Turkey Red in Spring

I put in a tiny test plot of Wisconsin No 2 in on March 30.  I mostly did this because I need a good photo of young red stems.  I'm also going to be watching the other heritage, spring varieties for signs of colored stems at emergence.

Spring 2018 has been cold, but not as wet as previous years.  I'm hopeful that I can get the big fields of Red Fife and Marquis planted soon.  The ground does not have much moisture in it.  If the sun will just come out, I think I can go work up the Hy 38 field and get it planted.

This has been the best year ever for maple syrup on the farm.  I've made 2.5 gallons over three batches, which is plenty more than I need.  I'll be giving some away, and using it to make cookies.  The syrup is also fairly light colored.  This photo is from the last batch, and it's not that dark.  The last syrup of the season is usually quite dark.

Rosie loves to hang her tongue out!

Donkey Mill Project

I've had the idea for a donkey-powered mill for awhile, and recently I came across a good automotive differential to be the primary hub and gearcase for the project.  With typical abandon I went to work and had the basic machine running about 10 days later.

Sebastian was the test pilot for this project.  I hope to have three sweeps eventually and use the whole team.  A threshing machine will require all the power I can get.  This sweep is a carbon-fiber windsurfer mast, much stronger than it looks in the picture.  I might go for something a bit longer eventually.  The skid is just spiked into the ground right now.  The sheller is just sitting on the ground, too.

Here is how the differential looked the day I brought it to the farm.  The seller told me it was from a rear-wheel drive Mazda, but I have no way of confirming that.  It took some doing to get the old driveshaft and rear axle off.

I liked this differential because all three shafts terminated in nice 4-bolt flanges.  Easy for fabricating.

One of the axles needs to be prevented from turning.  This differential offered an easy solution--I added a piece of angle iron to serve as both mounting bracket and the stop-turn mechanism.  It got a little trickier, however, when I found that any pressure on the axle flange caused the gears inside to bind up.  I later learned that the seal around the axle is not very good, and oil leaks out.  If I get the unit inside again, I think I will clean it up and put some good silicone around the lower axle to keep the oil in better.

So I fabricated another mount to hold the unit up around the driveshaft flange.  Since nearly every differential has a modest gear reduction from the driveshaft to the axle, it makes sense to drive the donkey mill from one of the axles.  In theory there would be no problem attaching the sweep arms to  the driveshaft input.  You would just lose some rpm on the output shaft.  By driving one of the axles I'm getting about a 1.5:1 speed increase.  My donkeys pulling on 9' sweeps are doing about 3 rpm I figure.

Here I am using some bicycle sprockets to get an additional 43:13 gear ratio.  I used 1/2" shaft for my interim driveshaft, but now I wish I had used at least 3/4".  It looks like a potential area of weakness.

The long shaft coming out of the center is 1/2" water pipe.  Again, maybe I should have gone bigger.  I fabricated some simple flex couplings from pipe flanges, little pieces of rubber cow mats, and 1/4-20 bolts.  I put these flex joints at both ends of the 1/2" pipe driveshaft.

Here is the unit to receive the power coming off of the sweep.  Again, very quick and dirty.  I'd like to improve this with some kind of shut-off clutch and some additional shafts to make additional gear ratios easy to achieve.  I'd like to run a fanning mill and a small threshing machine eventually, in addition to the corn sheller.  The corn sheller made gearing pretty easy for the first time out, since it's made to run with a hand crank at around 20-30 rpm I think.  The final output speed tested was 30-32 rpm, with Cassie on the sweep.  Other items will require higher rpm and more gearing.  I felt good about using a v-belt for the final drive, since the slippage would provide some safety as I built up the system and learned how it worked.

After running about 100 lbs of corn through the mill, the 1/2" pipe shaft seems a little undersized.  It would buck under loads, usually when the donkey would slow down and the sheller get stuck with an ear of corn half way through.  I'd like to rebuild it so the shaft has a higher rpm, and therefore lower torque on it.  I think a second chain on the center before transferring power to the main shaft is a good idea.  Also, I'm wondering if I can find some sort of slip clutch to act a safety overload.

Hilling

I did some more bed forming today and also tried hilling the potatoes.  What a blast!  Evertyhing worked great.

