GPS won't help you if you drive into a hole. Was he texting?Corn hides a lot of flaws when it is 12 feet tall.
This reminds me of 1968 when I drove home from college and there was dad's tractor, about like the nose of this Deere in a sink hole. Immediate thought was he didn't survive. I got home and he was a little bruised but really embarrassed he drove into one.
Can you imagine your body being thrown off a tractor? All he wanted was a pull to get the tractor out because everyone who drives by could see the tractor with the radiator flush to the ground.
It happens so easily. If we use tile to drain these fields for maximum yield, any flaw shows up as a blowout. We call it a tile blowout, the water sucks the soil right through the open drain instead of sinking in like it should.
We have some on the new farm, they have to be repaired or we could end up like this. I stepped into one tonight and about broke my leg. I have the ones on this farm repaired but they could blow out at any time.
Tile is expensive to put in and expensive to repair but you can't farm without it. Untiled land yields less, brings less money and less rent for the landowner.
Mother Nature does a real good job moving water. We just try to direct it a bit. It has made our country so productive and it is a sound practice.
Some farmers put in their own tile which is a huge money making part time job if you can do it.
Crops over tile lines almost always out yields the crop the farther away you get from the tile. Most land in the United States require tile 30 to a few hundred feet away and 60 feet is pretty common. That will remove the excess water economically.
Lime and tile will make the farmer more money than anything else and we all do it.
Most do but some don't.
You could wind up in a hole.
Ed
Interesting dilemna. Nothing like that here in Sask. I expect tiling would be too costly to pay here although if there was ever a year we needed it, this is the one.
ReplyDeleteI know if you hit a tile blowout rakeing hay in 4th gear with a Moline M670 it will take the front axle right out from under the tractor and you'll be half a day putting it back together. A 4440 Deere on the other hand will take out the whole front end and you will be repairing hydraulic lines and fuel lines and maybe a radiator too.
ReplyDeleteWe have drainage problems here in West Virginia, too, Ed. All the water drains off the hills and into the hollers!
ReplyDeleteInteresting! Ralph we are on the same continent but different worlds. 706, my brother owns a rare one, MFWD. Gorges you get your carbon from coal, we get ours from corn.
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