Hired out. He has the dozer and an excavator, and he has a Versatile 550 quad track he uses to pull a tile plow . He also has a trencher he uses depending on the project.




Yes, it's just been cold and wet up until today. I started planting today, and last year at this time I was close to if not 100% done with planting.

Stripping yesterday


Planting today

The trencher (wheel machine) is what piqued my curiosity. I recognized it instantly...it's what dad started with 3 decades ago. Wheel machines are the only way to run big tile (dad's big one will do a 36" wide trench) for outlets.

Dad has never been a fan of pull-behind plows. They're just too susceptible to heaving up and down through varying soils. And his largest client (owns a few thousand acres) hires him for the sole reason they don't use a plow.  Dad finally found a plow that truly satisfies his demand for install quality. A big part of it is it has the necessary weight to prevent heaving; it's almost 80,000 lb (the machine only). This isn't his machine, but it's a video the manufacturer put out of his model in action.



ETA, and after watching videos and seeing pictures, his client that refused to let a plow in his place is ok with that plow...

Got started on the first mowing of this year out at the acreage.  Just trying to keep the old fields open.

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Have you heard of cows?

Yep, but no fences & 12 miles from the house location. Tractor & bush hog get stored under a a shed roof off a small out building during mowing months.

With that much grass I would run cows inside an electric fence. Make some extra money.

How big?

I keep our 2 fields-about 3.5acres each-mowed. We alternate every year mowing one like a “yard” and keeping the other one “wild”. I mow some narrow paths for walking/ATVs. Lots of butterflies/birds/animals/etc in the tall grass.

20 acres total, maybe 6 - 8 open, 2 w/tree cover but mowed & about 10 or so wooded. I just mow often enough to knock down sweet gum saplings, pine,  briers, etc. that would otherwise take over.  The field areas are at either end of the long (~2000'), somewhat T shaped property, with the back fields land locked & accessed via an old "farm road" passing through/along other properties.

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edit for accuracy

Is the tiling installed to allow the ground to drain better?  There doesn't appear to be a lot of fall to those fields, so it's interesting from a storm water management perspective.

@nikdfish would you happen to be in Person county?  I'm just a few miles from a road with the same name.

Yep. The acreage is an inheritance of the wife, her portion of what was a family farm. Our house is out near Hyco lake.

Yup! In flat land it's a must for rowcrop agriculture.

It's expensive to do (a few thousand dollars per acre) but pays off with better yields in wet years. And it can make huge differences for spring planting. Imagine a wet spring where fields don't dry enough to till/plant in between rains. If the field will dry in 4 days vs 6 days it might mean you get the corn planted during a small break in the weather the 1st week of May when others won't get a long enough break until June. That can mean tens of thousands of dollars in yield difference for a single field.

ETA, in many areas the terrain is so flat that they have to get creative with how they route the water. The old school way was done with manual surveys, then they had laser level systems, now it's all GPS. My brother has a very high precision GPS on an old Jeep. They drive across the field every 40' or so developing a detailed map of the contours of the land. He takes that and plugs it into a computer program that helps him determine where each run of tile has to be to get the right amount of grade for water to flow, yet maintain the ideal cover. Too much cover and it's too hard for the water to get into the tile, too little and it can be crushed or damaged by farm equipment. Occasionally they still can't get things to work. The big wheel machine used for installing the "main line" that all the small ones feed into (main is called an outlet and small ones are laterals) has a max depth of 7 feet. Several times they've had to hire a dozer to come in and peel out as much as 6 feet so they could run an outlet (water doesn't run up over hills). After he has the runs all mapped he saves them and moves them to identical GPS units on each of the machines. The GPS will then automatically steer the trencher/plow, and automatically control the depth to ensure the tile is laid at the right depth and in the right place.

The new plow has an automatic tile cutter/feeder/crimper so the operator doesn't have to get out of the seat at each end. It still needs to be connected to the outlet at 1 end, but the high end (a deadend) doesn't require anything outside of pushing some buttons and levers.

When the job is all done they save all the maps on a digital file and give them to the property owner so he/she knows where each tile is and how deep it is.

The business is good money, but the cost of entry is expensive and the learning curve is steep. Dad got started by signing a contract to buy out a guy's entire business then "interning" with him for over a year to learn the finer points of the business. As far as cost of entry, they have about $1.5M worth of equipment if you include the trucks to haul it (technically a separate business).

Mowing a field and taking a break in the shade

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And done!!


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Mowing the gun range today



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What model Kubota is that? How's it handle a side mower like that?

It is the B3200, it handles that mower much better then I thought it would.
I almost ordered the 48"mower but I am glade I got the 57" as the tractor does just fine.
Only got the mower on Friday. Mower weighs 750 lbs.

Interesting. I have a B2650 and I always figured it was too light and narrow to handle something like that.

I personally wouldn't have enough use to make it worth getting one anyway though.

@SigOwner_P229

Thanks for the detailed response.  That's good info.

No problem.

This is their first year with the plow and it's been slow getting things going smoothly with a new piece of equipment. With fair weather and time things are starting to go better for them. They installed 4700 feet of tile per hour Friday with the plow. The wheel machine was lucky to do 10,000 feet per day.

