Fresh Fields

May – Busy month with contracts available throughout the month. I started off by applying a second dose of fertilizer to my Sorghum…

…and Soya Bean crops. These will now grow through to harvest time without further intervention from me unless some weeds appear.

At the start of the second week I looked up the available contracts – clearly it’s Haymaking time for a lot of the local farmers, though there were also Silage jobs. I can’t take Silage work because I don’t have a Bale Wrapper but Haymaking is right up my street. Each job is, in reality, 5 tasks – so they pay well. And there’s the bonus that you are contracted for a set number of bales – any additional bales earn money for you!

Here’s how it goes – First you mow…

…That’s quite a long job with this old-school cutter. Then you Ted the Grass – turn it over to dry it. Here I am crossing the river with my Tedder on the way to the field…

Once the Grass has dried and become Hay, it needs to be Windrowed…

…that’s always a dusty job😅 Then we have to fetch the Baler and package up the Hay…

…This field produced 67 bales…

Finally, we have to pick up the bales and transport them to the buyer…

The work alone earned me €5700 and then I got paid an additional €1800 for extra bales! 😎 But, As you can see, Haymaking is an intensive process – imagine doing that with Scythes and Pitchforks! Even with my mechanical aids, this field took me the equivalent of a week’s work and that’s why the work pays so well.

…That’s the story of May told in just one job. Time to head back to my farm at the end of a hard day’s work…

…I took Haymaking jobs on similar sized fields for the last 2 weeks of May. I ended the month with €44k in the bank account and that means that the dream of a better Combine Harvester is almost within my grasp. June should see my Barley crop ready to harvest and probably some harvesting for other farmers too👍 As an aside, I’m amazed at how quickly I have become adept at manually loading bales onto that trailer – that’s one gaming skill I never realised I’d be learning😂

Fresh Fields

April – Initially there was a sowing job for a neighbour…

…Then there were several fertilizing jobs and I had to make 2 trips back to the dealer with the Zetor to refill the Rausch spreader…

…After the last job was done I still had plenty of fertilizer left over for my own fields.

Last month I prepared field 3 for sowing and it fell to the Massey-Ferguson to deliver the Soya Beans to the pre-fertilized field…

…With all the vegetable matter littering the surface it was difficult to see where I’d sown, so the ridge marker was very handy. Then, with sowing complete, I rolled the field to compact the soil and prevent erosion…

…a nice easy job for the BM👍 I’m doing my best to share the workload around the tractors and with such sunny weather it seems silly to be sitting in a cab😅

The Oilseed Radish in field 1 was ready to plough in during the second week of April…

…Once more I turned to the MF to do the job. That’s another field ready for sowing – The plan has changed again😜, I’m going to put Sorghum in this field and after harvesting the Barley in field 2, I will be planting Canola there.

I spent the rest of the week mowing my grass crop and making hay…

…All of which was handled by the BM with a minimum of fuss. Baling the hay required a bit more power, so the MF hauled the Lely baler up and down the rows…

…producing 20 bales…

…All of which I loaded by hand into our trailer and set off to the biogas plant…

In the the 3rd week of April I sowed the Sorghum in field 1…

…Rolling the field afterwards to complete the job. I also fed the grass some fertilizer. With nothing else I could do and with the Barley getting close to harvesting, I took the Vistula Combine up to the dealer for some pre-harvesting season maintenance…

…and that really was the end of the work for April – the last week was quiet with little to do but watch for the Sorghum and Soya plants to come through😎

More from Osada soon 😊👍

Fresh Fields

The first week of February saw me kicking off my springtime work, sowing grass in the newly prepared area beyond the farmyard…

…This had the interesting effect of removing the residual weeds that the ploughing had left in situ! So now we have a pristine grass field😎 I then gave my Barley its second dose of fertilizer…

…before going off to the dealer to buy a roller. Then I used my new tool to roll the freshly sown grass area…

Last task of that first week was sowing the Oilseed Radish in field 3…

…and that was the work completed for February. With no contracts for other farmers, we returned to background tasks like vehicle maintenance for the rest of the month.

The beginning of March and I was able to grab a cultivating contract for a nearby neighbour. In my own fields, the grass and the oilseed radish were both growing nicely. In the case of the radish, it was time to cultivate that crop back into the soil and thus fertilize field 3 ready for the next crop…

…The Roe Deer were in the field when I arrived and braved the presence of the tractor until I got too close, then they were off😅 This field is now ready for the Soya Beans that I plan to sow in April. Now that I know the germination time, I decided that I would also sow oilseed radish in field 1. I’ve also had a rethink about the crop I will sow there – I’m now thinking Sorghum and I can put Canola in field 2 when the Barley has been harvested.

The remainder of March was quiet but rest assured, things will kick off in April – I hope 🤞😅 In the meantime, since the last of the ploughing tasks was completed, all the work has fallen to the 1980’s vintage Zetor 6245. It’s proving to be a good machine. We still need a more powerful 4×4 to handle the ploughing more effectively but getting a better harvester remains the priority. I’ll be back with the tale of April soon👍