Learnin' to Plow
Walt, I thought you in particular - as a former N owner - would get a kick out of these photos. This was my first, and unfortunately only attempt so far, at plowing. We had an old strawberry bed that needed to go fallow. I did this in early July, about 6 weeks into our worst drought in 19 years, so the ground was pretty hard.
Just finished hooking up the plow, which is hidden behind the brush. I've twice had the thing fall over on me, and at about 300 pounds trying to lift it upright is not fun.
Because of the width of the area that I was plowing (about 5'), it didn't make sense for me to open up a headland furrow. I did open the land on the left side, however, with the plow tilted to the left so that just one moldboard was in contact with the soil.
At this point, I'm making my first pass after opening the land. You can see that the plow is still tilted, which is a mistake. I leveled the plow, after opening the land, with the tractor out of the furrow. Obviously I should have leveled with the tractor in the furrow. I only had about 5" of depth on the left moldboard, and 3" on the right.
There's a 15' wide patch of sod that I am dreaming about plowing. Unfortunately, most of it had been allowed to grow up with brush in it. We cleaned out the brush this spring, but there are still stumps, making it dangerous to plow until the stumps decay (or are removed, which is not likely to happen anytime soon). I did try tackling a portion of it, but had very little luck. If I could get the plow to bite in, the coulters would quickly plug up with sod and the plow would lift out of the ground. I've now learned, at least theoretically, that it might be easier to remove the coulters as well as try plowing with position control on the 3pt rather than draft control (draft control senses the load on the hitch and adjusts the height of the plow accordingly).
Doing this only took about a half hour of actual tractoring, but it certainly was amazing. It gave me a glimpse of why farmers consider good plowing an art and are so passionate about it. Feeling the machine laboring as it released this dark soil rich in organic matter and smells - ahhh!!
Just finished hooking up the plow, which is hidden behind the brush. I've twice had the thing fall over on me, and at about 300 pounds trying to lift it upright is not fun.
Because of the width of the area that I was plowing (about 5'), it didn't make sense for me to open up a headland furrow. I did open the land on the left side, however, with the plow tilted to the left so that just one moldboard was in contact with the soil.
At this point, I'm making my first pass after opening the land. You can see that the plow is still tilted, which is a mistake. I leveled the plow, after opening the land, with the tractor out of the furrow. Obviously I should have leveled with the tractor in the furrow. I only had about 5" of depth on the left moldboard, and 3" on the right.
There's a 15' wide patch of sod that I am dreaming about plowing. Unfortunately, most of it had been allowed to grow up with brush in it. We cleaned out the brush this spring, but there are still stumps, making it dangerous to plow until the stumps decay (or are removed, which is not likely to happen anytime soon). I did try tackling a portion of it, but had very little luck. If I could get the plow to bite in, the coulters would quickly plug up with sod and the plow would lift out of the ground. I've now learned, at least theoretically, that it might be easier to remove the coulters as well as try plowing with position control on the 3pt rather than draft control (draft control senses the load on the hitch and adjusts the height of the plow accordingly).
Doing this only took about a half hour of actual tractoring, but it certainly was amazing. It gave me a glimpse of why farmers consider good plowing an art and are so passionate about it. Feeling the machine laboring as it released this dark soil rich in organic matter and smells - ahhh!!