The team also did some plowing in the cold West end.  What a muddy, not-fun mess in there.  But we dug out a lot of quack grass and if it will just warm up we can get it worked up.  My plan is for a single raised bed for cucurbits, and the rest some sort of summer cover crop.

Sebastian and Cassie are rock stars.  They had no trouble straddling the row and pulling like mad.

The hiller tracks better than I thought and it's even possible to move it right or left by moving the team.  I really think it's a winner.

We also made these beds next door for Dawn.

I have a three-wheeled work cart and I think this will be the main cart from now on.  The dolly wheel makes it easier for the donkey to balance.  Rosie needs some one-on-one work so I think she and I will do quite a few sessions like this one together.

Garden

One row of fingerlings went in on 4/25.

This is how the Haynes Bluestem planted on 4/18 looked on 4/25.

Some squash are coming out of the compost pile by themselves.  I will let a couple of these keep going.

As of late April the donkeys are coming up to the front yard for grazing.

Waiting for the rain to stop

Things were soaking wet well into late April this year.  Although I can usually count on planting peas and greens in the garden during the first week of April, this year it took until mid-May.

More archived wheat seed from the USDA for testing!

I borrowed this JD 4020 from Brian to plant 7 acres of Spring wheat.

This welding project came out of the shop over the winter.  I hope to use it for hilling potatoes and making raised beds.

Poor things had a long season of mud and cold in 2017.

Plow

I plowed up a small section of the pasture where the weeds have really taken over.  I'll seed it to clover and timothy in the spring and see what happens.  I don't think I'll bother to fence it off.  I was very happy with how the plow and team worked.  We could have plowed much more.

Rodrigo is hilarious--he stays in the coop until at least 11 am most days, sometimes much longer.  What a lazy rooster!

Plow and plant

Fantastic morning plowing and planting a late cover crop with the team this morning.  The plow is working very well and the new team lineup is the best ever.  I have the larger donks (Sebastian and Cassie) on the same doubletree to the right, and Rosie is on her own singletree.  I have set the hitch point on the evener over towards the larger donkeys, so that Sebastian and Cassie are doing probably 75% of the work, and Rosie the remaining 25%.  I may set it over even further, primarily to reduce side draft.  Right now I have Sebastian walking on plowed ground, and Cassie on unplowed ground (straddling the furrow).  If Sebastian walks in the furrow, it's hard to keep the plow in the furrow.  Keep in mind that side draft with 3 abreast minis is fairly severe.  Although each animal is pulling a fraction of what a full sized horse or mule would pull, they are not correspondingly that much narrower.  My singletrees are about 20" wide, and usually a full sized equine would have a 34" or maybe 40" wide singletree.  But my largest donk weighs about 350 lbs, probably 1/4 of what an average draft horse or mule weighs these days.  So things don't scale down quite the way I'd like, and side draft with 3 abreast is a big issue to deal with.

Anyhow, the soil conditions were pretty good (could have been a tad drier), and with rain coming I did not mess around much.  After plowing, I halted the team while I broadcast oats and peas.  They had a little trouble standing for me and I had to lunge for the lines at one point.  After broadcasting we picked up the spike tooth and just ran over the field a dozen times.  The seed all got covered and it actually looks pretty decent (see below).  September 29 is a tad late for oats and peas, but I don't want a lot of winter hardy cover crop to deal with next season.  I may try it in one small strip, since we are getting better at Spring plowing now.  For sure I am not eager to deal with terminating a lot of red clover again.  This strip was popcorn, flint corn, and garlic, and most of it was that darned red clover that was so hard to terminate in May.  I was a little disappointed in the corn yield, and I don't know if I should blame the red clover for not feeding the soil enough, or myself for planting too densely.  

Corn Harvest

I grew three varieties of corn this season, and the results were so-so.  I think the drought contributed to some poor yields, but I also think I crowded the plantings.  I used 24" rows, next year I plan to try 32".  Also, I need to find a popcorn plate for the Earthway seeder, since the popcorn seeds just pour through the corn plate.

By now every deer in the county knows about my corn and it is a race to get the corn out of there.  I should have started a week earlier, as a lot of the flint corn has been fed to the wildlife by now.  Today I went in and finished up.

Flint corn is fun to harvest, since I am harvesting and selecting seed at the same time.  For good seed, I am looking for full ears, sturdy plants, and no mold.  When I see one I like, I set it aside.

