General => Lounge => Topic started by: CougarSE on May 21, 2013, 08:14:01 PM
Title: Anyone else a farmer here?
Post by: CougarSE on May 21, 2013, 08:14:01 PM
My wife's family has an orchard with a retail store for produce. We grow a variety of fruits and vegetables with apple's being the primary product. 25 acres are planted into fruit and 6 of that is peaches. We plant out 1 acre of potatoes and 1 acre of tomatoes. Several other things are grown but that is the larger of the produce. Gumby can tell you he has been there !!!
Title: Anyone else a farmer here?
Post by: 50tbrd88 on May 21, 2013, 09:55:10 PM
I grew up on a cattle farm and still help out when I can. I sell John Deere equipment for a living so I am around farmers every day!
Title: Anyone else a farmer here?
Post by: Beau on May 21, 2013, 10:50:06 PM
I live on a 190 acre farm. Mostly hay here, haven't had any livestock on the place since before I was out of high school. Dad's farm is 160-some acres, mostly soybean and some hay.
Yeah, I know my way around a combine and I can school most anyone on fence building.
Title: Anyone else a farmer here?
Post by: bodyman on May 22, 2013, 12:38:34 AM
Grew up on a small 200 acre dairy farm, always had between 40-60 cows, now it's just corn and beans for Dad. Seems like we were always making hay, if not for my Dad, for one of his 3 brothers that farmed near by, helped the neighbors bale also. Still help out a little, mostly when things break down.
Title: Anyone else a farmer here?
Post by: jcassity on May 22, 2013, 01:33:35 AM
Quote from: CougarSE;415740
My wife's family has an orchard with a retail store for produce. We grow a variety of fruits and vegetables with apple's being the primary product. 25 acres are planted into fruit and 6 of that is peaches. We plant out 1 acre of potatoes and 1 acre of tomatoes. Several other things are grown but that is the larger of the produce. Gumby can tell you he has been there !!!
ever heard of "suckering" tomatos?
it makes the fruit much larger, and the suckers never ever bloom so they are a drain on the plant anyway,, reduces chances of blight also
Title: Anyone else a farmer here?
Post by: TOM Renzo on May 22, 2013, 05:07:29 AM
My wife wants to buy a very small farm and have a couple of animals. She loves animals. Other than that right now i own a HP FARM.
NO FARMS NO FOOD!!!
Title: Anyone else a farmer here?
Post by: Haystack on May 22, 2013, 12:09:45 PM
I've thrown hay for a couple summers as a kid. the farm I used to go to is now a school parking lot.
Title: Anyone else a farmer here?
Post by: vinnietbird on May 22, 2013, 02:35:18 PM
I never was a farmer, but I played one on TV.
Title: Anyone else a farmer here?
Post by: 88turbo on May 22, 2013, 03:20:24 PM
Does rock farming count? I work in a stone quarry that's in the middle of a cattle ranch.
Title: Anyone else a farmer here?
Post by: thunderjet302 on May 22, 2013, 04:04:36 PM
Quote from: jcassity;415764
ever heard of "suckering" tomatos?
it makes the fruit much larger, and the suckers never ever bloom so they are a drain on the plant anyway,, reduces chances of blight also
I do that every year. I've found I get more tomatos that way.
I have a garden. I can't "farm" as I live within the city limits. I planted 13 tomato plants, 4 brussel sprout plants, 4 zucchini plants, 4 cucumber plants, onions, several rhubarb plants (which come back every year), parsley, rosemary, dill, thyme, basil, and mint. I end up canning most of it for use throughout the year.
Title: Anyone else a farmer here?
Post by: CougarSE on May 22, 2013, 08:55:13 PM
Quote from: jcassity;415764
ever heard of "suckering" tomatos?
it makes the fruit much larger, and the suckers never ever bloom so they are a drain on the plant anyway,, reduces chances of blight also
I do oh so well. Now those suckers will bloom if you cut them off and jam them in the ground, they will become there own plant. If we didn't sucker plants every day to every other day we would have a mess on our hands. We even prune the plants to limit size.
Title: Anyone else a farmer here?
Post by: BLKBRD88 on May 22, 2013, 10:07:44 PM
Quote from: jcassity;415764
ever heard of "suckering" tomatos?
it makes the fruit much larger, and the suckers never ever bloom so they are a drain on the plant anyway,, reduces chances of blight also
Yep, when we were kids we had to pinch those suckers off of the tomato plants so dad could brag about his beautiful tomatoes. LOL Ron
Title: Anyone else a farmer here?
