2020 Harvest - Day 8 - Steady Progress Picking Corn

[@JasonSmith-em6ie]

I remember these days when I was a kid .... I use to love this time of year and getting to spend it with my family all day ! Love the videos keep em coming !

[@ronclayton1731]

⁶i

[@donnellykieranj]

A superb series of harvest videos. You and big papa bear are some team. Greetings from Ireland.

[@ravenviewfarm]

I don't know what I'd do without Papa Bear! Thanks for watching from across the pond!

[@stephenbutz2621]

Love hearing the rumble of the M , brings back fond memories of growing up on the farm in northern Illinois in the 50s and 60s 🙂🙃🙂❤

[@Mr-er6fg]

Love your show from Indiana , here! Nice to see sensible sized farms with sensible equipment. I miss it ! Best of luck!

[@ravenviewfarm]

Thank you sir! We try to keep things a little more “human” scale. Frankly I’m not sure how the big guys do it. I know every rock and gully, tree and hill here like the back of my hand, and that’s how I like it. Couldn’t do that with thousands of acres A guy can do a lot with a little if he’s determined (and kinda crafty). 😉

[@washingtonfarmboy9347]

Hey man. Just wanted to say I love the operation you guys have going and all of the old equipment you run. It’s so cool to see these old machines still running on the field. Keep it up!

[@ravenviewfarm]

Thank you sir! For us, on our size operation, this kind of equipment just makes sense. It gets the job done, and for the most part does it very reliably. I love the fact that we've been able to adapt to no-till and cover crops without investing in different equipment, and it was all paid for a long time ago. Plus it's just kind of fun to run the older stuff.

[@survivingmaineona20acrefar77]

Just found your channel it is refreshing to see other small farms making it work thanks for your time to do the videos there great.

[@mathiggins4264]

You guys be safe out there keep up the good work your buddy from Nebraska

[@charlesshaw9276]

Love seeing the videos popping back up keep them come 👍

[@kopenhagenkid]

Good luck picking your corn 🌽

[@stephenrice4554]

Lovely equipment , has to be used to keep it going . You being shepherded by the good looking dog while you opened up . 👍🇬🇧

[@powrotdokorzeni]

it was fun to watch this film 😃👍

[@sperfdairy2160]

Brings back the old days when my dad used to pick ear corn

[@pinesedgefarm1155]

Nice variety of tractors!

[@GeigerFarm]

That is beautiful ear corn 🙂👌!

[@kopenhagenkid]

Great video

[@RiverRatCatfishing]

Duke is doing a good job supervising! checking for corn dropping on the ground :)

[@lazorus6926]

Keep on grinding! Neat to see the old equipment!

[@ztbursch]

Thanks for sharing your videos. What kind of barn was that used for by your corn cribs seen at 9:03? The brick foundation missing the roof. I've seen them and wondered what the purpose of them was. They look long but rather narrow.

[@ravenviewfarm]

Hey Zechariah! That barn has served all kinds of functions on our farm. It was originally smaller, and used as a hog shed by my grandpa. Then my uncle, who was a block-layer expanded the walls to make a larger hog shed, and my Dad, who was a young carpenter at the time, put the roof on it. Once Dad took over the farm, he stopped raising hogs and used the shed for young heifers. After he got out of dairy farming it became a horse barn, and then finally sat empty for awhile until a storm blew the roof off of it. For the last couple of years we've been talking about getting a new roof on it. Dad and I have some serious plans to get that done in the summer of 2022.

[@hairymanonetwo]

I still pick ear corn with my 324 picker......but shell it now. I can shell 14 wagon loads a day " alone " . I can move two semi load per day " alone " Then I bought an old 6600 John Deere combine. I took one step back by doing that ! Alone.........I can not pick / shell two semi loads per day !! 1 and a half loads per day is the best I can do ! With a combine your chasing wagons and stopping to dump all day instead of picking ! Now.....add another helper...... hands down the combine wins ! So much for the advancements in agriculture ! After using my two row for 25 years...and repairs cost me 300 dollars in that time period... My combine Ive spent 4000 dollars just to get it up and going !

