@Volkmom ☝🏻

My family has a farm. My step father and mother are the main care takers and the rest of us pitch in when we can. I grew up on a different bigger farm. The current one is 60 acres 40 of that is wooded though. The farm I grew up on was 150+ acres.

@JesseJames my Voo owed 100 acres off jepson lane I'm middle/Portsmouth RI but sold the farm in 1990,

My dream is to one day purchase what is left of the car I grew up on. A lot of it has been developed but we sold the house with 50 acres so i would love to have it.

@JesseJames yea I get that

@Der Seeteufel - SD if you need some farming equipment fixed, my grandpa runs a machine shop with pre WWII equipment. Old man wisdom. DM me if you ever need the info.

@Sam Anderson thanks man. We repair pretty much everything ourselves and have a pretty well stocked shop, but if we ever need some custom machining on some of our older equipment I'll think of you.

We fixed one of the hydraulics on this old beast today. Turns out it just needed a new o ring

Those things are handy

Cleaning up the seed wheat.

I love my job!

That's sweet. Take it into the city on the weekend and make some extra cash haha

I should turn it into an uber.

Only problem is that it only does about 5mph and the closest city is 25 miles away.

Haha yeah, that's a little problem

That's only 5hrs.

Completed my longest haul to date. Delivered 5000gal of water to one of our outlying fields. 30 miles out from the farm.

Back at the farm loading up 5000 more gallons.

I was slowing down way to early on my return trip. It's amazing how much of a difference 40,000lbs makes.

Christ, I should've gotten my CDL when I had the chance

If you go work on a farm you don't need a CDL within 100mi of the farm. At least that's how it works here. I basically just did a few really short hauls with unloaded trucks and my boss in the passenger seat, but I recently started driving solo. I probably have less than 3 hours behind the wheel. Sometimes I think it's crazy the level of trust these guys have.

@Der Seeteufel - SD the sheer scale of ya’lls operation is staggering.

@Deleted User part of the reason I keep getting bigger and bigger jobs is that there is no one else to do it. Just think, we farm tens of thousands of acres with 7 full time employees including the boss. It keeps getting harder and harder to find temporary workers too. Most of the guys we hire during busier times are in their 50s or older. There's opportunity out here if young guys are willing to look for it.

@Der Seeteufel - SD why do you suppose it’s hard to come by young workers?

I think it's 2 fold. The price of farm labor is driven down by immigration and farmers are having fewer children. It also doesn't help that most farmers kids end up going to college and moving away. My grandfather had 6 sons and only one of them continued to work in agriculture, and it's only getting worse.

@Der Seeteufel - SD Howdy Andrew. New recruit here from down in Texas. Do you happen to have any experience with smaller operations, say involving greenhouses and aquaponics? Or 50-100 acres?

@Mikolas sorry but I am actually pretty new at this myself and I work on a 26,000 acre grain farm.

When your significant other complains about vacuuming show them this.

Someone left a gate open on the leg system and we put 10,000 bushels of corn on top of 40,000 bushels of wheat. Only thing to do is suck it off the top with a 200hp vacuum cleaner.

We've gotten about one truck load out

So my girlfriend asked me, "What did you do all day?" Oh nothing much just sat knee deep in corn and watched a giant vacuum.

I'm going to be doing this all day too. 3 hours per truck and probably 3 or 4 more trucks to go.

I'm off vacuum duty they needed another cart driver!

Corn harvest has begun.

I hauled 575,000 lbs of corn today. I just did the math and thought "Holy crap! That's a lot of corn."

That is a whole lot of corn

78,000 pounds of corn!

My boss just said we're hiring 2 South Africans next year. I think I'm getting through to him.

Most farm hands in ND are SA as well.

Actually almost brought one to tears when I brought up SA conditions, he was in shock that I knew what was going on over there.

Glad more are getting up to the midwest. They fit right in

Sending out another load of confection sunflower seeds.

If you look closely you can almost see an antalope.

Pronghorn.

If you look closely you can almost see an antalope.

