Farm Journal -Cider Hill Farms

[CCF]

This week, the farm focused on cleaning up the pond. Quite a few leaves and pine needles blow into the pond during the fall, so we always try to clean them out before spring when things get busy in the fields.

The fastest way to clean out the pond it by scooping up the leaves and pine needles with the excavator. As the excavator had not been ran since July, Marky gave it some extra time to heat up before going to work:

In the meantime, Garret got in the dump truck and drove down to the pond:

After five minutes of idling, Marky drove the excavator down to the pond, and got to work:

Surprisingly, not even a full dump truck load of leaves and needles had collected at the bottom of the pond during the fall. Although the dump truck did not have a full load, it still had a hard time getting up the hill. A small push from the excavator helped Garret get up the hill:

Once Garret was out of the pond with the dump truck, he headed for the woods road and dumped the leaves off to the side:

After he dumped the load, he parked the dump truck back by the barn. Marky also brought the excavator out, and parked it beside the dump truck instead of putting it back behind the barn. During the next few weeks the farm will be focusing on final cleaning and fixing up anything broken around the farm, so the excavator will be needed:

After they finished putting the machines away, they packed up for the day as it was five o'clock:

Hate to say it, but that's all for this week folks!

[Powerstarâ„¢]

Another great episode Tim, I like the shot of inside the excavator cab!

Wait in anticipation for the next episode 

[CCF]

Another great episode Tim, I like the shot of inside the excavator cab!

Wait in anticipation for the next episode 

Cheers Luke 

[CCF]

EASTER SUNDAY DOWN ON THE FARM

* I apologize if you were not included in today's festivities, I only have a limited amount of tractors and am not familiar with some of the new User names as of yet.

Today, Cider Hill Farms once again hosted its annual Easter Sunday Easter Egg hunt. The object of the event was to drive around with a tractor or piece of farming machinery, and collect a jumbo Easter egg filled with Jaffa Cakes and other Easter goodies. The event was a huge turnout, and over twice as many members attended this year. We were quite pleased by the turnout, and the members seemed to appreciate the day of fun. We hope to host this even again next year, and hope to host more FTF events throughout the year.

As Luke P and JohnDeereMatty were busy on Sunday and could not attend the event, they volunteered to hide all of the jumbo eggs around the farm on Saturday afternoon. The Farm Owner let each of them take home an egg as a reward:

All of the participants lined up at the starting line at 7:30 a.m., and got ready to egg hunt. The starting line was much larger than last year:

At 8:00, the Farm Owner blew the starting whistle from the top of the barn, and everyone scattered off to find eggs:

First off down the farm road was Andy, once again with his New Holland 4wd tractor:

Andy finds his egg in the parking lot by the stream:

Following up next is Simon M in his John Deere 9420T:

Simon finds an egg in a harder to get to spot on top of the rock pile by the pond, but is able to get to it with the help of his tracks:

Mandy comes up next in her Case IH Quad trac:

She finds an orange egg near the road to the tractor boneyard out in the woods:

Jason Cutts barrels down the road in his IH 5288 shortly after Mandy:

He drives around the edge of the pond and is able to find an egg hidden on the outside rim of the pond:

Gavin follows up with one of the most interesting tractors out of his antique tractor collection, a Case 1370 Spirit of 76' tractor:

He drives off to the same place as last year by the pig pen, and finds an egg without any trouble:

Sean roars off in the opposite direction towards the field in search of his egg:

Sean finds his egg in a large grass plant by a few of the small ponds:

James F and Colm follow behind Sean:

They both find their eggs out at the beginning of the field:

Marky roars off in the other direction with his Massey Ferguson:

He finds his egg in the flower garden near the farm entrance:

At about 8:30, someone everyone knew all too well pulled up in front of the farm in a stolen police cruiser with the roof missing:

The evil Bazza knew very well that the farm would be hosting this event again, and it would provide him with a prime chance to steal some Easter eggs and cause havoc:

In order to not get caught out of jail, the evil Bazza knew that he would have to find a tractor to use so he could blend in with the rest of the party. After a quick search, all he could find was the farm's old Minneapolis Moline tractor. The evil Bazza did not like the idea of running that tractor around the farm, but he knew beggars couldn't be choosers. As soon as the evil Bazza hopped on the tractor, the back wheels became even more clapped out than before:

The evil Bazza rode around the farm, and searched for his own egg as he knew trying to steal Marky's egg would get him into more trouble than it was worth. He found an egg that was particularly filled with sweets out by the woods road. The sweets would be more than enough to cure the evil Bazza's sugar addiction until his release in a week:

Jez came roaring along after Marky. After some looking, he found an egg in the goat's water hole:

Even though he had been quite busy as of late, Nathan managed to come again to the event on his John Deere utility tractor:

He had a pretty good feeling that there would be an egg of his favourite colour in the same spot as last year, and he was right:

