Post by gmauch on Mar 9, 2013 12:48:45 GMT -5
Been a really long winter here in Southeast Colorado. We have not received any moisture all winter except a dusting of snow here and there which has left everything incredibly dry. This is year number 13 for us under average moisture so the old man wasn't in too much of a mood for updating equipment. He has a long list of things to update as soon as it gets wet.
Even with the drought we still had the usual winter chores. Here we are grinding hay. Gotta feed the cows that feed the world!
Hauling gravel to make a new road through one of our farms and also to fill sprinkler tracks.
With the drought the winter wheat wasn't able to get up very well last fall. Because of this our usual spring winds in the 50+mph range the field started to blow. This is one of our field taking off. There were times I literally couldn't see the end of the hood of the tractor.
There were two upgrades that we did make this winter. the first was to upgrade our grain drill. Our old drill was only 13' wide and winter wheat and spring grains are becoming a larger part of our crop rotation so we desperately needed an upgrade. So the mechanic and I drove around for 3 day covering Eastern Colorado, Western Kansas, and the Oklahoma panhandle but we finally found a good drill at a great price. We settled on a Sunflower 9432 on 7.5" and 30' wide with only 12,360ac for 25K. Here is the dealership delivering it.
Hooked up and ready to go that afternoon. About all the MX 180 can handle on the hills. In two days its already planted a little over 200ac which is a massive change from the 13'.
The other upgrade was our service pickup. We had out grown our Ford F-350 and it was getting really old. Then the local John Deere dealer told us they were wanting to sell theirs. Its a GMC 5500 with a service box and crane. We bought it for 10K.
That's about it for the winter. Hopefully summer will be better.
Questions and comments welcome.
Even with the drought we still had the usual winter chores. Here we are grinding hay. Gotta feed the cows that feed the world!
Hauling gravel to make a new road through one of our farms and also to fill sprinkler tracks.
With the drought the winter wheat wasn't able to get up very well last fall. Because of this our usual spring winds in the 50+mph range the field started to blow. This is one of our field taking off. There were times I literally couldn't see the end of the hood of the tractor.
There were two upgrades that we did make this winter. the first was to upgrade our grain drill. Our old drill was only 13' wide and winter wheat and spring grains are becoming a larger part of our crop rotation so we desperately needed an upgrade. So the mechanic and I drove around for 3 day covering Eastern Colorado, Western Kansas, and the Oklahoma panhandle but we finally found a good drill at a great price. We settled on a Sunflower 9432 on 7.5" and 30' wide with only 12,360ac for 25K. Here is the dealership delivering it.
Hooked up and ready to go that afternoon. About all the MX 180 can handle on the hills. In two days its already planted a little over 200ac which is a massive change from the 13'.
The other upgrade was our service pickup. We had out grown our Ford F-350 and it was getting really old. Then the local John Deere dealer told us they were wanting to sell theirs. Its a GMC 5500 with a service box and crane. We bought it for 10K.
That's about it for the winter. Hopefully summer will be better.
Questions and comments welcome.