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In theory you can be no till forever.

In practice very few farmers are that good at it, but it is possible.

Seems like minimum till is popular here. Last 3 days the fields have come alive with guys pulling a ripper here and putting down anhydrous there. Wanna say things are a couple of weeks behind here, but soil temps have been low... There were guys putting down anhydrous 3-4 weeks ago but it was cold. Had some serious snow since then...

Green-up is coming, but slowly. Most years I've mowed a couple of times by now.



From 1:40 or so is typical of what it looks like here...

Mid-Missouri and West Central Missouri are starting to get hot and heavy. Mix of till, min. till and no till around here.

Yeah, I have been at it for a few weeks here in the Central Rockies. Had the local Co-op spread fertilizer and Sonolan on the safflower ground yesterday. I need to get it incorporated today, then plan to drill the seed on Friday.

After the planting is over, it will be time to get the irrigation system up and running.

Granular?

We tried liquid Sonolan once.

What kind of prices are you getting for your safflower?

They offered us 16 cents.

That. But when seeding alfalfa it really needs to be chisel-plowed, then run a finisher over it twoce to get it planted.. Then many around here go over that with a roller to get any small stones buried.. But they do run the risk of severe runoff via heavy rains before it germinates..

First crop hay here won't be done until nearly June 1st..

Yes. I have never seen any irrigated alfalfa planted no till. Probably do it somewhere though.


We plant dryland hay using no till. Usually try to plant it in the fall.

I usually have the liquid Sonolan applied by a spray rig, but this year we had a flush of spring weeds and volunteer wheat that we needed to take out with glyphosate. With the 48 hour incorporation window on the Sonolan, it became easier to spray the glyphosate, wait a couple of days then apply the Sololan with the fertilizer. They applied liquid Sonolan to the dry fertilizer in the mixer.

They are offering 16 cents for safflower here this year as well. We grow the white-hulled birdseed type here.

Depending on the prior crop, you can plant alfalfa using no-till without any problems. A lot of folks around here are in a long term rotation of five years of irrigated alfalfa followed by two years of winter wheat. They harvest the winter wheat in July, bale the straw off, and no-till alfalfa into the remaining stubble in September.

Here it's grain corn or soybeans and winter wheat.

A little millet here and there. The county to the west grows lots of cotton.

Been lots of Anne, the love-sticken, 9-headed snake heading out around here the last few days. Also lots of fire trucks heading out to help out those unfamiliar with the interaction between flames and wind.

I know some farms that have been no-tilled for 30-40 years. It mostly depends on soil type and the land itself. Here on my farm, this is how my neighbor that rents the cropland does it......he will put anhydrous down, run a harrow over the ground, and no-till the corn, then he will drill no-till wheat into the corn stubble in the fall, and after the wheat is cut in June, he will no-till soybeans. If he can combine the beans early enough in the fall, and the ground is not too wet, he will usually rip it every 3 or 4 years. On land that is too wet for wheat, and I have some, he does a corn-soybean rotation, both no-till. I guess you could call what he does as a combination of minimum till and no-till.

i turned over my 20x60 ranch the other day. took me almost an hour.

Didn't make into the field today.

Feed cows and fix fence, damn cows are a pain in the ass this time of year! Hate trying to farm and brand and haul out pairs all at once kind of deal......


But this afternoon I did change the oil in one of the ol' Versatiles.


Had the drill up and when I came back from getting oil it was on the ground. Nice big oily mess on the drill frame. Blown hose but I'd rather it happened now than later. Then I discovered a 1" hose coming from the hydraulic 'radiator' is leaking.

Running this old stuff is always 'fun' and sure beats payments on a new one!




My dad did drive up to Glasgow with the two canner bulls and got a change of pasture permit. He said there wasn't anything out moving the fields which I found a little surprising.

I almost made some progress today.

I was working at getting a track tension cylinder off the 85C Challenger.


You hook up the hydraulics to both tension cylinders and extend them.

Then you put the stops in and release the pressure.

I tried to cheat and just use one stop on the center pin on the axle. Crushed it like a pop can.

Now I need the cylinder stops from T and E in Great Falls. I will try and borrow them so I can get this job done and then I will make a set of stops.

Tomorrow I will get tires and wheels for the roller and go out south to see if I can resurrect the old tool bar thats been sitting out there for years.

It's been a wet/cold spring here. Was just starting to dry out and we spread a bunch of manure/fertilizer yesterday on some drier ground. Rained off and all day today. Not much going on around here

Jim, sorry to hear the short cut didn't pan out!

What make toolbar are you attempting to resuscitate?




Ben, wish we could get your extra rain(in a about a month).........grin

Putting duals on another tractor.

Its an old Morris Sam.

It was a CP 60 footer that we cut down to 40 feet.


I put all new Melroe shanks on it years ago, and a bunch of new trip pieces. The Melroe shanks are good because they are 1.25 instead of an inch. Bad thing is they take 47 degree shovels.

The nice thing about the old Morris tool bars was that they actually had a trip shank. It took a lot of pressure to trip them out of the ground, but once you did the pressure went down.

They are a lot of maintenance compared to our Flexicoil or the older Friggstad we have.

Nothing works every time.
Trade offs in every method.
Long term no-till has benafits (saves on erosion, moisture, less fuel, etc),
but then you get grass problems, may need more artificial fertilization, germination woes, ground won't "dry" in the spring.....

Enviros love no-till in theory, but despise Roundup......and it takes lots o' Roundup.....