[@mediocrematt7560]

This video came up in my "recommended for you" list and it sure hit the spot. I love the old iron being used. Is all your equipment older? I've been trying to convince my wife (who grew up in a farming family) to buy some land for a small farm. This is the type of equipment I envision us using. Love the video/s and definitely earned another subscriber

[@ravenviewfarm]

Hey Myatt! Thanks for subscribing! To answer your question, yep, all of our stuff is pretty vintage. I think the newest piece of equipment we own would be our early no-till drill, and that was manufactured in 1985. Most of our stuff is from the 70’s and some older items. I think you have a good vision there! Getting started in any kind of farming is a huge challenge, mainly due to costs and slow return on investment. Going small with older equipment can absolutely work. Pair that with niche-market products that are more profitable and you can really start to get somewhere. I’ve been blessed to have the farm in the family. Not sure I’d ever be able to start from scratch. Have you ever checked out the channel Just a Few Acres? Pete’s a good example of making it work profitably on a small scale with older stuff. Best of luck!

[@mediocrematt7560]

@@ravenviewfarm Thanks for the response! Yeah I definitely understand it's going to be a challenge, especially with today's costs of everything. Going to be an uphill battle but we'll get there. Thank you for the recommendation also, I will definitely check them out!

[@farmcentralohio]

@@mediocrematt7560 Dive into it slow, don't try and take on to much at once to start with.

[@King_Randy]

It was in mine too

[@jamesrolfe9151]

Hella awesome 👍👍 thanks

[@stephenbutz2621]

Great camera angle on the corn elevator 🙂

[@dmagnus3246]

Interesting to watch.

[@DiamondKingToolsWeymouth]

Awesome video!

[@keithkuckler2551]

Is that the "super picker" with the bigger husking bed? I pulled one with a 4020 when i farmed between Jordan and New Prague, Minnesota in the 1970's. It would walk right though the corn. Where is your farm? I could pull two gravity boxes with extensions in tandem with my 3020. I used to crib all of my corn, grind some for feed, and, shell the rest with my Moline 1200 sheller. Lots of labor, but, i only had about 80 -100 acres of corn, so, it was doable. Today, i am sure i would just have a combine. Nice to see that old equiptment still doing the job. I never thought the4020 was "clunky" though.

[@ravenviewfarm]

Hey Keith! You know, whenever I hear the term "super picker", I imagine the 3-row version that New Idea came out with that had a 1,000 rpm pto. I think it's one of those things that people interpret different ways. But to answer your question, yes, ours has the larger 12 roll husking bed, and it does seem to keep up pretty darn well in heavy corn. That mounted picker we opened the fields with struggled a little in the heavy spots by comparison. What you're describing is exactly what we still do. Except we don't have any livestock to grind feed for, so it all goes through the 1200 sheller in the spring and off to the elevator. Well, almost all of it. In the last two years I've started marketing a larger and larger portion of cob corn and cleaned shelled corn direct to customers for wildlife feed, and it's been surprising how that's taken off. Truly, the 4020 isn't clunky. It's just all relative to what you're used to. Since it's our biggest tractor, it feels a little less agile than the smaller ones, and the cab limits visibility (but only a tad bit). Plenty of farms use them nowadays as their small chore tractor, lol. But to me, it's a huge beast.

[@keithkuckler2551]

@@ravenviewfarm I know what you mean, I see folks raking hay with those big tractors and i wonder why. I pulled a 3-18 White auto trip plow with my 4020, but, i had some heavy soil. I would chisel my bean and small grain ground with a 10 foot chisel plow, but, i always liked to moldboard plow the corn, it warmed up way faster in the spring. I farmed just north of Porter Creek, and, just south of ST. Joes church in Scott County, Minnesota. I think the church has been gone for quite a few years, it has been about a dozen years since i drove though that country.

