What a difference a little horsepower makes.

Now we’re cooking up at my farm. I needed to put the effort to get the rest of my new plots into production faster, so I rented a tracked Cat skidsteer with a rock bucket last Saturday. Wow! What a difference.

Both my north and south plots were carved out of solid woods 2 years ago. Clearing the remaining dead wood and duff and then picking the rock (oh, we got rock allright) was taking forever by hand. So far out of nearly 10 acres, I only had about 2.5 into production on these 2 plots.

In one day with the Cat skidsteer and the rock bucket, I stripped the whole rest of the south plot and did a rock-picking pass AND I got about 20% of the north plot done. Then I put in a culvert on the road between the plots just for fun. I had my father on the John Deere and I was dumping rocks into the Deere’s bucket so he could do the shuttling back/forth to the rock pile while I keep the Cat’s snoot in the ground where it was doing the most good.

But wait, there’s more. My father did some creative plumbing and expanded our sprayer to 5 nozzles and over 10 feet per pass of coverage! Now we’re covering some ground!

1.5 acres of my new Brassicas Bender blend got seeded and fertilized today. Finally we got brassicas in EARLIER than my target date by a few days rather than 2+ weeks later.

What a difference a little horsepower and the right weather makes.

1st picture – Spray rig with arms folded. Clever!
2nd picture – Spray rig with arms extended.
3rd picture – North plot now 20% done. Looking to the south.
4th picture – South plot now 100% cleared. Looking to the north.

Grouse

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like they say Grouse,nothing runs like a deere,with a Cat on its ass!!!

I’ll give ol’ Big John credit for his place on the seniority list. He worked damn hard given that he’s 50 years older than the Cat.

I don’t have a lot of experience with skidsteers, but the Cat rubbed me the wrong way in two areas. First, the location of the fuel filler cap is about the worst possible place unless you are pulling up to a station pump or a fuel truck. Filling it from 5 gallon cans is damn near impossible. Second, could they hide the brake release button any better AND could Cat possibly use a label on this button that rubs off any faster, leaving no clue as to what that button actually does? It only took me 10 minutes to figure out how to get the parking brake off…

Grouse

I hear you Grouse and applaud Big John,that tractor will still be here after the kitty is long gone.
as far as ergonomics on anything these days,you just shake your head and wonder who the H.E. double hockey sticks raised those kids who became engineers later.
no offense to the engineers who do good though.

Looking great Grouse!! Glad that rock bucket was a success. I feel for you guys that have a ton of rocks

Your brassica bulbs will be as big as pumpkins this year with the earlier plant date

Sprayer is pretty ingenious too. That will make things go much quicker. You are getting it dialed in, keep at it!!