
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| Churned up, but moist and stinky |
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| New straw on top |
Monday, September 2, 2013
Tassel-ears
Went to the corn today to harvest some for the pigs and found this oddity.
That is an ear of corn that developed on the tassel at the top of the corn stalk. Apparently it's very rare and has to do with a hormonal imbalance in that plant. Read more here.
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| Tassel-ear |
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