Holy crap.  Dang near a mile an hour.  I've never been around it, but I never would have guessed you could put anything in the ground that quick.

It takes 1 operator and 3 others to make connections and keep up with the other work at that pace.

The Quick Hitch that I ordered a couple of months ago finally arrived. I got it hooked up the other day onto my LX2610:



We then moved my brush hog into its proper place under the overhang:

Don't know if posting chores from my work machine counts.


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No pictures, but had the L3901 tires filled with Rimguard today. Should be around 750lbs, hopefully enough to keep the back end down some when using the loader.

You might know this already, but I'd still recommend ballast behind the rear axle.

Thanks, planning on making a ballast box eventually, no doubt it would help.

Do you have a compact but heavy 3ph implement?  Ballast boxes are typically a unitasker; useful for nothing other than weight and mass.  A heavy implement will probably work better - hangs a bit further back.  Once I bought my box blade, I modified it from 675 lb to almost 1200 lbs.  After I got it, I never used my ballast box again (55 gallon barrel filled with concrete).  I ended up giving it away.

Currently only have a wood chipper (which sees a ton of use).  Weight about 900 lbs, but sticks pretty far off the back and is unwieldy while maneuvering.  I may eventually get a tiller or flail mower, which would fit the bill too.

I get it.  My bushhogs (Bushhog 286 and now a Howse 7') are by far my best counterweight implements.  But it's like maneuvering a semi-truck around when they are on the back.  Having said that, my bushhogs are by far my favorite for moving my deer shooting houses around.

Here's a simple addition to almost any 3ph implement to add weight - a 450 lbs concrete weight block.  You can just barely see it on the back of my bushhog in the pic below.  I build the houses in my shop, then move them to their location, lift them up and install the +8' 4x4s underneath them.  Also note the concrete, lead and steel wheel weights.

Only have before and after pics, with no tractor pic, but took advantage of high 60* weather this morning to work on clearing some more cedar and thorns.
Brushhog and grapple used often.

dear Ag Guys, please don’t make fun of the size of my front tire/wheel assembly…

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Lol, your wheel is so small!

Nah, just kidding...for real, even the ag guys gotta mow the yard. My dad has 500 hp tractors and other massive equipment but still has a BX2660 for mowing, moving small things, etc. No size too small.

props for DIY on that rubber swap.

as you can see, I did cheat.  late in the week my eye began to get hella irritated and red, so my wife dragged me to the eye doctor.  while I was in the waiting area I watched some YouTube videos on changing small size tires.  a lot of folks recommended the harbor freight changer.  I have quite a bit of experience changing motocross bike tires (I’ve ridden enduro and dual-sport forever) but with my eye all crapped up I was thinking that using the HF changer would be easier than fighting the tire with the 12 inch tire spoons that I have for my bike.  I went to HF on the way home from the ophthalmologist and bought the changer.  

my BX is 11 years old now and this is the first tire I’ve pulled.  like many BX owners have experienced, my fronts “bled down” a bit when the tractor was new.  the common solution to this is introduction of a quart of slime.  problem solved.

early in the week I drove to dump some brush in the woods, and when I went to back up and turn the front right was already so low of pressure I nearly ripped the tire from the wheel.  I got a garden cart, put my little compressor in it, dragged it out to the tractor, and refilled the front tire about 6 times so I could get it all the way back into the shop.  luckily the FEL was already on, and the FEL makes for a nice front jack.  a little cribbing and then I could work on the tire.  

the damage was in the shoulder of the tire, and it was more of a slit than a puncture.  the slit seemed to be about 1/4” to 3/8” long.   no matter what I tried I could not get a plug to hold pressure.  or rather, it did hold, until I drove the tractor a bit and made a turn.  the sidewall flex would open up the slit and pressure escaped.  

so I had to order a tire and as noted above I bought a changer while I was considering how much cursing would be involved.

I rate this changer 9 out 10.  watch some videos first, but you can go very quickly.  the only thing that I would change is where I mounted the changer base.  I didn’t want a quart of Slime on my workbench, so I screwed the changer base to my carry-all deck.  this proved to be a bit low for certain operations -- it did work, but it's a little cumbersome.  

but IMHO, the HF changer is worth it for small tires (it works up to 12" rim dia).  

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Unloaded my mower and welding table:

It's my most used implement.

That Farmall is so cool
I would have to use a gel seat cushion though
Can you post some engine pic's?
@Andrapos

Improvise, adapt and overcome.

I added Cat 1 to Cat 3 conversion bushings to the pins on my brush hog so it will have a better fit on the new quick hitch:

Couldn’t stand turf tires on my BX, always getting pinch flats. Change to the R4, way better and they don’t do anymore damage to a lawn than the turfs with a machine that size.

Spent yesterday adding some accessories to the L2501.  Femco Tuff Top, LED work lights, and some Ken's bolt-on bucket hooks.

Very nice, what basket is that?

Kolpin 53360 ATV Front Rack Gear Basket

That looks quite handy, is it hard to see when you're hooking up implements?

It's not bad when the basket isn't full of stuff.  It did take some getting used to having the basket back there since I do a lot of backing when brush-hogging.

Its a tractor to me damnit!

And it pulled that trailer with probably 1500lbs of dirt in it and it didn't explode!