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I did many things today.

Got out the door about 7:30, started my day by picking up drip tape. It was two years worth in a pile that I had to load into the bed of the truck and the older stuff had become so compressed and layered that it sunk into the mud from the fall and was just so incredible heavy.

Then I got to spray some boron on this year's strawberry field down at west since it's a water soluble fertilizer. Very boring since you have to drive the tractor slow. By that point, the sun had come out, so I grabbed the rototiller and got the second section done along with some cleanup of empty spots and some of the section I had done last night after I drove in.

Then I fired up the cultivating tractor which was an experience as terrifying as driving a no-power-steering tractor from the 50s sounds. Very scary.

It worked though. It was just very fast because it's slowest gear is a decent pace in comparison to the tractors we've got that go very slowly when you want. It had four gears and reverse. I guess they didn't go slow in the 50s. I had five rows or so to do and I definitely murdered a chunk of the first row I tried but it's fine. It's an offset engine, so I drive over the row and I can see it and the sweeps below me. It will work excellent on corn and things like that but it has pretty wide cultivating bands so I wasn't able to cultivate my 2 or 3 row crops because the band of unworked/undisturbed soil was about 4 inches wide. I think I might switch out the narrow sweeps for a wider shallower one to reduce the throwing motion of them, which is what some of the issue was. The narrower sweeps throw more dirt so it was a little unexpected.

I'm going to buy hilling disks for it, so I can hill my potatoes and possibly make little raised beds.

I ate lunch as I was rototilling.

I finished the cultivating around 2:30, grabbed a snack while dad fixed a hydraulic toplink and dropped the sprayer from the tractor. I got the disks, replaced the leaking hydraulic toplink with the fixed on and got knocking down the corn maze stalks from last year. I went to raise the disks up again and broke dad's fix, so then I just dragged the disks around to each field. Some of the grass and dirt got a little turned over, it's fine.

The disks are funny. It generally works on two extemes: either the disks are on the ground moving dirt or the wheels are holding the disks up. The only way to hitch and unhitch the disks is with the wheels down, because there's only one wheel axle, and there is two disk axles. This is relevant because when you pull the disks, the hitch is at an angle with the disk frame so it gets the most pulling power. But it's a lower angle than is possible to hitch with the disks down. So you need the hydraulic toplink to raise the disks, lower the wheels so there is leverage to pick up the hitch of the disks and put the pin in or take it out on the one wheel axle.

Dad needed the tractor back to spray the corn maze area. Since the toplink wasn't working, he told me that you could hammer the pin out of the hitch and it would be weird but fine. I couldn't get that dang thing out, I was so mad. I gave up and dad ended up taking the leaking toplink down to get the tractor unhitched.

Then I walked the dogs.

Most of the trips I made were down to west: spraying, rototilling, cultivating, getting the disks, so that took up time as well.

It's due to rain tomorrow, but I've got more projects to complete. I may or may not be able to get drone pictures this weekend. Although I don't remember if I posted them last time either....
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unicornduke

July 2025

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