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- wild millersParticipant
Nice work, that looks awesome. I couldn’t really tell from the video, but how is the three abreast neck yoke attached to the end of the tongues? Is it bolted? I was also wondering what is the distance between the two tongues? We often put three abreast on our I&J ground drive cart but like you said, you can’t get the D-Ring cinched up tight and I was wondering if I could utilize the different tongue positions on the I&J cart to fit in two tongues. I haven’t measure it yet though and it may be a bit narrow for the middle horse. The thing is, when I want three horses on it is in the bigger more hilly hay fields and that’s also when I want them all to be able to hold back and not have the tongue weight on their necks for a long time. Finally.. just wondering why you would want to lighten your tongue weight if you have designed the rig for the D-ring? Thanks for sharing, cool project.
wild millersParticipantbendube, thanks for the thoughts. With those concerns in mind when we went to the field today I was curious to see what we would find. We aren’t on what you would call bottomland in this garden, though about half of it is lower than the other and it doesn’t drain very well right now. When the subsoiler had past through, we went back and excavated a little to see what it looked like and found the hard pan to be moist, though not soggy and while I wouldn’t say that we “shattered it” we also didn’t “smear it” it was pretty cleanly cut through with a few chunks of compacted hard pan broken up and pushed up near to the bottom of the furrow.
A few more pictures…also you will notice that with three abreast, one horse was walking on the plowed ground, one in the furrow, and one on the land. I was able to justify this because for one it made the subsoiler track straight in the furrow behind the middle horse, and the other reason is because I was using our little hillside plow. At each headland we were swinging it around and alternating from left handed to right handed plowing. This meant that at each headland turnaround the outside horses swapped positions from land to plowed ground, thus not leaving one horse walking on the plowed ground all afternoon.
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You must be logged in to view attached files.wild millersParticipantWell, we had at it today. Taking breaks every now and then we were able to work around the 90 plus degree heat, we started around 11, took a break for the afternoon then started again at 6 or so and finished up around 7:30. I say finishing up, but we had to leave the last few furrows un-finished because a mighty thunderstorm blew in. Overall I think it was a great success. We were running the subsoiler at a consistent 15-16 inches deep, sometimes a little more sometimes less. The three horse hitch was definitely necessary. They were able to pull it, and quite readily they did so, though they were working for it.
I was driving the young team out front with the plow and some friends pitched in to drive the three abreast with the subsoiler behind me. A few observations made…I was pleased with the vertical suction of the subsoiler, though I wish that I had been able to set the point at a steeper angle so that the beam would have been able to run a but more parallel to the ground. I set it at this angle by taking measurements off of a yeomans plow shank, and if we set it any steeper it would interfere with the potato plow, when we wanted to bolt it back on, which will bolt back on with two bolts. As it was, we had to flip the vertical clevis upside down to gain enough of a hitch angle to get the subsoiler to bite at this depth. That said though, we were able to make it work, so I’m not sure I have any complaints about it. The beam just looks a bit funny. For the most part when they laid into a stone, it would tend to pop it up onto the surface, though they did hit at least 2 that stopped them dead. The team stopped quickly though and it wasn’t much work to lift the shank out and let the team re-set it again past the stone. For those observant enough, you may have already recognized what the point for the subsoiler is made of. Take a look again and you will see the spike of a pick ax, cut off at the head and welded on the bottom on the beam! I’m debating at this point whether we should try to finish the field as we started or leave the last little bit as a final variable for the comparison of the sub-soiled, non-subsoiled, and bio-drilled gardens. I think we may do this whole plot again next year to finish the field for good. As it was we were running the subsoiler every 12″ or so across the field in each furrow bottom, so we ended up with pretty good coverage I think, but again, if we do it next season as well we would probably break it all up for good!Attachments:
You must be logged in to view attached files.wild millersParticipantErika, thanks for your thoughts.
Your questions are also my own for the long term effects of this operation. This particular field in our market gardens has been participating in a study on soil health through Bianca Moebius-Clune and her team at the Cornell University soil health lab, for the past 2 years. The study runs a 4 year course and is being replicated on about 10 farms in NH, it is being tested on crop ground, pastures, and hay field alike. Soil health testing means she is testing for physical and biological activity in the soil as well as aggregate stability and depth/hardness of hard pan. As opposed to just the chemical readout of available nutrients. More can be found out about this here.. http://soilhealth.cals.cornell.edu/index.htmThis fit in with our goals of making our market gardens drought proof since we do not irrigate the field crops and would like to build our resiliency to erratic weather patterns. Anyway, we divide this field into four sections to help facilitate our cover crop and cash crop rotations. We will be attempting to subsoil the far left plot in the photo this time around and hopefully the near left as well soon after. We consider this subsoiling to be a one time effort as once the pan is ripped we hope it will stay broken under our low till horse powered operations. The two plots on the right in the photo are both also dealing with the hard pan issues, but they both have a few spots where the soil is a bit thin and bony. Stoney, and we couldn’t subsoil very easily. In these plots we are focusing on tap rooted cover crops..tillage radishes, and sudex. The near right plot in the photo is a solid stand of tillage radishes last fall. The tillage radishes were part of our no-till onion experiment that we will be putting together a small photo essay about. Possibly contributing to to a multiple farm collaboration about tillage radishes in Anne and Eric’s CQ column in the SFJ in the near future.
Anyway the jist of all of this is that two plots will be tap rooted or bio-drilled using cover crops to break the pan, and two will be mechanically subsoiled by live horse power for a directly side by side look at results. The soil health experiment will continue for this season and next and we will be looking forward to what we find.
