Author Topic: 2020 Victory Gardens  (Read 37801 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Offline bjrogg

  • Member
  • Posts: 10,732
  • Cedar Pond
Re: 2020 Victory Gardens
« Reply #285 on: November 05, 2020, 04:21:26 am »
Pulled the plug. Last week hitting -20C  -4F. Was a little rough on the tomatoes and peppers. A little surprise cold snap.
Bjrogg They grow sugar beets around here also, walked many miles around the fields hunting pheasants back in the day.
Thanks Leroy

Yes the pheasant really like the sugar beet fields. Our pheasant seem to very slowly be coming back. The beet fields are a good place to find them.

Bjrogg
A hot cup of coffee and a beautiful sunrise

Offline bjrogg

  • Member
  • Posts: 10,732
  • Cedar Pond
Re: 2020 Victory Gardens
« Reply #286 on: November 05, 2020, 04:43:40 am »
BJ, I seen one of those grain carts that lift for the first time a couple weeks ago. I was amazed; and I've been in a farming family for 40 years lol. Do you haul your beets to Croswell or Sebewaing? Good luck with your harvest.

Yup Pau it’s pretty amazing some of the equipment they have come up with now. Ours is actually pretty low tech compared to the new stuff. I like our stuff though. I like our carts. We use them for wheat, corn, beans, beets and even silage when we use to chop it. They are pretty versatile.

Most of the new systems are designed to pile beets on the ends of fields by the road ditch. Then a machine comes in that picks up the piles and further cleans the dirt and loads them onto big trucks on the road. The trucks don’t have to go off the road which can be a big advantage. The diggers are self propelled and very expensive. It is a nice system, but very expensive and not at all versatile. The only thing all of that equipment can be used for is sugar beet.

Paul we haul our beets to “permanent storage piles” at Ruth or  Verona. They are stored there until they go to one of our 4  factories. Most go to Croswell if possible to save on freight, but it depends on how the factories are keeping up.

We are still plugging away. Everything is getting tired and worn out. We have been doing a considerable amount of fixing to get across the finish line. Running this equipment in the dirt and rocks is very hard on it. The many, many tons of beets are also a big wear on the trucks. As I say though. Of all the many bills we have. The trucking one is the one I don’t mind so much. It’s not good if you don’t have something to truck.

Bjrogg
A hot cup of coffee and a beautiful sunrise

Offline Eric Krewson

  • Member
  • Posts: 5,305
Re: 2020 Victory Gardens
« Reply #287 on: November 05, 2020, 07:08:49 am »
The deer have finally started feeding on my little food plot, 3 does were in it yesterday evening.

I got a new hip last Wednesday so I won't be harassing the deer for another month or so, possibly longer. I am walking without a walker but sore as the dickens.

Offline bjrogg

  • Member
  • Posts: 10,732
  • Cedar Pond
Re: 2020 Victory Gardens
« Reply #288 on: November 05, 2020, 09:29:59 am »
The deer have finally started feeding on my little food plot, 3 does were in it yesterday evening.

I got a new hip last Wednesday so I won't be harassing the deer for another month or so, possibly longer. I am walking without a walker but sore as the dickens.


Sometimes it takes awhile for one of them to figure out they don’t get a electric shock . I remember a pen of heifers we had. It didn’t have a gate. Just a wire you could take down to let them out. Sometimes you just couldn’t make them cross where the wire would have been when you took it down. We literally had to load some on a trailer to get them out of the pen.


Bjrogg
A hot cup of coffee and a beautiful sunrise

Offline bjrogg

  • Member
  • Posts: 10,732
  • Cedar Pond
Re: 2020 Victory Gardens
« Reply #289 on: November 05, 2020, 09:31:55 am »
Here’s the ones I’m looking for. The last four rows. Need two more trucks to empty the carts and get last pass.
Man that’s a good sight.
Bjrogg
A hot cup of coffee and a beautiful sunrise

Offline Hawkdancer

  • Member
  • Posts: 5,027
Re: 2020 Victory Gardens
« Reply #290 on: November 05, 2020, 11:06:22 am »
Great!  Now, up jumps the new cycle!  I got my growing pots cleaned out and the stalks into the compost bin, had to do some serious tree trimming to rescue the composter!
Hawkdancer
Life is far too serious to be taken that way!
Jerry

Offline PNewton

  • Member
  • Posts: 400
Re: 2020 Victory Gardens
« Reply #291 on: November 06, 2020, 05:35:04 am »
Those new machines look awsome. Another thing that amazed me first time I seen one. My some farm for my mother-in-law. They hope to finish soybeans this weekend.