Post by: jcassity on May 24, 2013, 01:46:34 AM
not a farm for me, but i have much experience with a steaking two or 300 plants each year,, fuggers grow fast to so you gotta tie them about once a week.
ive got a long story i could tell about our families "beef steak" but ill keep it short.
when my uncle lester was in the battle of the bulge (wwII), he and his buddies were nearly starving. uncle lester and the team trapsed across a field and got pinned down right in the middle of a potato & tomato patch. pretty much all the fruits were devistated from past conflicts of the previous days/weeks.
he dug around up in the side of his fox hole and dropped potato's out to himself from "underneath"~~~!!!
well, there were some straggler tomatos and he had one that was as pink as pink could be, and huge. he took some sead and put it in a hankerchif and mailed it home. from that day up until 2008, our tomatoes were started from seed,, from the past seed of the seed from that one single tomato.
i have the honor keeping this going, dad died last month but i was in the work shop and found the coffee can of starter seed, there are some beef steak seed for me to plant. i wont get to it this year but maybe next.
even as a kid i imagined the war and what all he went trough as i planted all of them by hand... with a butter bowl of water in each hole being ever so careful to pull up the softest earth and not dirt clods around the tender little plant. it passed the time for me and helped me disipline myself into a worth while effert that yielded us such great food to eat and to trade or share or simply give away .
its hard work doing a full blown 4 acre garden full of everything on a mans wish list every year, espeically with nothing but a hoe, a front tine Hahn 5hp 1974 tiller and tough hands/indurance.
Title: Anyone else a farmer here?
Post by: jcassity on May 24, 2013, 01:50:23 AM
well, humm, ill treat the suckers with a little more respect next time because i never knew that!!!!!!!!!!
now i can call them "late tomatos" thanks to you!
Title: Anyone else a farmer here?
Post by: jcassity on May 24, 2013, 01:54:11 AM
Quote from: thunderjet302;415796
I do that every year. I've found I get more tomatos that way.
I have a garden. I can't "farm" as I live within the city limits. I planted 13 tomato plants, 4 brussel sprout plants, 4 zucchini plants, 4 cucumber plants, onions, several rhubarb plants (which come back every year), parsley, rosemary, dill, thyme, basil, and mint. I end up canning most of it for use throughout the year.
start you some mint in the yard,, if you mow often then it wont hurt your feet or,,, find a wild patch of spiriment along a creek bed,, makes the yard smell wonderful nice work on the spices and herbs, we do that to.
I bet the 4 zucchini plants did great. If you like fried green tomato's, zucchini will act / taste and look like fried green tomato.
Title: Anyone else a farmer here?
Post by: thunderjet302 on May 24, 2013, 11:15:43 AM
Quote from: jcassity;415910
start you some mint in the yard,, if you mow often then it wont hurt your feet or,,, find a wild patch of spiriment along a creek bed,, makes the yard smell wonderful nice work on the spices and herbs, we do that to.
I bet the 4 zucchini plants did great. If you like fried green tomato's, zucchini will act / taste and look like fried green tomato.
I do have some wild spearmint in the yard. Not in the lawn though. It's in the back along the fence with my neighbor. I does make the garden smell nice. This is my first year growing zucchini. I've done cucumbers before so I figured I'd give zucchini a try. I eat quite a bit of it throughout the year so I might as well grow it myself. Most of the plants up here start dying off around mid to late October, depending on the weather. The only thing that tends to survive into the late fall (almost to Thanksgiving many years) is the brussel sprouts. I'm usually pulling the last ones off in late November.
On a good note I'm already eating out of my garden. The rhubarb has been going nuts the past few weeks (finally warm after 10+ inches of rain over tha last month) and I've had to harvest some to keep the plant from over growing. So far we've made rhubarb cake, ins, and strawberry-rhubarb pie. If the rhubarb keeps growing at this rate I'm going to have to start making jam out of it by next month. I probably won't get any tomatoes for another 6 weeks or so. I usually pluck some of the first big green ones to fry up. I think it's hard to beat fried green tomatoes and ice tea on a hot summer day.
Title: Anyone else a farmer here?