Finally to be clear I should say that the plots we will be subsoiling this coming week will be on their way into a summer bare fallow period before being cover cropped in august for spring veggie planting. I wanted to fit this into a slot in our rotations that didn’t have a cash crop following it for the reasons Erika stated about the evaporation of soil moisture to the depth its been worked. -JoelAttachments:
You must be logged in to view attached files.wild millersParticipantThanks Carl, we’ll give that a try. My wife Annalisa is a licensed massage therapist though she hasn’t tried working on the horses yet.
wild millersParticipant$8 would be out of the loft, so not too far off from your price. Just not too many grains being grown here. My brother in law does grow quite a diversity of grains on the farm next door, but they aren’t clean of seed and make for a challenge of priorities for us.
wild millersParticipantNice looking straw, and a nice price too. Up to $8 a bale in our area. Wish you were a little closer to NH. Those onions are looking good too.
wild millersParticipantThe book goes on to say that with this adaptation you could clip anywhere from 3-13″ It also speaks of a hooked bolt that would hold up the inner shoe even with your outer shoe. The bolt would go through the tongue and the push/drag bar would be held up by the hook on the bottom of the bolt. Doesn’t give a very clear picture of that part though
wild millersParticipantBen, Heres a photo from The Mower Book by Lynn Miller. Page 66. -thanks george
Looks like it could be very simply rigged up with any sort of steel wheel, I thought that I may try the gauge wheel idea also, I think it could bolt right onto the shoe to keep the forward support that the shoe provides. Like it shows in the picture. I spoke with Macknair and he says hes never even seen one of the these adapters before. In the books, but not in real life.Attachments:
You must be logged in to view attached files.wild millersParticipantThanks for the thoughts daniel, your timing sounds right on with rye and vetch management. I have clipped crops in transport mode before, the problems I found were, an un-even cut of course. The inner shoe clipping low and the outer shoe floating way up there, it does get the job done but I also noticed that doing that seemed to destroy the first hold down clip on the bar. It was wearing hard on the two knives that run under it, gouging them out and basically wearing the end of the hold down to nothing. It just feels like its hard on the machine when mowing in transport. Can anybody add to that and let me know if we should be able to mow in transport mode without being hard on the machine?
wild millersParticipantOh, neat, thanks for sharing. I guess I have seen this idea described a little differently in Lynn Miller’s book on horesdrawn plows, but he talked about a chain hitched right behind the furrow horses evener and back to the beam to work the same effect. He also talks about how this puts lots of carbon into the soil at one time and the need to let the soil digest for a while before trying to plant a crop into that for the sake of nitrogen robbery by all the carbon. I guess that’s why I’m aiming to keep the cover short and vegetative and leaving all the clippings to start the decomposition process before plow down time.
wild millersParticipantJ.l holt, I’m not familiar with the high wire..would you mind explaining?
Ed, I believe that idea. Just wondering if they were speaking of grass/legume crops or small grain cover crops? With this high mowing idea i’m trying to deal with rye and vetch, oats, sorghum sudan grass, annual rye and such. Trying to keep them young and vegetative to get a couple clippings off of them before plow down.
wild millersParticipantYes, you have to adjust each wheel independently and its kind of futsy getting them all to run at the same angle, but we set them so the wheels are turned in towards the field one notch.
wild millersParticipantHighway, you asked about raking hay in from the outside edge of the field. One approach we use sometimes depending on the field is to change the tracking angle on the tedder wheels for the first two passes around the outside of the field so it kicks the hay farther into the field rather than spin it into the brush at the edge.
wild millersParticipantAt this point our only working horse drawn plow is a walking IH hillside. We use it in the market garden extensively and also for breaking sod. It seems that with very little adjustment we have always been able to turn a nice looking furrow, that said, it definitely isn’t optimum for every condition. They are designed to go pretty good both directions but not great in either direction. Ironically I just spent the last two days opening up an acre of hillside sod with this tool and for the life of me, I couldn’t get the thing to turn a decent furrow uphill. Ended up turning everything downhill and cursing at not being able to make it turn up. I realize the center mounted lever can swing to the left or right to adjust your horizontal hitch which should account for the hillside plowing. When plowing with the left handed bottom, throwing soil uphill I set the lever all the way to the left and the machine seems to run a bit more level. Most of the time though, on any kind of flat ground I keep the lever tied off in the center and am very pleased with the performance. Above all else though, my biggest issue with the hillside plow is walking behind it! Because it is designed to work both directions, the handles are not offset as they would be with a regular right or left handed plow. That means the handles are centered on the machine and moldboard is set off to the right or left depending. Leaving you always walking in the same spot whether throwing right or left and that is one foot in the furrow, one foot on the land. I can get away with walking either the furrow or land sometimes, though it is never really comfortable. If you were in really mellow, stone free soil, you could even get away with walking next to the machine steering it one handed which I have managed a few times when my legs get tired of tripping over each other, though we don’t have much of that kind of ground on the farm. Like any plow it gets real jumpy when the ground gets bony. I usually use it just as a left handed plow just because I’m more comfortable with that and our near horses are better at walking the furrow, but it is a great training exercise working it both ways, as each horse gets their turn in the furrow. Overall I do enjoy the tool but am always dreaming about finding a good left handed walking plow which seem to be non-existent up here in NH. Sorry about the long winded response, I’ve spent a lot of time recently looking down the handles of a hillside and thinking about how they work.
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