Offline HH~

  • Member
  • Posts: 1,742
Re: 2020 Victory Gardens
« Reply #292 on: November 06, 2020, 07:07:46 am »
You been busy BJ.

Gave pappy a bag bell peppers and bag of cayennes for doing brats later in winter. Need to get some charcoal to spead in all my beds for next years. Keep that club root outta there.

HH~
MAFA: Makin America Free Again

Long is the road, Hard is the way.

Mother Gue never raised such a foolish child. . . .

Readily will I display the intestinal fortitude required to fight onto the Ranger objective and complete the mission though I be the lone survivor. RLTW

Offline Eric Krewson

  • Member
  • Posts: 5,305
Re: 2020 Victory Gardens
« Reply #293 on: November 06, 2020, 08:34:01 am »
About charcoal, I saw a documentary about the once cultivated areas around the Amazon. This ground is notoriously poor but sustained a huge population. In all the formerly cultivated areas they found ground charcoal in the soil. It is know that charcoal keeps nutrients from leaching out of the soil, these so called primitive folk figured this out.

Offline Deerhunter21

  • Member
  • Posts: 2,253
  • What do you despise? By this are you truly known.
Re: 2020 Victory Gardens
« Reply #294 on: November 06, 2020, 12:00:50 pm »
Pulled the plug. Last week hitting -20C  -4F. Was a little rough on the tomatoes and peppers. A little surprise cold snap.
Bjrogg They grow sugar beets around here also, walked many miles around the fields hunting pheasants back in the day.
Thanks Leroy

Yes the pheasant really like the sugar beet fields. Our pheasant seem to very slowly be coming back. The beet fields are a good place to find them.

Bjrogg

beet fields... i got that down!!! going pheasant hunting tomorrow! theres so many here in nebraska! glad the pheasants are coming back on your fields if there not destroying anything. biodiversity is pretty important for land and its health!!
Life before death. Strength before weakness. Journey before destination.

Offline bjrogg

  • Member
  • Posts: 10,732
  • Cedar Pond
Re: 2020 Victory Gardens
« Reply #295 on: November 28, 2020, 10:48:08 am »
Finished the tillage and spreading seed for cover crops. Not sure if it will show up, but took a picture of the rye cover crop greening up. This is a cover that will grow at 32 degrees Fahrenheit or above. It will grow under the snow. It is good at scavenging nutrients and saving them from erosion and leaching. It’s roots and vegetation provide organic matter and the animals love it to. We will kill it off about a week before we plant beans next June. It will be a foot or two tall by then.

In our sugar beets we will plant directly into it and kill it off about a month after we plant the beets. It will protect them from the wind.

I am big on cover crops and modern farming practices make them dry practical to use.

Bjrogg
A hot cup of coffee and a beautiful sunrise

Offline WhistlingBadger

  • Member
  • Posts: 1,576
  • Future Expert
Re: 2020 Victory Gardens
« Reply #296 on: November 28, 2020, 12:34:31 pm »
I've never really tried cover crops because our season is so short here, but I like the idea.  How do you kill them off without killing the beets?
Thomas
Lander, Wyoming
"The trail is the thing, not the end of the trail.
Travel too fast, and you miss all you are traveling for."
~Louis L'Amour

Offline bjrogg

  • Member
  • Posts: 10,732
  • Cedar Pond
Re: 2020 Victory Gardens
« Reply #297 on: November 28, 2020, 01:53:46 pm »
I've never really tried cover crops because our season is so short here, but I like the idea.  How do you kill them off without killing the beets?

That is the main reason modern farming and science has made it practical. We have tried to use these cover crop in the past. They were difficult to manage. Modern farming has taken a lot of that out. They still take a lot of management but now we have more tools in our box.

A hot cup of coffee and a beautiful sunrise

Offline Eric Krewson

  • Member
  • Posts: 5,305
Re: 2020 Victory Gardens
« Reply #298 on: November 29, 2020, 07:24:58 am »
I finally got some pickers in my greens patch, so many of my friends love greens but just won't come pick them.

I got a new hip a month ago and just tried greens picking this week, I could do it. I have an 87 year old friend who is a shut in for the most part. I picked a huge bag of greens to take to him, he loves them so much he will eat them three meals a day and started washing and cooking them as soon as I delivered the bag to him.

 

Offline DC

  • Member
  • Posts: 10,396
Re: 2020 Victory Gardens
« Reply #299 on: November 29, 2020, 10:03:44 am »
What are "greens"? I thought it was a generic term for any leafy veg but now I'm doubting that.