All I see if a red truck...

Dammmm nice kill.. you shot that thing right off the tractor?

Nah. This isn't even mine. I was scouting yesterday though and helped him find it.

I didn't draw tags this year.

Tan that hide!

Idk where this goes bc "farmer" is on a *spectrum* lol. But here's a couple of my sheep.

That definitely goes here. I'd really like to see more small scale farms in here.

😀

TFW there's goats. 🤗

First time driving a planter.

NICE!! @Der Seeteufel - SD

Why didn't I become a farmer? This is all so beautiful. 😩

@micbwilli hellishly difficult if you're not born into it. The start-up costs for land and equipment are astronomical

Now I'll never be happy....

I guess I'll have to enjoy these pictures and live vicariously though you guys.

It is much easier to buy a few acres and homestead. Vegetables and small livestock.

But a corn or wheat or cotton operation takes hundreds of thousands or more, at least in Oklahoma and Iowa.

I read that the smallest farm you can do is 5 acres if you want to feed yourself. I saw plans for one like this once that said how to divide the land up for small livestock and plants and such.

If I find those plans I'll post them.

I didn't like that the plans didn't include ponds for fish farming. Fish are a great feed converter. They can get feed convertion ratios over 1 if the pond have some natural sources to eat off like plants and plankton.

@micbwilli A little perspective on what it takes to run the farm I work on. That planter I was pulling costs about $250,000. That doesn't include the tractor.

The farm I work on has 4 air seeders (what I was pulling) and 3 row crop planters of roughly similar value.

To be fair I do work on a large scale farm even by South Dakota standards.

It's cold wet and miserable but the corn must come in.

41° F

Is there a danger of mold taking the corn in wet?

I know bailing hay wet is very dangerous.

The mosisture is 17.5% which is a little high but nothing the elevator can't handle. They'll run it through a dryer if it's too wet.

Mostly what we're worried about is what price they're giving us. You get docked for higher moisture.

If we leave it in the field much longer though we might not be able to get it out.

Devil's Triangle.

It's a little bit hard to see but there's a combine dumping on another grain cart up ahead.

night raid, nice

I mean, the grain is yours, so it's not a "raid," but ya know

I like harvesting at dusk. You see a lot more wildlife. Working 16 hour days has been wearing me out though. I can't wait for December and my trip to Australia.

@Der Seeteufel - SD You work the southern hemisphere harvest? In my little OK town growing up we'd see migratory Boer hands during wheat season.

No I'm going to see my girlfriend and hunt some kangaroos. We get SAs here too. My boss is considering hiring one or two next season.

@Wood-Ape - OK/MN

Nice!

October 10th. South Dakota.

Wow. Warm as eff here

Roll down your window and you still can't see.

We don't have a bucket lift truck but we do have a scissor lift and a pickup.

I guess OSHA doesn't come out to farms often

Nope OSHA doesn't regulate us at all.

nice

awesome

I got a shout out in the most recent FTN for sending these pictures to jazz hands. It's right at the beginning of the show.

http://fashthenation.com/2018/10/ftn-157-accelerate/

Nice

That's a really nicely done picture

Cleaning corn. Eventually we'll get this cleaner installed into the leg system but we had to rig up a temporary system.

I had to clean a dead cat out of the fan compartment of a combine today. To answer your first question yes it did go through the fan while the fan was running. Farming wasn't very fun today.

Wise men know "grain isn't vegan"

Yeah look at all these dinosaur bones I've burned.

Sunflower harvest.

Sunflowers are our most dangerous crop. They are very dry and produce a lot of dust. When we saw this smoke on the horizon we were worried one of our neighbors lost a combine. Luckily it was just someone burning tires.

Fire is such a concern that our service truck pulls double duty as a fire truck with a 600 gallon water tank.

Sunflowers are oily as well, no?

Depending on the variety some can be very oily.

Generally speaking though the dust is what starts on fire.

Who sees it?

The deer?

