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Where, and how did you learn the machining skills Big Jim?

Dave, Big Jim can look any whey he likes! I ain't agonna tell him different.

Nice.

Or as my buddy Bob would say: “Looks store-bought”

Sorry man.

Starting to dry out here too. Cant find moisture to put the seed into.


We learned last year to trust your instincts and have a plan. Sounds like you have one already.


Good luck.

I am a pretty poor excuse for a machinist Richard!

My dad taught himself and had a friend who was a machinist. He would ask him questions and they would do work together.

Dad kind of showed me some things, the rest is just trial and error. Mostly self taught.

I am reading backwards!


Nicely done JC, that is WAY da fuuck outta my pay grade!

Seeding central this weekend, getting late danmit!




C, I was hoping you guys got something and was watching the radar all last week. Sucks, no other way around it. Big old lightning show across the river right now, they are getting douched and we have got maybe less than a tenth.

It was a hot one this afternoon.

Loaded and going with the wind up a gradual incline and the ol' Versatile got warm each pass. Crowding 210F so I resorted to killing the A/C and that dropped it 5F, just enough to stop the warning light!

6 minutes later hit the other end, spin around and crank the A/C back on!

You look very wise......and sweaty.

I look like I have a receding hairline.




Here's an interesting fun farm fact.


Fixing fence on a creek bottom.


A recorded count of 32 ticks within 1-2 hours.


All crawlers, maybe 1 hooked up.



Shattered old records.


Creepy!

And looking at radar maybe a storm headed up to the far NE corner?!


I hope you catch it C!

Time for a rain dance in Plentywood country.

Wife is watching TV.


Flash flood warning for Garfield and McCone counties(to the south).

Nothing to speak of here.

We got 1 tenth...of a tenth.

I refuse to use hundredths.......as of now.

Looked at the weather....big storms!

Hey Jim,
You mention organics. Are you growing legumes for humans?
Or, is this livestock food to meet requirement to label meat as organic?


My Brother-in-law says how you can't make much farming.
I keep telling him he can't make much trying to compete with
IBP. He has a nice Pa. hill farm, and is too set in the "old" ways.

We are 150 miles from Pittsburgh, Baltimore, and D.C. those people
will pay stupid amounts of money for grass fed beef and organic anything.
He needs to get in their markets.

Dillon, yes the lentils I have grown were for human consumption.

No pulse crops this year though.


I only have one farm that is certified organic, and so far we have only raised spring wheat on it. It is a wreck this year, like everything else.


We tried the grass fat thing here, selling some beef. This area is so poor that folks buy beef by the cut, not by the quarter. Even though they can get better beef for less money buying from me.

We are not set up for retail cuts.


A few years ago Gabe Brown gave a half a day talk that I attended.

Its sounds corny but attending that talk changed my life. Made me excited about agriculture again. We focus on sustainability and profit now, not production.

We quit fallowing land, we stock pile forage for winter grazing, pasture calve on green grass, rotate crops, plant cover crops and so forth.


The only down fall for us is how bloody poor it is here. Folks wont buy our eggs if they cost more than you can buy at the grocery store!

I buy fresh eggs from our neighbors across the street I pay a buck a dozen above what they cost at the store. But the quality is beyond compare. They are longtime livestock ranchers. Few years ago we had a real mild winter and their hens where laying out of control. At that point they were just trying to give the eggs away because they couldn’t even sell enough at the local farmers markets. Eggs in the stores were going for 98cents locally.

Hell, I'm givin' eggs away free.

Chickens are laying 6 doz. a week.

We may eat 8-9 eggs a week.

I'd rather give 'em away than be bothered by folks driving up wanting to buy them.

Farm eggs sell for about $2 doz here.

That’s a good price for farm fresh eggs. Back when all the kids were at home In highschool and all in sports we’d burn through three dozen eggs a week. Heck a Sunday morning breakfast was one dozen itself. Our ranching neighbors tried to stop taking money for the eggs years ago during that time as they are big sports boosters of the high school. They got tired of the gifts showing up on their porch and relented.

Having enough city people around is kinda the secret to this organic farming stuff. Most rural people don't fall for the sales pitch. It's like the angus beef being better than the other breeds. It's hard to BS PEOPLE RAISED IN THE COUNTRY. ED K

I wonder how many a black baldy crossbred end up in a purebred angus package.

Jim, we, unfortunately, are in transition here. The locals are mostly lower income. We have way too many imports, ruining the place.
Not enough of them to really market organic to. A couple places are surviving doing that. But they are all hippies that got Pappy's farm.
Funny that, hippies marketing to the Man.

Anyhow, our markets are 100 miles away. Christmas time one of dad's friends used to take a pickup and trailer load of firewood to Pittsburgh, set in the mall and sell it.
All you can put on one arm $10. In the '80's he would come home with a weeks pay, in cash, for about a days effort. Same thing with sweet corn. Here it was around $1/dz there $3. Pull a trailer load out there for 2 hours sell for 3-4, come home.

I have a cousin that lives 20 odd miles from Hagerstown Md. He has made a fortune being a hillbilly in the city.
He had 20 or 30 acres that he truck farmed, and land here that he cut wood on to sell there. The stuff that we would sell here,
would bring 2-3 times more money for him.