Turkey Wheat Project: Raymond Field

A second field became available in the town of Raymond and I was able to obtain enough seed to plant it. This 6 acre field is in a beautiful setting, but it was covered in annual weeds, some grasses, and dozens of small trees. This field has not been farmed in 3 years, and has not had any fertilizers or chemicals on it for 10 years. Here is how it looked before we began.

This is the view from the seat of the tractor during the first pass of discing. We began using a 15' disc pulled by a John Deere 3010, which was just barely enough power. I did most of the field work while Brian was busy harvesting soybeans in nearby fields.

After 3-4 passes of the disc, the field still had a lot of trash but looked a lot better. This is the appearance of the field on October 12, after 2 days of work. By then we had switched to a 130 hp International 1086 to pull the disc. We did not get it planted in time before a rain event of around 2" came.

We resumed work on October 22, by which time the field was still wet, but workable. We brought the John Deere 4020 with loader bucket into the field to remove a large rock. Many, many smaller rocks and trees were removed by hand. The field was worked with one pass of the disc...

...followed by one pass of the digger/drag. The trash was just barely cut up enough to be dragged. There were a few places where the trash was still clogging the digger, but Brian could see it happen and take steps to clear the implement. After digging the field looked very good.

We began the next day with drilling! The seeder was a no-till type and Brian drilled the field in about an hour. The target drilling rate was 100 lbs/acre, which on this machine turned out to be notch 23 on the right on notch 24 on the left. Depth was around 1". The no-till machine packs the soil tightly and the surface of the field is completely different than the field in Mount Pleasant.