Post by: Cougars 2 go on May 24, 2013, 04:20:55 PM
I used to handle 30,000 to 50,000 bales of barley and wheat straw in the summer with a few thousand hay bales mixed in. All over the county. No hooks, no gloves. Filled many barns, wagons, rig trailers, etc. Fortunately the New Holland 575 baler had the kicker chute so we didn't have to walk the field but rather ride the wagon to pack 192 bales per wagon. Sometimes if we were filling a barn that was close, one person would 'kick on' a wagon load while a few others were offloading the wagons into the barn. Also, some of those bales were handled twice. Once in the field and again in the barn. Cutting wood and fixing fence in the winter. I still help out occasionally when I'm home. The guy I helped out used to have anywhere between 30 and 50 beef cattle hence the fence fixing.
A lot of the fields we farmed are all neighborhoods now with homes selling between $400K and over $1 million.
Title: Anyone else a farmer here?
Post by: Cougars 2 go on May 24, 2013, 04:21:09 PM
I used to handle 30,000 to 50,000 bales of barley and wheat straw in the summer with a few thousand hay bales mixed in. All over the county. No hooks, no gloves. Filled many barns, wagons, rig trailers, etc. Fortunately the New Holland 575 baler had the kicker chute so we didn't have to walk the field but rather ride the wagon to pack 192 bales per wagon. Sometimes if we were filling a barn that was close, one person would 'kick on' a wagon load while a few others were offloading the wagons into the barn. Cutting wood and fixing fence in the winter. I still help out occasionally when I'm home. The guy I helped out used to have anywhere between 30 and 50 beef cattle hence the fence fixing.
A lot of the fields we farmed are all neighborhoods now with homes selling between $400K and over $1 million.
Title: Anyone else a farmer here?
Post by: jcassity on May 24, 2013, 04:53:46 PM
Quote from: thunderjet302;415923
so I figured I'd give zucchini a try. .
prepare yourself,,,,,,,,,,,, the stuff requires little or no intevention once the leaves get big enough to shade the ground,, they never stop producing and you'll give away more than you eat!!!!!!
that stuff is outragious, they should figure out how to get gasoline from them,, no body can fugg up growing zucchini
Title: Anyone else a farmer here?
Post by: CougarSE on May 26, 2013, 10:37:34 PM
I cut hay yesterday, a day later than i wanted but oh well. We planted 90 tomato plants today, about a quarter of the total. The little ones need more greenhouse time. The orchard is doing great, peaches are the size of golf balls. Potatoes should go in this week as well.
That's a lot of straw Karl, few people around here even bail straw after taking the wheat crop off. Of course there isnt a lot of wheat around here either, prices have been so low people save the wear and tear on the epuipment. I guess that's why small squares cost $4-5 around here. It will be interesting to see what happens with hay prices too, after last year's drought we saw grass hay at $6-7 a bail, timothy at $9-10 and alfalfa at $12!!!! I'll be burning down 10 acres this fall and seeding it into timothy to sell to the horse people.
Title: Anyone else a farmer here?
Post by: jcassity on May 26, 2013, 11:02:38 PM
just start growing pot,, the FDA will back you up.
Title: Anyone else a farmer here?
Post by: Cougars 2 go on May 27, 2013, 02:10:48 PM
Quote from: CougarSE;416083
I cut hay yesterday, a day later than i wanted but oh well. We planted 90 tomato plants today, about a quarter of the total. The little ones need more greenhouse time. The orchard is doing great, peaches are the size of golf balls. Potatoes should go in this week as well.
That's a lot of straw Karl, few people around here even bail straw after taking the wheat crop off. Of course there isnt a lot of wheat around here either, prices have been so low people save the wear and tear on the epuipment. I guess that's why small squares cost $4-5 around here. It will be interesting to see what happens with hay prices too, after last year's drought we saw grass hay at $6-7 a bail, timothy at $9-10 and alfalfa at $12!!!! I'll be burning down 10 acres this fall and seeding it into timothy to sell to the horse people.
Our bales were around 42 inches long, 18 inches wide and 16 inches high I think. They weighed in the 40s... between 40 and 50 lb I think. The hay was around 70. He packed his bales heavy because he sold by the ton so the more you can cram into the same space, you get more money for less handling and less twine, less running up and down the road, etc. Most of the barley straw went to horse people and most of the wheat straw went to landscapers - hydro-seeders.