[@dankreoger611]

@@ravenviewfarm 0

[@douglaslaschkewitsch6032]

Why do you guys switch to the pull type picker? It is only a 2 row like the tractor mounted one. Not any faster?

[@ravenviewfarm]

For a couple of reasons. The mounted picker is borrowed from my cousin who farms nearby. Since we don't own it, we don't like to run up the hours on it, or risk breaking something while it's in our care. Plus the brakes on that Farmall 400 are pretty dang bad, and since the picker stays on that tractor year-round, they're not likely to be serviced any time soon! Also, Dad doesn't particularly enjoy running it. It's harder to get on and off of that rig, and you're right in the thick of all the dust and noise, and surrounded by moving parts. For comfort, the pull type is way better. And last but not least, the 686 with its diesel engine is a lot more fuel efficient than that 400 gasser.

[@brysonriley4490]

Old stuff works great then new stuff

[@robertburt9071]

O how I remember those days I was about 14 15 in the wagon pushing cobs to the door All of suddenly the wagon over it went On the high side From Ontario Canada

[@ravenviewfarm]

Holy smokes Robert! Did you have to find a fresh pair of britches after that?! Pretty sure I would've!

[@millardhayes1884]

Those were nice looking ears of corn. Did it yield well? Only a Y or N

[@ravenviewfarm]

Thanks Millard! Yep, we had an excellent yield - around 175 bu/ac. I was pretty happy about it, because our budget for inputs was tight, and we only applied 135 lbs of nitrogen per acre. I know it's outdated now, but the old agronomists adage was a pound of N per bushel of corn. If that's our standard to go by, then we did pretty well.

[@av6067]

Those trusses you have that are getting weathered away next to the barn are worth big money I would definitely cover them up for the winter just saying.

[@ravenviewfarm]

They're already rotted away to the point of being useless. They've been there for years. All I can say about them is that not every project works out the way it was originally planned, lol.

[@av6067]

Ravenview Farm that really sucks my reason for the comment was that I got ass raped this past summer when I needing them.

[@johnhall1614]

I hand pick our Rafi seed corn now, but I am looking at a new ides like the one you borrowed from your cousin mounted to an Allis Chalmers D17. It's about an acre. How much loss do you get when using the picker like that? I hate wasting the seed, using one of those can you walk the field behind and find ears it leaves behind?

[@ravenviewfarm]

If your corn is standing well and isn’t down, it’ll get pretty much all the ears. We see very few full ears left in the field. Where you DO get crop loss is at the rollers in the head. If the moisture level in the crop gets too low (under 16 or 17% I’d guess) then you can get a lot of shelling as the rollers strip the ears off of the stalks. In dry crop you’ll see a significant number of kernels on the ground and ears in the wagon with kernels missing. So there’s definitely a sweet spot for harvest. I’ve always heard a John Deere 300 picker, which uses stripper bars instead of rollers in the head, will get more of the crop in the wagon, but it’s not as good at husking and cleaning the ears as a New Idea picker. I’ve never used a JD personally. Just ideas to mull over. 😄

[@joekemp5034]

Where I live in Missouri everyone bales their corn stalks and sell the hay in Texas and Oklahoma for cattle filler. I know in 2020 they were getting $140 for a 5x5 bale net wrapped.

[@ravenviewfarm]

Ah yes. We did some corn stalk baling way back in the day, but that was small square bales. I remember it wasn't much fun, lol! There's not as much of a market for it around here, and for soil health purposes I guess I'd rather have the residue back on the field. But to each their own!

[@farmcentralohio]

With all those cornstalks goes a lot of good things for the soil. $140 for one bale? You might have your numbers mixed up.

[@augustbuysse4947]

Is that a heniker can or a year around on that 4020

[@ravenviewfarm]

Hey August! That's a Hiniker cab on our 4020.

[@stephenbutz2621]

Why not use both pieces of equipment, the mounted and the pull type pickers ??

