[near horse]

You mean a slip or sled?  We use one here.  IME, they handle about 6 bales at a time reliably; like most baling, I have my chute tilted up a bit; figure out how to run your trip line to trigger the latch and open the gate (we have a pair of rods w/ loops on them); I’ll post a picture of the setup if you want.

Also – a lot of guys weld another rail on the sides toincrease the height but it doesn’t change the capacity IMO – 2 high bales can barely make it out the gate.

BTW – have you seen the old buncher stackers.  They leave a pyramid of 6 bales behind.

[near horse]

Eli – I jus need to add the “dry side” as well.  A large proportion of the dryland wheat farmers here in the PNW have switched over to no-till and had a bad experience last fall seeding winter wheat due to unusually dry fall conditions.  They were pulling up clods of earth the size of basketballs trying to no-till into overly dry soil and tore up their drills in the process.

[near horse]

Sorry Erika – here’s the manufacturer’s site with similar video.  http://www.erme-france.com/eng/planteuses.html

[near horse]

http://www.dutchvalleygrowers.com/equipment_P1.html

Not to hijack a thread  but here’s some garlic equipment and while this is tractor equipment, it sure gives one some ideas as to fabricating both a planter and harvester from “stuff” in the equipment boneyard.

That planting wheel looks a lot like a steel lugged wheel off a spud digger! ….

 

Also – I googled garlic planters and noticed a number of homemade ones out there.

[near horse]

Erika – did you hand plant those rows?  They look a lot better than my efforts for straight and tidy!  I ask because I’ve never seen a garlic planter but did see a homemade version out of Canada on the show “Prairie Farm Report”.  It was a ride-on planter with 2 wheels (like a transplanter sort of) and they used cups made from plastic bottle caps I think.  Pulled with a garden tractor but pretty slow speed.

[near horse]

“As farmers we have more muscle than money.”  Hmm – wait ’til you’re older and re-evaluate that statement. : )

Now mine reads “little muscle and less money”.

[near horse]

If you want to make bioD at a smaller scale you build your own “less efficient” processor at a fraction the cost.  There are tons of plans/designs out there.  Crushing is the limiter ….. presses are not so cheap either and the “reasonably priced” ones have a small throughput capacity.  That’s why the guy in the photo was running 3 presses at once.

I tried to point out earlier that canola/rape have been highly bred and selected and need babying (pesticide/herbicides/fertilizer).  The guy in the photos is probably crushing canola but he’s really promoting camelina — much smaller seed and yields but pretty hardy/tough plant that requires little “babying”.

Another option to offset costs would be to work out a cooperative arrangement with other like-minded individuals.

[near horse]

Actually, the chemical and energy (heat) costs are included in the cost per gallon of producing biodiesel.  And to make it even close to profit making or break even, the byproducts (oilseed meal as well as glycerin) are considered to have been sold.  Chemical cost – the sodium hydroxide is pretty minimal  in both amounts and cost;  methanol is not so cheap and now uses natural gas as the base so sort of linked back to the petro market.  Can use ethanol but from the literature, it’s not as “good” as methanol.  AND you need to make ethanol (and not drink it or use it directly).

The flow issues that bioD has are also a problem with WVO (waste veg oil).  The other sticker is water.  Water can wreak havoc on your lift/injector pump.

The positive thing about some biod production is that seed can be stored until you have the time to process it.  Also, both ethanol and biod production yield a useable byproduct — the leftover/spent meal.  The cost of the “processing equipment” if purchased, can be a putoff but worth investigation.  Here’s a series of pics showing the setup at a local farmer’s shop –he’s running 3 seed presses in the first picture.

 

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[near horse]

With regard to when rain has the greatest negative impact on your hay crop, it is certainly right before baling or after it has been cured.  If you think of freshly mowed hay as having water in it you’re trying to “remove” via drying, there will be less flushing/leaching of nutrients  from rainwater.  So Donn’s method makes sense (but that sayig doesn’t sound so good “make hay while the rain falls”.

Carl – we used to argue with the forage agronomist at the university regarding just what you mention – rained on vs older unrained on hay.  He used to say that letting it get old only guaranteed a loss in quality vs gambling on a rain related loss.  I argued that the losses assocaited with getting rain AND having to tedd, redry, rake are much greater than those from hay a little more mature.  Not to mention palatability.

[near horse]

I think Carl has it right.  If you’re leaving mowed hay in the field with impending rain, you have exposed more surface area of the hay to rain/leaching of nutrients.  Putting it in a windrow is comparable to stacking hay (on a much smaller scale) that helps to shed some of the rainfall..  It does require spreading the windrow back out to dry which is another step and can wreak havoc on things like alfalfa.

[near horse]

Steve – one issue on the bio-d front using rape/canola is crushing/pressing the seed and then doing the transesterification (you need ethanol or methanol and sodium or potassium hydroxide).  So there’s some input cost both in expendables (reagents) and equipment (press and reactor).  The equipment can be homebuilt if needed but not so the chemicals.

Good part – r/c is pretty high in oil(I think in the 30 – 40% range); the meal left over after pressing is a) good livestock feed (plenty of protein)  b) can be resold at $2-300/T.   Also, rape/canola can be grazed (if careful).

Bad part – rape/canola can yield up to 3000# per acre but is really susceptible to bugs (flea beetles) and weed pressure.  Commercially they spray and baby it a lot.  Harvest – combine.

BUT – you can also try other oilseeds that are a bit more robust (how about mustard) but might be lower in oil content.  There has been some research into using mustard seed meal as a pesticide by spreading it on the soil surface.  I don’t know what the result was.

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j.i holt –

While the 540 RPM output seemed to necessary to me as well, Dris Abraham at Historic Prophetstown in Ohio uses an I & J GD  PTO cart and runs it at 300 or 350 ( apparently you can select a PTO speed).  I can’t recal what he was doing with it at that speed (I think maybe mowing) but he IS pretty experienced with the the GD cart from I &J.

[near horse]

Here we see a lot of used rotary tedders with the gear boxes torn up — when hay in the windrow gets soaked guys go at it in high tractor gear (like 6-10 mph).  Not so good with heavy wet hay.

[near horse]

Here’s a pic

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This thing looks like a full-blown sulky minus a tongue and the necessary changes needed to make it work w/o a tongue.  I’ll post a pic soon.

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