3/5ths US Under Drought Conditions

phred14

Mon Jul 31 16:35:27 -0700 2006

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While here in Vermont, things have been tooooo wet. Many crops have been lost because it was just too wet to plan. The first cutting of hay was lost because you would have had to cut in the rain, and then it wouldn't dry. Farmers have been asking for assistence because of the wet weather. It has tapered off some, but May was the wettest on record.

3/5ths US Under Drought Conditions

zogger

Mon Jul 31 18:01:31 -0700 2006

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It was almost that way here, we didn't get to cut until June. Then it just stopped any real rain. A few quarter inch sprinklers, that's it, and in high 90s to low 100's temp,. stuff do dry up some. The only alternative in wet weather is "haylage", if you can get it dry down to like 50% before it rains on it again, but that has to be uniform as well and you need the special wrapping equipment, which most farmers don't have. Plus the bales are a lot heavier to haul around..

The only fun and practical thing I've gotten to do is bush hog the swamp, well I call it the swamp, it's some low areas that stay permanently moist and as such don't grow much in the way of grass but various  and sundry weeds love it that cows don't like to eat much.  It's dry enough now to not get stuck in it like I did last year... that was crawler action and some heavy chains to get out.

3/5ths US Under Drought Conditions

Matt Fulkerson

Mon Jul 31 19:00:03 -0700 2006

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Hey, I'm just a poor city slicker.  What is bush hogging?

From talking with my parents in the Minneapolis area, it sounds like the Midwest has missed out on all of the rain the east coast has been getting this spring.  In weather patterns like this you get forcasts of a 30% chance of afternoon storms, but it won't rain for weeks.  Are the weathermen just trying to be optimistic?

3/5ths US Under Drought Conditions

wowbagger

Tue Aug 01 05:11:09 -0700 2006

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"Brush hog" is a generizied trademark name for a brand of mowing equipment used to cut down large, woody stemmed, TALL weeds - it can cut down 1 inch diameter trees. It cuts a large swath, and usually is designed for rough terrain.

3/5ths US Under Drought Conditions

Martin Blank

Tue Aug 01 06:22:17 -0700 2006

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This sounds like something that would be much fun to do, especially if combined with a couple of gallons of kerosene and a few matches.

3/5ths US Under Drought Conditions

zogger

Tue Aug 01 07:04:10 -0700 2006

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Some guys burn their fields every year, but that is more a south georgia thing down in the quail plantation areas than around here. They burn it off to control insects mostly, kills off a lot of the ticks and some of the more noxious weeds, etc, and helps to keep the rattler population down more. It doesn't hurt the actual grass any at all, that regrows readily from the roots. I burn directly under the barbed wire fences (with a large propane torch) a little to keep vines from growing up them, that's about it. I'd be chicken to try and burn off a whole field really, not without a ton of guys spread out with equipment to watch that it didn't spread into the woods.

3/5ths US Under Drought Conditions

phred14

Tue Aug 01 07:16:58 -0700 2006

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The brush-hog I used to use in my farming days was essentially a lawnmower-on-steroids attachment that went behind a tractor, powered by the PTO. (Power Take Off) It's been a while, so my memory may not be perfect, but I'd put the blade somewhere in the 3-to-5 feet in diameter range, and it usually didn't cut too close to the ground. (4 to 5 inches)

It was our second-nastiest line of defense for clearing some land of vegetation. Our nastiest cutter was the flail-mower. That had one or more horizontal shafts somewhere around 6 feet long, perpendicular to the direction of travel. Each shaft had a bunch of hinged blades called 'flails' attached. Each flail was a slightly curved piece of metal with one sharpened edge about 4 inches wide and extended about 6 inches from the shaft. Enough were attached around the shaft and down its length for complete coverage. There may have been multiple shafts (again, fuzzy memory) for complete coverage. The shaft(s) rotated and the centrifugal force kept the blades extended and the motion kept them cutting. Anything too nasty for the blade to cut, like a rock or too-big wood, and the blade would pivot backward (against the centrifugal force) to prevent damage.

By the way, this morning on the way into work, it was raining cats and dogs. It's clearing now, and is supposed to hit the mid-90's today.

mowing

zogger

Tue Aug 01 07:39:43 -0700 2006

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what wowbagger said. What we use here is a 6 foot diameter two blade old new holland mower. Haying mowers are radically different looking.

  There's several here but that is the one I use the most, usually attached to a deutz 60 horse tractor.  It attaches to the rear of the tractor on the three point hitch, has a couple of large diameter caster wheels in the back. Adjust the basic minimum cutting height there by adjusting where the wheels are bolted into place. The three point hitch on the tractor side does the last up and down and level action depending on your needs, such as flat down, slight angle, all the way up for travelling to work site, etc. You run the driveshaft for it to the power take off shaft on the tractor. Bump up the RPMS to the correct speed and GO. It cuts some serious mambo stuff. Sometimes I run it in reverse and just back into humongous pickers and wild multiflora roses, etc and wipe it out. I call it the salad shooter..heh. It mulcherizes generic small woods/big brush pretty well. We have another one that is mounted on a big articulated boom off to the side of a tractor. It's big, perhaps you might have seen county road crews use one. You can pick it up vertically, lift it way out to the side, reach up and go down a treeline and cut sideways way over your head, drop it down and drive next to a ditch and cut that steep slopey area, etc. That one is fun, too, a little dangerous but fun. The cab of that tractor has really heavy steel mesh for "windows" so you don't accidently get a face full of assorted plant matter of the large and high speed kind.  You can literally start at the top of a smaller tree (say up to around 15-20 feet high and maybe up to 6 inches diameter, around that size as long as it is a softer wood kind of tree) and mow it right down to the ground. That one runs off of hydraulics. If you like fast hand eye coordination/levers/buttons with video games you'd like operating machinery, same deal, just real stuff gets done.

3/5ths US Under Drought Conditions

Improbus

Tue Aug 01 07:42:44 -0700 2006

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This weather reminds me of summers in the '70s.  I remember a month plus of triple digit temperatures and cracks in the ground so large you could lose a dog in one.

when's the next dust bowl?

rubycodez

Tue Aug 01 08:37:03 -0700 2006

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Every 20 to 70 years, the U.S. gets a drought that lasts 5 to 8 years or more.  The last multiyear drought, just three years, was 1987-1989, the costliest at about 40 billion dollars,  attributed to above normal surface sea temperatures. Hmmmm......

In theory we're never supposed to get another dustbowl like the 1933-1939 one because of  better topsoil management techniques, but I wonder if that falls apart after more than five years of continuous drought

when's the next dust bowl?

zogger

Tue Aug 01 11:25:24 -0700 2006

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If it stays that hot for that long I don't see how you could avoid it. The plant matter on the top would dry up to nothing and blow away, followed by any topsoil.

when's the next dust bowl?

rubycodez

Tue Aug 01 13:07:18 -0700 2006

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well, that would be horrible.  the first hand accounts of that era are really bad, people dying of lung infection, animals and some people suffocated, people's pores clogged with dirt, some days like twilight, not being able to see buildings across a street, roads not recognizable because covered in dirt, dirt hanging in air even indoors with hospitals unwilling to do surgery under those conditions so just putting in tubes to let pus drain out of infected organs, blood red snow in winter