You can see that my stand of flint corn is not that pretty.  I think the poor showing is a result of the drought and the plants being too close together.

Here is a good candidate for a seed ear.  The ear dropped away nicely from the stalk.  Even better is one that is hanging all the way down, so that it dries down and rain is conveyed away from the inside.

Cassie did a great job of standing still while I picked popcorn and filled up the cart.  Rosie worked a shift a couple days later and was insufferable.  She would not stand still!  Just a sign I need to work her more as a single.

Sebastian was an absolute rock star.  Here he is standing while I pile sweet corn stalks high on the cart to take back to the barn.  I feed all the animals a lot of cornstalks this time of year.

Sloooow Summer Morning

Around this time of year the donkeys can get into a mode where they just do not want to get out of bed.  I go down around 5:30 am, open all the gates to the pasture, and the three donks just stare at me from their stall.  This morning was an extreme case.  Sebastian was sitting down, so I knelt down and just rubbed on him a bit. Then Rosie came over and rested her chin on my shoulder.  We hung out like this for a few minutes, and I reflected on how lucky I was to have this wonderful farm with such great animals.  I went inside to eat my breakfast, but they did not rouse themselves to go eat anything for another 30-40 minutes.

Rooster drama.  Rodrigo has been beating up on Woodstock.  They can be so cruel.  Two months ago it was the other way around, but Woodstock injured his leg and now Rodgrigo is just going to town on him.  It's really awful to watch sometimes.

We had a 1/4" downpour last night as part of a very quick squall.  Now the wheat in the garden is really laying down!  I hope some of it stands back up.  

The popcorn and Roy's Calais flint corn is coming up nicely.

Rosie can hang her tongue out for what seems like hours.  I take it as a sign of extreme contentment.

Under Control

After getting back from my break up North I work non-stop in the garden.  Hardest hit is the team--we have to get this red clover dug out!  Wow is it hard work.  The clover will just not give up, and the team needs to rest often.

Here is a view of the three USDA wheat seed tests.  From left to right is Turkey Red, Wisconsin Pedigree No. 2, and Bacska.  The Bacska looks very good, and it is distinct from all the other winter wheat in the garden.  It's going to be fun to try baking with this wheat in a couple of  years.

Here is the lettuce that I planted last August, for winter harvest.  Now it's growing quite nicely in the oats.  Go figure.  BTW, the oats came up very spotty and I think I need to double drill next time.

More lettuce woes.  I drilled in a triple row about a month ago, and maybe three survived.  Lettuce is not my forte.

Here is my 2016 attempt at a pea trellis.

Here is how the strip West of the garlic looked before I drilled in popcorn and flint corn.  So that damned red clover finally gave up!  I fully expect that there are a few live crowns still down there, but overall I am pretty pleased.  At any rate, a couple of red clover plants will not bother the corn.  At the South end where it gets wetter the seed bed is not as good.  But the team pulled there hearts out.  The drag was set up with 3 x 9" sweeps, set pretty close together.

Tomatoes going in!

It's just drying up enough that I could get out and do some work today.  Needed to get the vegetables on the East strip organized and fixed, and to start clearing out my supply of tomatoes in flats.

Put about 50 tomatoes in, I have two more flats to go.  These are going in on the former oats & peas strip, next to the potatoes.  I only planted the high ground in the middle.  Towards the end of the row it is still fairly wet.

So.....tore out some more failures from the April 18 planting.  I put in about 85' of beets (Detroit and Chiogga), and purple top turnips.  I actually labeled the rows, too!

Rules for Gardening:

• Never apologize for your soil
• Keep planting until something grows
• Summer comes once per year
• One word--turnips!  If nothing else will grow, grow turnips.  Peasant food will save your garden.

Got some frost damage on Saturday night (May 14), which nipped some of the potato leaves.  They will be OK.

Here is what the Marquis on Spring Street looked like on May 15.  The Turkey is in the far background.

Donks and goats have been on 100% pasture for 3 weeks now, I'd say.  The donkeys come up front because the lawn is thicker than the pasture right now.

Elliot inspecting the Ehmke Turkey.

The Boyne raspberries are significantly ahead of the laphams.  The lapham raspberries are showing the tiniest buds and nothing else, but all of the Boynes have good leaf growth like this one.