Rick came next after Nathan. He decided to search close to the farm entrance:

Rick found his egg under the farm sign after a bit of looking:

Shortly after came Will and Old Ford:

They each headed for the same spots as last year, and came out lucky:

Following next came Ben:

Ben purposely ignored some of the eggs, until he found a yellow egg by the edge of the goat field and pig pen. Rumour has it that Ben chose the egg because it was the easiest to spray over with gold paint, and shortly after the event was seen bringing his egg to the local pawn shop to trade in for 99p:

After Ben, came Nick on his John Deere GP spike wheeled tractor:

Nick found his egg under a tree up in the farmyard:

After Nick came Tris, barreling down the farm road:

Tris found a lime green egg in the stream after a bit of looking:

Shortly after Tris came Martin and Stan:

They both headed for the back of the equipment barn, and each found their egg:

Luke came next on his John Deere crawler:

Luke found his egg in a rather obvious spot, the rock pile right by the starting line:

Bill followed shortly after in his old IH 600:

He located his egg in the duck pen:

Marcus rolled down the road towards the field shortly after in his John Deere loader tractor:

He found his egg on the outskirts of the field:

Kevin came after Marcus:

Kevin found his egg on the edge of the Goat field:

Next up came Kiwi Nick, who traveled on overnight flight all the way from New Zealand to be a part of the event:

Nick found his egg on the rock wall dividing the large field from the new field:

And finally last but not least, Scott showed up with an alternate means of transportation once again:

Scott found his egg on the side of the compost pile:

[CCF]

As the egg finding ended, the participants headed off to the field with their tractors and eggs for a ground photo. Deerepower, the hired security guard, was happy that he did not have to chase anybody or break up any fights over eggs during the event. Most surprisingly, he did not have to shoo the evil Bazza off from the event. After everyone had cleared the area, he rode around on the farm's Gator to look for any personal items that were dropped by accident during the event. He was quite happy to find an egg that nobody had picked up on the edge of the goat field for himself:

The farm owner also took a spin on the other Gator to look for any extra eggs. He was happy to find one extra egg for himself:

As soon as everyone was ready, the Farm Owner took a group photo of the event. Once again, the evil Bazza managed to get into everyone's copy of the group photo. Nobody seemed to mind though, everyone had enjoyed event and feelings were good throughout the day:

Overall, the event was a huge success, and everyone who participated had a great time. The event went by unbelievably quickly, and everyone was done with the event by 10:00 a.m. Cider Hill Farms was glad to host the event, and is already making plans to make next year's Easter Sunday Easter Egg Hunt even better. Now that Easter is done, the bulb plants will begin to give off life, as will the trees and the grass. Spring is finally here, and the year is off to a good start.

That's all for the episode this week folks, I hope you had as much fun reading my journal as I did writing it. The next Farm Journal will be Farm Journal #1.

[Powerstarâ„¢]

Love it Tim, really really good, alot of time and effort must of gone in to that and we really appreciate that! In my picture as i'm climbing up the rocks in the crawler it looks like smoke coming out of the exhaust because of the tree pattern behind 

And scott :D :D :D

Nice form of transportation, made me laugh out loud!

Happy easter mate 

[Lord Ferguson]

What a read... brilliant Tim.... Nice to see old Holmes on a 35x Industrial..

Trust Bazza to be there if chocolate is involved hey 

Happy Easter to you buddy.... and thanks for the laugh..

Scott on his goat  :D :D

[Tractorman810]

great read tim, good to see all of us made it over

[FW]

Great to read Tim, well done and Happy Easter. ;)

[Murray]

nice haha love take it you were a machine short by time the guy is on the sheep 

[CCF]

Thank You very much chaps, The Easter Sunday journal is always my favourite journal of the year to write. Glad you liked! 

[THEBRITFARMER]

TIM TIM TIM !!!!!

Another cracking Easter journal again. Loved it. The pic of Barry on his clapped out tractor is sheer brilliance  :D :D

Love my mode of transport too

Cheers mate

And Happy belated Easter to you and to all.

[BC]

What can I say that the others have not already said... well in addition to that Tim another brilliant story. Keep up the good work.

PS Although that was an old IH600 I would love to have a real one... lovely beasts

Correct me if I'm wrong but are those the ones that start on petrol and then switch over to diesel

[Lady Ferguson]

Amazing Tim... you must have spent hours setting up the shots and preparing the storyline... excellent stuff darling

[CCF]

FARM JOURNAL #1

I apologize for not adding to this topic sooner chaps, this summer has been very eventful thus far and has not given me much spare time for down on the model farm. This journal is a catchup journal from May-early August (Present). Some of the photos are not up to their optimal due to lighting problems, hope to fix that in newer journals however. Enough talk, time for the journal and pictures!

