Spring fieldwork in Iowa

Well, the tractor is in a field and it did do a little work, but!!!!

I need to seed a 1/4 mile long waterway I graded last fall so I wandered out that way a couple of days ago to check it out and it was fairly dry, so yesterday I did a little more blading in a few places and then disked it up. There is about six inches of thawed soil at most above the frost so I could get down deep enough to loosen it up good, but in the low black soil it was plenty chunky. The weatherman talks lows in the teens for the next few days and I'm hoping the freeze-thaw will soften the chunks enough to make a good seed bed. Up the hill a little farther I decided to turn around in the chisel plowing and darned near created a stuck and troubled picture so I didn't venture too far from the beaten path after that incident. The tractor is tucked back in the shed and the disk is back resting on the crickbank in it's usual parking place so I can declare spring fieldwork officially ended for awhile.

We are drier than I would like to see for this time of year and I saw some huge long cracks out there in the field so I'm hoping the rains will quit going around us soon. Jim

nice looking tractor and disc!


I wish I had just 1/2 an inch of that soil... I'm jealous!

Nothing wrong with stuck and troubled. Well, at least from the viewer standpoint.

Mount Vernon, same thing here, thawed a few inches. It is predicted to be about freezing the next 7 days.

End of April planting?????

fixerupper,

Wow! We still have a fair amount of snow-cover on the fields around here.

Even though it is a JD (sniff..) it sure looks pretty in the field....is spring coming soon?

I have variable soils where I farm. Where the tractor is parked it's fairly black but up the hill just a ways the soil is browner textured. On the upper part of the waterway the soil had worked down so fine the wind was blowing dust. The lower part is so chunky a hurricane wouldn't make it move. Where I darned near got stuck is high and very visible to the neighbors. The news would have made the coffee shop before I would have made the walk home. LOL Sweetfeet, there was one little pocket of snow between two clods out where the stalks had been ripped, just about in the 'stuck and troubled' area, but that was from a recent snow. We have been mostly brown and black all winter with a few short times when the ground was white. This morning I wandered out in the bean stubble to snag a rock I'd forgotten to pick up last fall and most of the rows had a long crack in the ground between them. Rain will go down those cracks but we have to SEE the rain first.Jim

That is one nice looking rig.

The tractor has 9100 hours. I bought it a couple of years ago. I did a little buffing on the hood and touch up on the front end but other than that, this is the way it looked when I bought it. The row of lights in the front of the hood was about as worthless as anything can be so I replaced them with the LED conversion Deere has. It cost me a bunch, but they put out a real white light that makes the rest of the lights look yellow. The LED's probably don't shine out any farther than the factory ones did when they were bright and new, but the light is more useable, I don't know how to explain it any better than that. JIm

Where are you at?

Between Storm Lake and Spencer and just a twitch east or Four miles west of the Albert City Threshing Show. Jim

I had a similar experience yesterday. Wheat stubble with
clover overseeded. It was like pudding - I sped up right quick
while I still could. Lots of fields are ready for disking. The ones
that really need it are a good ways off. Isn't that how it always
goes? Guess I spend another day puttering in the shed.

(reply to post at 07:57:40 03/22/14)

Click to expand...

I had thought there was way too much frost in the ground, but one neighbor is putting down anhydrous, and another neighbor just went by with a field cultivator.

Extreme southwest Iowa.

I saw a no-till drill running Friday outside of Quincy IL. Has to be seeding pasture, way to cold and early to be beans.

Had a year with a late spring went out 1 night and chopped
stalks with a 50 jd neighbor took off to the field next day
planted tractor and disc in deep left large trail of mud
home

Can't tell for sure. Is it a 4650 or 4850??

Jim, I was just going to ask about the rocks. There were plenty down at Goldfield when I worked for my brother.

I was out yesterday with my 580 to fix a tile hole for the guy I farm with. It was close to the road ditch and had about 2 feet of frost but farther out in the black dirt it was dry without any frost. It was just greasy on top and I was only cutting in about 6". NOBODY is doing anything but tiling around here in central IL.

We have rocks. I usually pick up maybe 5 tons of them every year off of 700 acres, but I'm pretty thorough. It doesn't take many rocks to weigh that much. They aren't huge as a whole, mainly volleyball and smaller with maybe a dozen or fewer that need a loader to pick them up. The tractor is a 4650 power shift and I don't think the pump has been cranked up which is fine by me. Being non-front assist it doesn't have the traction for more horses than it has now. Jim