[@ravenviewfarm]

Hey Stephen! For a couple of reasons. The mounted picker was borrowed from my cousins down the road. They needed it for their operation, so we only had it for a couple of days before they needed it back. Also, there’s only two of us, and someone needs to run loads. Filling em up doesn’t do much good if no one is emptying them. And finally, those mounted pickers are actually not much fun to operate. You’re right in the middle of a noisy dust storm, with a lot of shafts and chains running all around you. The pull type is higher capacity, safer, and cleaner to use.

[@wyattcarrender5881]

How many pounds do ya put behind the m I’m wanting to use mine this been harvest but don’t know how much it can pull

[@ravenviewfarm]

Boy Wyatt, I'm not sure. I can tell you that a 200 bushel-sized gravity box, full of ear corn will give it a workout, and is probably the maximum load I pull with it during any given year (as you see in the videos). If the same sized wagon was full of shelled corn or soybeans - I wouldn't attempt it unless it was over flat terrain. Even our 686 sometimes struggles with a full gravity box of shelled grain when the conditions are tough. We usually pull those with the 4020 just to be extra safe, especially if any hills are involved. The M has plenty of power, but traction becomes an issue. It just doesn't have the weight to handle a big load of grain safely. Pulling a load uphill would be bad enough if you started to spin out and either dug yourself in, or had to try to back down the hill. Even worse would be having a heavy load push you down a hill and end up out of control or jack-knifed. So, having said all that, use your own best judgement, or find a way to do some incremental experiments and test it out safely. You know your farm and the conditions better than I do. Good luck!

[@wyattcarrender5881]

@@ravenviewfarm thanks for the info

[@gordoncarpenter1552]

One thing about it your not color blind with your tractors

[@ravenviewfarm]

Each one has a role to play!

[@joshuagolombeski6133]

How well the corn running ?

[@ravenviewfarm]

Overall, we averaged about 175 bu/ac with this crop. Some ground was over 200 I'm sure, and some ran a little thin. Without all the fancy monitoring gadgets we can only really look at the big picture, but it was a good year to be sure.

[@joshuagolombeski6133]

U guys are on 36 or 38 inch rows ? U get cribs all full and have anything left ?

[@ravenviewfarm]

@@joshuagolombeski6133 We're on 38" rows. We aaallllmooost filled all four cribs. It was really close, but not quite.

[@snowman5609]

Where are located?

[@ravenviewfarm]

Minnesota, about 45 minutes south of the Twin Cities.

[@masongurney1952]

Isn’t it easier with the picker on the frame than driving beside the rows

[@ravenviewfarm]

It's really a personal preference kinda deal. For us, we were borrowing the mounted picker and my cousins needed it back after we opened up our fields, so our time with it was limited. That said, some folks like the mounted pickers, and some don't. They're very noisy, since you're sitting in the middle of all that equipment, and (for the same reason) they're really dusty and dirty if the corn crop is dry. You have to watch yourself around the exposed chains and various shafts as well. Safety is always a necessity, but even more so with the mounted pickers. They're also a lot of work to mount and unmount from the tractor. The one we borrowed from my cousins is kept on that tractor year-round. In any case, Dad and I always preferred the pull-type. Now, the mounted pickers did have some advantages. They're nimble and maneuverable, and the whole rig is a lot shorter when the wagon is behind you. No compensating for a pulled implement when you navigate a curve in the field either. I just happened upon a different KZbin channel - Gierok Farms. They use a mounted picker with an IH 686 like ours. They even demonstrate the process of mounting it up. Pretty neat! For them it works! To each their own.

[@johnnyholland8765]

Typical farmstead. Little of this little of that kinda scattered about. Not many of them left. I am in Georgia and we used to have a honest to goodness old feed mill that would buy your ear corn to grind for feed. Fellow who owned it was crushed in a cattle chute when he was trying to load a bull and never recovered fully from it. Son took it over and ran off most of the customers then closed it. They tore it down a few years ago. Sad... I put a lot of hours on a 656 in my younger days. What do you do with your ear corn?

