Home Forums Miscellaneous Topics Rural Living A Harrowing Experience!

Harrowing pasture land with a rigged harrow, that is.


Here, in this neck of the woods, the pastures need to be loosened and aerated. If you do, the grass grows much, much better.

This ridged harrow also fixes and levels gopher mounds, (some I've seen are 10' around, and 3 feet high.)... And it levels hog damage from rooting of feral hogs in pastures. Levels fire ant mounds as well.

You can see several mounds in the photo.



Just waiting on some rain to bring the grass on!





Ranchers don't raise livestock. They raise grass.

You're definitely more dry than the Upper Midwest right now. One couldn't do anything on good pasture sod without adverse results. More rain/snow tonight through Sat night. Should start drying out here next week.
You are right.....you are a grass farmer/rancher and use cattle to manage your grass. My wife and I are retired grazers. Miss our cattle, but it was time. Hogs, huh? Don't have those critters up here, just coyotes and wolves.

That is good even with a flex harrow, it breaks up the meadow muffins and spurs the new growth. We often think we will do it, rarely do.

Are the bottems shaped like a chisel plow? Is that what pulls them down into the ground?

They are just cut off at right angles to make a sharp edge.

What degree you engage the ground, and the pitch angle as well as how moist the soil is, is how deep it'll run. If you run too deep put a spacing donut on the hydraulic cylinder to limit depth.

I like that tool very much. You're right about it helping pastures. I have a few times used a disc that was set to just barely hit the soil, and done we call scarify the ground. I also made a pasture drag out of some fencing panels and 2X6's that I use to drag down pastures and scatter the piles of cow chit. It works halfazz, though not as good as one made strictly for that use.

Near here in Sac City, Noble Manufacturing made a lot of harrows. The teeth can be turned, they are square, but with a flute.
I've been told the made the point by heating, and pulling them apart.

When Nobles shut down in 84 it was about the end of Sac City.

That thing looks like it would take some HP to pull through the sod like that.

I use this eight foot flexible in my horse pastures to aerate and spread my free fertilizer.

That's way too shiny, it ain't half broken in.

I'm pulling it w/ my 75hp tractor.

You sure don't need brakes... Just hit the clutch.

When going through one of those big gopher hills that has been expanded on for years, it really digs in!

The more uneven the land, the more aggressive it gets.

I like it!

That one is an Armstrong Ag rigid harrow, and is 12' They can put 4' batwings on each side, making it a 20' harrow. That'd burn some diesel!

Yeah... Not used it much yet.

Just bought it a few weeks ago, when I got that compact track loader...


My tractor dealer loves me! ($$$$)

A harrowing experience is driving over one that was left sitting for the tall grass to conceal.

I get that experience a few times a year when shredding ranches that are overgrown.

Never with a harrow, but I have run over some pretty interesting things that got my attention when the shredder got to them.

That would be handy at times in the winter.