Drilling Alfalfa & Pouring Walls

how's it going guys today is march the 30th we're getting to the time of year when we're thinking about doing some field work and the first thing usually is to see some alfalfa we're going to try and do that today we also want to intercede some grass and some old alfalfa stands gonna hook up the drill got the 7220 off the sprayer so back over and get this hooked up first just going to check over the drill a little bit get some seat in it the other day i got my sprayer monitors moved at first we had mounted them up there because we didn't have any other place to put them really we got another bracket and moved them back i think it's a pretty good spot these are the boom controls and then the one off switch and the individual section control i don't have too much i need to do to the drill these front tires need some air we have about 15 acres of old alfalfa that we want to intercede some grass into this is our alfalfa seed for the new seedings we have a 10 acre field we want to plant then once you get that seed it lasts about three or four years and we have a few fields that are starting to get a little thinned out during their third year we got this orchard grass so aired these tires up and i'm realizing at least one of them should be replaced getting kind of torn up there doesn't really look healthy i'm ready to go start seeding i'm going to help my dad clean up after the hoof trimmer first though had a little bit of rough start to my day i tried to film a couple different jobs this morning and then all my clips disappeared off my camera for some reason this machine is good for drilling into an established crop because it just has the discs that slice in and places the seed it doesn't really disrupt the soil too much we're going to be putting this grass into a standing off alpha field so we want to try to damage that up at least as possible we're just scraping up the scrape alley where the trimmer was we even trimmed our famous leader cal number 482 this morning i had filmed it but now i lost the footage so a little disappointed got everything back in order there and we just had this drill show up we're going to rent this one for the new seating alfalfa got about 15 acres to see with this one i'll unhook that and then hook up to this one for another 10 acres today they're going to be pouring the walls of our new pit they're getting the form set up this morning and should be ready by this afternoon i think they're planning to start around one so you guys see how that's coming along we have a little problem with this step here we caught something with it last year and it bent the step up and now we got to bend it down so that it don't catch that disc here got the forks he's just pushing on it trying to get it away from that disk all right hold it i'm ready to go with this rig i'm just going to order myself some lunch real quick and then we can do some seating i'll just be honest some days these videos are not as easy to make as others some days i just have trouble talking to the camera or all my clips get deleted or whatever take a small italian provolone cheese my wife's not home today for lunch i'm ready to head to the field now i'm just going to open up this valve which will allow the cylinders to drop down so we can start seating not really sure where to set our rate at i want to get about five to seven pounds to the acre there's nothing on the chart in here for this type of orchard grass so tried to just kind of find some other seeds that were similar size and compare see how it works out but what this is ideal just making sure everything's working on the drill we have it set at the shallowest depth we're just trying to intercede a little bit into this established alfalfa field i would have seen this alfalfa two years ago and it's just starting to thin out a little bit it is greening up a little more now but a week or so ago it looked pretty thin in this field a little bit of weeds coming up now but we're thinking if we can just seat in a little bit of grass it'll help it yield a little bit more this year make a little better feed we have about 15 acres that i'm gonna see it over just four fields strips across this area it's right around the new building so we'll get to see that action as we're going last pass on this first field a couple concrete trucks just pulled in looks like they're gonna start filling those walls [Applause] gonna take 110 yards of concrete which is about 11 truckloads [Applause] this is what we're doing to the soil we're not really beating it up too much just cutting slices in and placing the seed right in there not too deep it's a little wet out here the mud is sticking to the wheels a little bit but it's not too bad i want to check how much seed is left getting pretty empty it's a treated cow that i put fertilizer on a couple weeks ago it's really greening up and starting to grow good so now i'm going to unhook this drill we'll hook up to that drill so we can do the new seating alpha we're just going to be using the small seed box in the back we were using this big box for planting triticale last fall well we're just going to be using this small alpha seed and we want more precise metering so this is the alfalfa seed and it's coated with the treatment that's why it's pink it's real small stuff we want to plant about 25 pounds of the acre we got a chart right there so about j or k before i go see that i want to see how the concrete's coming along [Music] got it all filled up so i'm about to head out and do this alfalfa we could have seated this with our old drill uh we we have in the past but we like this drill for a couple reasons for this job for one thing the row spacing is a little closer it's only five and a half inch gaps between the rows instead of seven and a half and i think that helps with the weed control a little bit because there's just more cover of the dirt less space for weeds to grow in between the rows the other reason we like this drill is because it actually has this small seed box for for smaller seeds like alfalfa can be a little more precise and these tubes actually drop out they don't go down the the same tubes that the the big box goes into they just come out in the back behind the main discs so it's kind of dropping it just on top and ends up packing it in just a little bit it doesn't seat it very deep and that's really all you need for alfalfa you don't need it to be down under the soil much this drill is a little bit different because it has discs across the whole front of it that are there just to till the soil up a little bit just gonna start a little bit see how it's planting and then we can make adjustments if we have to so these will keep it from going quite as well just gonna adjust all these a little bit so i made a few adjustments to keep it from going so deep this wheel right here is what runs the meter so bring the seat out so if you have it up out of the ground that thing won't be spinning but once you drop it down it does this field we had uh seated with that ventrac last fall if you remember and then i came in a couple weeks ago and sprayed it with glyphosate killed it off so now we're gonna just see it straight into this no tillage i think it's running plenty deep i'm going to add another spacer we'll just put this smaller one in the nice thing with this drill is i can move pretty quick go about eight mile an hour i just want to get out and check one more time and then we'll go i see little pink seeds and they're not too deep so about this something that we only have to see once and then it'll keep growing back so it'll be at least three years that we want to replant this field unless we have to come back and intercede something like we did earlier today we like to rotate out a corn into a legume of some sort which it's either alfalfa like this or soybeans you keep trying to grow corn year after year it's going to hurt your soil health and your yields are going to start dropping so we want to make sure we're rotating in some other types of crops really like alfalfa for fuel rotation it's just a good crop to to get into the soil and then you grow better corn once you switch back into corn [Applause] [Applause] this is my last pass it's starting to set a little bit stuck rebar in the top because they're gonna attach this to the curbs up top or the floor not sure if they'll bend them over or what so one thing with this building i have to make sure i respect the crews that are coming in if they'd rather not be filmed i just have to stay away sometimes but i'll make sure i show you as much as i can of the progress i'm not sure how long they're gonna have to let the form set here the top of that wall is eight inches below the floor level there's gonna be an eight inch thick slat laid across on top of there that'll be what the cattle are standing on to eat all right thanks for watching

Channel: 10th Generation Dairyman

Views: 195,851

Rating: 4.9807353 out of 5

Keywords: farming

Id: bpRSHSqvvJg

Length: 16min 36sec (996 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 02 2021