September 2009 Sept 1st 2009 Started second cut. 6200 cutting and the TS130a following with the tedder. Cool temperatures and minimal wind is resulting in very slow drying. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Sept 3th 2009 Started making small square bales for starting loads of cattle. Only need about 500 new ones this year as we still have a lot left over from 2008. The baler worked great but the thrower controller was giving a lot of trouble. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Sept 4th 2009 HJV Equipment brought out an Autofarm base station to do a radio survey on our farms to determine RTK possibilities for the future. The A5 GPS display is very user friendly, however the salesman said there would be big developments later this fall to watch out for. We'll just have to wait and see what Autofarm comes up with. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Sept 5th 2009 Finally wrapped up haying for the year. Finished the last field with the round baler. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Sept 8th 2009 With calls starting for custom silage chopping, the harvester had to be cleaned up and switched over to silage. We store our heads in an old tie stall dairy barn so we made a head caddy for the 3pt on the small tractors. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Sept 10th 2009 We have decided to build a new farm entrance to the home farm. We only have one entrance and getting our semi in and out for fuel and the cattle trucks in and out has always been a drive in and back out ordeal. This will allow for a loop and will make it a lot easier on everything. First step is to strip the top soil. Brought the CX210 and D5M home to do the job. Crossing the road with the excavator video In cab loading a truck video 3rd person view loading a truck video ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Sept 11th 2009 Day 2 of stripping soil. Using the cx210 to load trucks and the d5 to push up the stockpile and keep everything neat. I can't get over how that dozer will climb up the pile. We are expecting to have over 100 dump truck loads of topsoil stockpiled by the time the driveway is completed. Worked all morning on soil relocation and in the afternoon started corn silage for a local dairy farm. All we do anymore with the old harvester is open up fields so they don't run over 3 rows around the outside of the field with pull type choppers. Stockpiling top soil video ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Sept 12th 2009 This is the longest stretch of sunny weather we've had since early May. Starting to remember what summer was supposed to be like. Pile of top soil is getting bigger. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Sept 14th 2009 A good day today, should be able to wrap up stripping top soil in one more. This is taking a lot longer than we originally planned. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Sept 16th, 2009 Finally finished stripping top soil. As we only have the one dump truck we borrowed a dump trailer from a friend to help speed up the next process. Filling that hole with field stones to form the base. It isn't the biggest dump trailer in the world but it is better than nothing. Its only downfall is the tailgate is WAY too small. It should be built up at least twice as high to allow large stones through. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Sept 17th 2009 First thing in the morning the cx210 was moved to a previously cleared 1ac lot. In the lot was an old house foundation and a bit of an old barn yard. As well as several very large stone piles . Crawled up top one of the piles with the excavator and started swinging rocks as fast as we could get them away. Really wish we had our skeleton bucket for this job but it isn't built yet. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Sept 19-20th 2009 Rain has slowed things down for us, brought the cx210 back home again to level out the loads of stone we've brought home so far. Still a long way to go. The 1ac is pretty well ready for the dozer to come in and rough grade so I moved on with the cx210 to a fence row in the field. Cleared off the trees and stumps so we could haul home all the stones home and keep building. There is A LOT of stones in this fence line. Also while stripping top soil a tile was crushed, so that was fixed and backfilled with clean 1inch gravel. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Sept 21st 2009 Dry enough to keep going again so we knocked out a big chunk of the fence row. The dump truck is broken so one of our old corn king dump wagons was used as a second hauler. It really isn't built heavy enough for this type of work but it was already beyond hauling grain anymore. Without a skeleton bucket I was switching between the root rake and digging bucket to sift out and load the stones. Getting about 75% of the top soil out but it is very slow this way. There were a lot of stumps I couldn't get out with all the stones still on top so that is why in the one photo there is a windrow of wood and a windrow of boulders. A lot of rain forecasted so not sure when we'll get back to building this driveway. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------