Growing up, the convention in grape vineyards was a grape hoe- a grader blade like device that you maneuvered in and out under the trellis around each plant and post. Hoe the dirt and weeds away in spring/summer, then hoe to the plants in fall to protect the rootstock. The horse-drawn unit was long gone by the time I came around, we had a hydraulic unit mounted on our JD 1010, with a small lift disc behind to chop up the weeds. Very slow moving, so as to not damage plants or posts.
The use of herbicides began to replace the mechanical tillage, but not so much at our place. My Dad, a veteran of many hours of this half-row-per-pass cultivating, was always dreaming of a grape hoe with some kind of mechanical tiller on the end, rather than a blade. Imagine our excitement when I found out about the Weed Badger! A production model similar to a grape hoe with a hydraulic rotating head and sensors that moved it in and out automatically!. And there was a used one for sale nearby!
I bought it, and we spent good money having a mount made for our 2355N. Never imagined we did not have enough hydraulic flow to make this thing work- you could make it go in and out okay, OR make it rotate great, but not both at the same time. It would be fine for a little bit, then heat up and stop one of the motions, usually just in time to tear a plant out by the roots, or bend over a post. I'm pretty sure the last trial ended up damaging the hydraulic pump in the tractor, it has never quite been right ever since. The solution is a different tractor with more flow, or the PTO driven hydraulic pump setup from the manufacturer for a couple more grand. Our solution has been to shove it in the corner of the barn and stack other crap on top of it in shame.
Thanks for the opportunity to share my shame, hopefully my experiences will help you all avoid similar pain in the future. Step six of 144 step farm-fever healing process complete.
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Today's Featured Article - An Old-Time Tractor Demonstration - by Kim Pratt. Sam was born in rural Kansas in 1926. His dad was a hard-working farmer and the children worked hard everyday to help ends meet. In the rural area he grew up in, the highlight of the week was Saturday when many people took a break from their work to go to town. It was on one such Saturday in the early 1940's when Sam was 16 years old that he ended up in Dennison, Kansas to watch a demonstration of a new tractor being put on by a local dealer. It was an Allis-Chalmers tractor dealership,
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