[@ravenviewfarm]

Hey Johnny! Yep, there aren't too many farms like ours left. It's a shame. I'd rather have the variety and do a little bit of everything, but it's tough to make a living at without getting big and specialized. We figure if we can find some niche markets and increase our profitability without having to leverage ourselves with huge debts, we can keep things smaller, more diverse, and more "human scale" and still get by. What's the old saying about eggs in baskets? ;0) We let the ear corn dry down during the winter months, and unless we've picked it really wet, it easily gets to 15% or lower. Then in the early spring we run it though a Minneapolis Moline sheller and ship it off to the elevator. In the last two years I've started shelling, cleaning and bagging some of it and direct marketing it for wildlife feed, along with bagging and selling the cob corn for the same purpose. That's actually taken off and done a lot better than I expected. It keeps me busy during the winter, I get to meet a lot of interesting people, and the profit margin is considerably better. Local markets just make me feel better too. I get to be a part of the community.

[@CarnivoreCurin]

I don't see anything about cows. Do you have any cattle?

[@ravenviewfarm]

We do not. We were a dairy farm until 1993, and given our small size, we just never upgraded to bins for our corn storage. So we typically pick ear corn, crib it, let nature dry it down, and shell it out in the spring. I’m in the process of cleaning up nine acres of pasture, with the goal of getting livestock back on the farm within a couple more years!

[@rickturnr]

Is your farm organic? One of my crop consulting clients got 220 bushel/ acre organic corn and at $10/bushel=$2200/acre

[@ravenviewfarm]

We are not organic, but we are using regenerative practices - no till, cover crops, diversified rotation, reduced spray and fertilizer. We may eventually consider going organic, but Dad is opposed to it currently. Also, our soil is degraded enough in some fields that we would never even come close to 220 bpa corn without some serious remediation (which we’re currently working on). But kudos to your client! That’s some serious fertility and a good growing year to achieve that! Maybe some day!

[@adilsataraltaii8537]

I think that the haven

[@philplace5822]

I grew up milk cows and D14 .

[@thomasbyerly4305]

What I would give to be a part of this

[@smashbashcrashrc5429]

thats some bad looking corn

[@ravenviewfarm]

Oh? I'd love to hear why.

[@pocketchange1951]

👍👌🇨🇦❤

[@lezannevanniekerk3145]

Qaz🐕‍🦺🐐🦌🐕🐁🇮🇳🇮🇱😢😭😩🥺

[@antonioquilici4089]

Do you sell merch? I would consider talking to Zach Johnson "Millenial Farmer" on youtube he might help expand your subscriber count :)

[@ravenviewfarm]

Hey Antonio! I haven't gotten into merch yet. We might do so in the future, but for the moment we've always got too many irons in the fire as it is, lol! I met Zach a couple of years ago at a local conference and we had a nice chat. He's a good dude. It would be fun to do a little collaboration with him someday, but his channel is so huge now that I don't forsee it happening anytime too soon.

[@hollyhuebsch7701]

Use the combine

[@ravenviewfarm]

I hear you Holly. That does seem like it would make more sense. The combine is only part of the equation though. We would need a bin for storage, and a dryer to get the moisture in the corn down to a stable level for storage in years when we can’t get it dry enough in the field. We don’t have either of those things, and adding them would be a considerable expense. At this point, and at our small scale, it just makes more sense to pick it. Our infrastructure for that is already in place and paid for, and I’m finding new markets for the ear corn each year, so it’s working for us. If we ever expand the operation we may have to rethink things.

[@ArmpitStudios]

@@ravenviewfarm Plus, keeping these earlier practices and machinery going is important.

[@justincase2830]

@@ravenviewfarm I picked many acres of corn this way. Oliver two row. Filled pole cribs and cribs like yours.Made circle snow cribs one row or two rows up or dumped it on the ground if we ran out of room. You never have to baby sit ear corn like you do shelled corn or spend money to dry it like you do shelled corn most years.

[@braderwin937]

@@justincase2830!

[@justincase2830]

@@braderwin937 Brad Erwin!