Dust particle fires/explosions are crazy.
I caught an episode of Modern Marvel's and they talked about this grainery explosion in the 70's. Absolutely crazy.
https://www.nola.com/movies/index.ssf/2017/12/continental_grain_elevator_exp.html

There's a video of it somewhere.

@Der Seeteufel - SD awesome I heard that and actually wondered if it was you. Nice!

What do you think that would do to a tractor tire?

Found it out in one of the sunflower fields.

Dumbass animals, always dying and crap

wow thats so pretty!

I think Molly prefers the quadtrac. More room to curl up and nap.

Beautiful

Guys it's over an hour after sunset and overcast. All I can see is what's in my light and the combines off in the distance. For some reason tonight feels spooky.

I'm givin her all she's got captn!

big boy

on the hoof

@Der Seeteufel - SD Wow, the upcoming release of Farming Simulator is turning out to be truly next gen.

It's only been 7 years since we got this obnoxious masterpiece:

https://youtu.be/gEJHrmliVQw

Great leaks Andrew 10/10

I love Sseth. He's a good boy

He a good boy he dindu nuffin

SD traffic jam.

Truth be told I was driving a 500hp quadtrac and we own the land on either side so I could have just passed. I just thought it was pretty funny getting stuck behind a semi on a section line road in the middle of the night.

Ride his air stream draft lol

That road is little more than a cow path and pretty rough. We were probably doing about 5mph.

Feels like 75 in the Dakota wind!

😎

Farmer crushed to death after his dog pushed forklift lever

https://www.foxnews.com/world/farmer-crushed-to-death-after-his-dog-pushed-forklift-lever

Poor guy

If you leave a dog in the cab of a tractor you have to avoid any moving parts. My boss made absolutely sure I knew that before I started bringing my dog with me. The only time this really matters to me is when I have to get out and pee and I'm always careful to stand clear of the tractor.

That is such a great photo @Der Seeteufel - SD

I think it's broke. Still not the worst burned up motor I've seen though.

This was totally my fault too. It was cold and the starter stuck on after the engine started. Apparently the correct solution was to hit the starter with a wrench or hammer.

Last field of 2018 harvest.

Nope.

I was sure it would work

To be fair the trailer is empty.

The irony is we have 2 dozen tractors in this lot but they're either hooked up or won't start.

This bad boy would probably get the job done.

I'm not unhooking it tonight though.

None of these will start.

Why not tho

No batteries. Not a single one in the whole storage shed.

Those are collector's items anyway. My boss likes old John Deeres.

I wasn't lying about the 2 dozen tractors thing either, and that only counts the ones that actually could start. We probably have 6 or 7 more in junk row.

You can see junk row just past the bins. This was from earlier this year.

I don't think these will work either.

🐶 ❤

Does the black dog in the foreground have one front leg??

No she's got both.

That rooster was tame as hell. I almost got him with a rock.

Must have been a pen raised escapee

Self propelled grape harvester. Barossa Valley, South Australia.

One of the many vineyards.

More from the vineyards.

Also cows.

Ahhh I wish I could afford the land for a couple cows. Got my sights set on goats for now

Got these two books yesterday

Growing some spinach indoors, messing with these weird hybrid seeds I bought. If I like em im gonna plant them larger scale in spring

https://m.youtube.com/user/urbanfarmercstone

I love Curtis stone!

yeah, he's pretty great

nice pics @Der Seeteufel - SD

Check out @HarmlessYardDog’s Tweet: https://twitter.com/HarmlessYardDog/status/1094763065453805574?s=09

Kind of like South Africa. And you see what’s happening down there.

@Der Seeteufel - SD Those are healthy looking cattle!

says will a month later

@Der Seeteufel - SD hey boss, are you all coming to the farm machinery show in Louisville this week?

@RevStench It's a bit too much of a trip for me at the moment, but it looks cool. I wish I could make it.

@Will - MD I'll let the GF know you like her cows.

@Der Seeteufel - SD oh bummer. It's an awesome show.

https://youtu.be/5xsFvj3s_YU