Author: Nuttygrass

I'm a nut and grass farmer, EMT, Firefighter, and world traveler. I love a good laugh and a great adventure!

Farm Talk

When I was down at Loyola Marymount for college, my freshman year I got put with a random roommate, miss Ashlee. She was a city gal from San Diego, who did have some roots in farming but for the most part, my life was very foreign. We are still very close friends to this day, it was a great random assignment. But I remember very vividly the first few months and even still today she will stop me mid-sentence and say, “Ok quit talking Farm Talk, I have no clue what you just said!” I never thought of how I talked to be “farm-ish”, honestly there are many times on the farm that I’m lost as to what to call things still today. I use “that thingy over there”, or “You know that deal that rolls, with the notches, and the whoop.” So I thought I would put together a small piece of translation so when you come out to visit, you can bring your dictionary for “Farm Talk”

Rig – any vehicle that you drive

Truck – A semi-truck of sorts, NOT A PICK-UP

Pick-up – If you’re smart it’s your Ford…if you’re not it’s your Dodge or Chevy

Jockey Box – Glove box

Creek – pronounced Crick, small trickle of water that runs below our farm

Baby Grass – A first year grass seed field

Yellow – Our Yellow Truck

Blue – Our blue truck (seeing a pattern here?)

Mojo – The ’67 Ford that was bought new and still runs like a champ

Lean To – Any building that is open on one side and connected to a shop or fully enclosed structure. If you have a shop, or any building you have to throw up a lean to, I’m not kidding. Even my house has a lean to!

“To Town” – If you go to this place, always ask everyone if they need anything, town is not close and fuel isn’t cheap

“Beep Me” – We use direct connect, or basically walkie talkie each other…Niner Niner

Tile Suck-out – When the tiles that are underground that we use to help the soil drain, break. It causes a HUGE hole in the ground and has to be flagged so that we don’t loose a tractor in a hole.

Anchor – corner post for your fence, not for your boat.

Slicker than a hog on Ice – be careful whatever it is, it’s slippery!

Romeos – Comfortable slipper looking shoes, great for work and everyone has them

Pop – It’s not soda, it’s not cola, it’s not even Coke…it’s Pop!

Oregon – Now this is important…it’s pronounced OR-GUN…not OR-EY-GONE

Most important thing to know – How much Rain did you get yesterday?

Farmer’s Tan – The reason when I put my arms next to my legs after summer, it resembles a ying yang sign.

What do you think…did I miss anything??  Anymore “Farm Talk” on your farms??

1st Day of Combining Grass Seed 2012

 Dust is Flying…Seed is coming in…Under this big blue sky…Yukon finds a cool place under the sun…Day One of Ryegrass…all finished up.

Swathing Demo…or Roller Coaster Ride??

A fair warning…my nerdy farming side comes out in this blog post a bit.  I get quite excited about new equipment so bear with me…

For most farmers harvesting equipment doesn’t come cheap and it isn’t something that you buy without a “test drive”; it’s such an integral part of getting our seed crops to market that usually buying something is no small venture.  So when it comes time to check out what is new and exciting in the world of seed production harvesting equipment we usually jump at the chance to try out some new toys.  This week we got to demo a new swather.

Maybe I should start at the beginning, seeing as many of my readers aren’t necessarily farmers.  Swathing is the first step in grass seed harvest.  It is basically “windrowing”, or cutting the crop into rows that can then be picked up by the combine.  In the area where I live this all done through the night; with seed production it is very important that the seed stays on the straw so that it can get into the combine.  So we have to cut when the dew is on the plants in order to allow the seed to not shatter, or fall off of the straw.

Windrows on the left, what hasn’t been swathed on the right.

We have two swathers right now that do a great job.  But again, as I said, when you get the chance to try out a new piece of machinery…it’s not a question of if, more of when can I get my hands on it?!  So they showed up at 4am the other morning…and I was excited!  I took a few rounds as the passenger and then they gave me the wheel.

After getting the hang of things…still looking quite focused!

Now here is where this whole roller coaster idea comes into play.  Because our swathers that we have now, run about 4mph while we’re cutting, this new machine, runs over 10!!!  I agree that in a car, this seems like a snails pace.  But when you’re on a machine with knives swinging around like crazy, bouncing over grass stubble, trying to drive a straight line, 10 miles an hour feels like you’re hitting the autobon at 120mph!!  Plus if you’ve ever worked on a farm you know how fast things can go wrong at a mere 1.8mph on a combine, yes, multiply that stress by 5!  You can say I hardly took my eyes off the windrow or my white knuckled hands off the wheel!  And to tack onto that, it’s not that you’re just going fast, you’re also steering the machine from the rear tires.  These babies turn on a dime, a very fast dime!  I did a few cookies (ROOKIE!), I’ll have to admit, but I think that if they would maybe let me demo it for the season (wink, wink) I would get the hang of it!

I’m not making this up…I was going 10.4!!!!

I have to say though, the machine did cut a wonderful windrow!  As the first step in harvest, having a good windrow is something that can’t be overlooked.  It will be interesting to see how this field combines compared to others.  Personally I love demos, however getting back into my 4.0mph swather did seem a bit boring after this crazy experience.  They have a good video out that shows some examples of this baby at work, pretty impressive.