Several weeks before the ground was fertilized and tilled, several farm employees went out and picked up any large stones and rocks in the field that would cause trouble for the fertilizing units and tillage. All of the rocks were dumped into the irrigation stream to further improve the water quality:

Due to this year's extremely high prices of fertilizer and fuel and the ever rising price of seeds, the farm has decided to cut back on the land farmed this year by several hundred acres. The farm only is farming 500 acres in total land now, so it is considered a small farm. With the large amount of money the farm has made from clearing residential and commercial driveways of snow in the wintertime, the farm will be able to still make it by this year with a good sized profit. Here, fertilizer is being applied to the ground with a dry fertilizer spreader:

After the fertilizer is applied, the ground is tilled up. As the decision to cut back on farmed land proved to be successful, the farm will most likely be trading this tractor and implement in at the end of the summer for something more suitable to the land size:

[CCF]

The large chunks of dirt that are cultivated up from the ground are thereafter broken up with the disk:

One of the main focuses of the farm this year has been to save as many resources as possible to keep costs down. We have done this by cutting back farming land, and therefore spending less on seeds/seedlings, fertilizer, fuel, and water. This year, we have done most of our planting at dusk when the temperature starts to lower. By doing this, drivers need fewer breaks, therefore saving idling engine time on machines. Working at dusk is also much easier on the machines:

Our hay field was cut in May, and is due for it's second and possibly final cutting of the year within the next few weeks. As we still cut a vast amount of hay on our and other farms, we have decided to keep the self propelled mower conditioner for another year:

[CCF]

After the hay was cut, it was baled after sitting and drying for a few days. We were lucky enough to choose several days in which there was no rain for the hay to dry:

In June, weeds start to become a problem around the farm. This year, we have been right on top of keeping all of the weeds neatly cut down with a rotary brush mower:

Weeds grow everywhere on the farm during the hot months of the summer. Weeds have not been as bad as past years due to the many rain days with cooler temperatures, however it is still important to get rid of them in the field, as they have taken over whole crops in the past. This year, we have been weeding at dusk, and have been using the Gator dump bed for the weeds instead of a loader bucket. By doing this, we minimize the compaction of the soil, making it easier and faster to till when a new crop is being planted:

Well, this about brings everything up to speed on Cider Hill Farms. Now that the busy part of the summer has gone by, I hope to get back to the model farm on a weekly basis. Tune in next week for some root crop harvesting and general farm work.

[jcb4cxkid]

nice story you can see how much effort goes into this topic 

[CCF]

nice story you can see how much effort goes into this topic 

Cheers jcb mate 

[Kiwi6920]

Welcome back with the journals tim, been hangning out for this, love reading it, thanks for the time you put in doing it

[Luke DeWitt]

very cool journal. Maybe next year you could plant a vegetable garden with that crew. 

[smallclaas]

Another great read Tim, I haven't been on here in a while so I look forward to catching up on the going ons down at Cider Hill 

[CCF]

Thank you very much chaps. 

[CCF]

FARM JOURNAL #2

At Cider Hill Farms, it is evident that the summer is starting to wind down. During the past few evenings, the temperature has been dropping down to 10-12 degrees, and there is a hint of fall in the air. We are now starting our gradual descent into the main harvesting season with the harvest of several of our root crops. So far the past week, the weather has cooperated with us quite nicely with clear skies and minimal rainy days, definitely a good sign for things ahead. Fall is right around the corner now!

Early in the week, we went out to inspect several root crop fields for harvest. The crops were definitely ready for harvest as evident in the pictures, so we spent most of the day harvesting the four rows. What is seen in the picture is about a quarter of all of the root crops grown on the farm this year:

After the crops were inspected, we started by harvesting the Onion fields. The few weeds that were growing in the field were tossed into the back of the gator, while the Onions were placed into the loader bucket to be brought up to the barnyard:

While Garrett and Gavin were harvesting the Onions, Zane and Martin harvested the two rows of potatoes. The potatoes were placed on a small wagon to be brought up to the barnyard for washing. Most of the potatoes will get sold in this coming weekend's farmer's market:

Unfortunately, one of our Onion field got completely overgrown by weeds because it was shaded by several trees in back of the field. The farm owner tried to dig up a few of the onions to see if they were any good, but all of them were not much larger than gum ball size. The farm owner sent Gavin out to mow down the field with the brush mower. The farm owner told Gavin and Martin to go back to the field and try to pull out as many of the small onions as possible and dump them in the pig pen, as the farm owner does not want Onions to be grown in that field next year:

[CCF]

To prepare the field for the next crop, all that had to be done was a quick cultivation and discing. Dave took cultivation duty, because the soil was relatively free of rocks and weeds, he was done with the four rows within an hour:

Marky was quite pleased when the Farm Owner told him to disk up the fields instead of giving the John Deere tracked tractor an oil change: