A roller harrow breaks clods and churns the soil.  The rollers penetrate up to 2″ deep, mixing and firming the soil in preparation for the next step.

This is an 40-acre farm in Grand Junction, right under the monument, completely surrounded by subdivisions.  The cost of doing farm work against the neighbor complaints, just became too much, so the farmer sold out.  He made a large amount of money and the ground will grow houses instead of crops.

Terry was interested in the 115 John Deere blade, and the manure spreader.  They all sold for much more than he wanted to spend.  It was a good sale for the seller, everything went really high.

Terry has begun the spring work on our fields. 

The temperatures are at the high 20 mark during the night, with day temperatures hovering around 45-54 degrees. 

 With fertilizer costs steadily rising, Terry likes to pulverize the corn stalks and ‘disc’ them into the ground, thereby amending the soil.  Not only does the  stalks add nutrition to the earth, but the churning of the discs soften up the packed (by cows) soil.

Cows are put in the harvested corn fields to clean up stalks and leaves that are left. Since the corn stalks are left standing in the field after the corn is harvested, new mommas-to-be are put on our place to graze.  The stalks remain intact, rooted in the soil surface, along comes the cow which eats the loose husks, and other material producing wonderful manure which helps fertilize the fields.

The cows wander everywhere, in the Chico and sagebrush, up the hills, and down in the cattails along bottom of the hills, and especially in the hay, bean and corn fields on top. Once the babies (calves) are born, the cow and calf are moved to another place down on the river.  Although, the white and brown, and tan cows you can see in the photo are NOT ours, they and their momma’s and grandma’s have all been born on our place over the last 50 years.

When Terry (or anyone) disc’s the plant residue is mixed into the soil about 2-3″  of the depth of the disc.

Needless to say, you don’t want to disc if the ground is damp, or still wet from winter’s snow! 🙂

Yes, it is still a wee bit cold here.  Still spring work has to begin.

Terry is changing out the entire 12” pipe system to 10” pipe.  The water carries better leaving the mud and sand at the end of the pipe, not IN the pipe.