[AT] Thorns

[Mike M]

Hi Farmer,
My wife and I had a similar situation in 1995 when we built a house on
old cattle pasture land. We only had 10 acres, but between us and our
neighbors we had about 70 acres, and were just down the road from my
buddy who was about my age, but farmed for his dad. The field was full
of ridges and holes and was a nightmare to walk through. I said he could
farm it for nothing if it could help make it smoother. He came with a
big John Deere and a 24' disc. After discing it he still wasn't happy
with the results, so he hooked up a 6 bottom plow and plowed the whole
field, the plow pulled about 14" deep, then he disced it again. Our
field was now like a putting green. Good for both parties involved.

Mike M

On 12/29/2020 8:04 AM, Indiana Robinson wrote:
> My parents bought this farm in 1951 after it had been badly farmed for
> many years by a series of terrible renters. Recalling back I have
> trouble grasping just how backward much of american farming was until
> after WW-II. The great depression sat farming back a lot as most just
> tried to hang on. In those post WW-II days my father was quite
> progressive and so were many of our neighbors but there were a large
> number that were still farming that should have not been farming. My
> father bought a field sprayer after the war and he kept pretty busy
> spraying for neighbors as it was the only field sprayer in the
> neighborhood. This farm was horribly eroded with gullies that were
> deep enough to hide cows. Fence lines were grown up as wide as 30'
> mostly with honey locust thorn trees, many with 12 to 18 inch trunks
> and a zillion of them with 1 to 3 inch trunks growing only a few
> inches apart. Back then most farms had a certain amount of permanent
> pasture for grazing horses and cattle etc.  On this farm those were
> covered about 80% with honey locust. Many large areas were even
> impassable walking. They had even abandoned one 20 acre field as "worn
> out" and no longer worth planting.
> We worked really hard during the early 1950's to make a real farm out
> of the place. Much of the work until about 1956 was with a Deere
> crawler, first an MC then a new 40C. The dozer blade was in constant
> use both on thorn trees and filling gullies. Building new fences was
> also constant.
> Another constant was spraying... From the time I was 11 I spent much
> of every year except winter spraying thorn trees, basically with agent
> orange... Mixing 2-4-D, 2-4-5-T and stove oil.
> It became standard practice for my father and I when doing field work
> to refuel the tractors each evening and if we had come in before dark
> we would each take out our pocket knives and working, one of us on
> each side of a tractor, start digging out thorns in the tires. We did
> that while also discussing the day now done and planning the next day
> and future days and projects.
>
>
> .
>
> On Tue, Dec 29, 2020 at 2:46 AM Steve W. <swilliams268 at frontier.com
> <mailto:swilliams268 at frontier.com>> wrote:
>
>     Mike 1countryguy wrote:
>     > new tires and tubes for my 4 x4 were over 7,000 dollars several
>     years
>     > ago.   That makes renting/hiring a dozer much more affordable. 
>      Unless
>     > you can get some tires that the Mennonite's use In northern
>     Richland
>     > County, Ohio.
>
>
>     I have a few tires around here with TireJect in them. Stuff seems to
>     work a lot better than slime but isn't as easy to get. Doesn't
>     cause the
>     rims to rot either.
>     One of the demo mowers I ran last year had air free tires on it, like
>     the Tweel. Worked OK but didn't have a lot of traction on wet
>     grass or
>     mud. Probably would have been good on ice like on an ATV/UTV
>     because you
>     could drive ice studs into them, but they are $$$$$$4
>
>     --
>     Steve W.
>     _______________________________________________
>     AT mailing list
>     AT at lists.antique-tractor.com <mailto:AT at lists.antique-tractor.com>
>     http://lists.antique-tractor.com/listinfo.cgi/at-antique-tractor.com
>
>
>
> --
> --
>
> Francis Robinson
> aka "farmer"
> Central Indiana USA
> robinson46176 at gmail.com <mailto:robinson46176 at gmail.com>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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