Green Chopping Far From Home

The silo has been emptied of corn silage, now we forage for whatever patches of grass we can until there's sweet corn to cut. These spots or usually too small for hay, or weedy.
Filmed on June 24

[@Vfh........y]

When I was 12 and lived on a farm in Iowa I was involved in 4-H. I had a steer every year and I never won a purple ribbon or anything close to it. But we fed my steers ditch hay which was basically brome grass with a mixture of whatever else was cheap and could scavenged together.. when we got to the fair of course the other steers had a higher daily rate of gain. And it was disappointing to be young and standing at the end of the line. But my step-father assured me that if you took this life lesson of raising cattle off what you have we made a whole lot more money than stuffing grain and different injections in those cattle. I still use those lessons today. So I say to these farmers I'm absolutely impressed with what you're doing. Long story but I felt like it deserve to be said

[@boehmfarm4276]

Thank you

[@lukestrawwalker]

That's why despite being raised and living on a farm, I was never interested in 4-H or showing cattle in FFA... in our area anyway, it's all about "showing off", mostly rich folks showing off how much money they could blow on a calf to win the ribbon, not about the actualities of really raising livestock. No interest whatsoever in that sort of thing. Rich people showing off doesn't impress me LOL:) Later! OL J R :)

[@banditfarmer1900]

Feed is feed when the cows are hungry ! Most people would never think of doing this, Kudo's for thinking out of the box ! Keep up the great work JB ! Bandit

[@boehmfarm4276]

Most people wouldn't have mowed hay Saturday either, but I did. We got lucky with a light rain this morning and with lots of wind, was dry to bale this evening

[@shawnfox8002]

Wow I've been around farming all my life but I've never seen a chopper quite like that pretty neat contraption.

[@lukestrawwalker]

I read about a small guy down in Florida IIRC in Farm Show magazine... he was baling all his dry hay as he doesn't have the acreage or equipment to do silage. Anyway his old baler finally bit the dust and he couldn't find a newer one in his budget and didn't want to buy someone else's old junk and have to sink a fortune into it to get and keep it running, plus have all the aggravations of it breaking down for his few acres of hay. SO, he started thinking "outside the box". Before modern small balers were invented, most farmers put up "loose hay" in haystacks. Not viable in the hot wet humid climate of Florida, it'd rot to mush. BUT the equipment requirements are very low. SO he put on his thinking cap. He picked up a similar chopper for nearly nothing, fixed it up a bit and was ready to chop. Not having loaders or silos or bunkers or anything for making silage, he decided to chop dry hay. He got his hands on a couple of old trailer house frames, and chopped them down some in size, put a trailer floor on them and some sides, and a tin roof over it. In the front is a fold-down sheet of tin so the chopper can blow the chopped hay into the trailer all the way to the back to fill it. After he's filled it with chopped hay, he parks them in a storage area til he's ready to feed cows in winter. He made the bottom sheet of tin on both sides of the trailer capable of being folded up on hinges and chained up out of the way. The cattle can then eat the chopped hay directly out of the trailer like a feed bunk! As they eat it down, hay keeps dropping down til they can't reach it anymore, so he just forks over the stuff in the very center they can't reach to the edges til it's all eaten, then opens the next set of panels back, letting the cattle work from front to back until the entire trailerload of hay has been eaten over a period of a few weeks. Then when it's empty and cleaned out, he swaps for a full one. Puts up all his hay chopped now, it's "under cover" and out of the weather, so far less weather loss than round bales outside or a stationary barn for small bales (let alone tarps or whatever) and the hay stays on the trailer from the time it's chopped til it's fed. The only thing he does different from silage is, he cuts the hay and lets it cure in the field til it would be ready to bale as dry hay, raked into the windrow, and then chops it into the trailers rather than baling it... If you were selling hay or doing tons and tons of hay, then the system probably wouldn't work because of the low density of chopped hay in the trailers would require a LARGE number of trailers, and no good way to sell the hay or handle it for customers or whatever, but using it on the farm, it's a good system that works for a small guy! Later! OL J R :)

[@diesel4life7410]

Gotta do what ya gotta do I my self have bailed road side just to make up enough to get me through.. Not every farmer is a million dollar operation you do what you must to get by ... Great videos guys keep them coming!

[@boehmfarm4276]

Usually, I can beat the township to mowing our roadside. A couple weeks ago, they redug the ditches and covered up the grass with some of the dirt :(

[@lukestrawwalker]

@@boehmfarm4276 Used to bale a LOT of road hay down here... back in the 80's and 90's. We had a Ford 501 sickle mower did a decent job except when paper cups would catch on a guard and start leaving a stripe. I used to bale both sides of the road from the edge of town 5 miles away all the way out about 6-7 miles west of the farm out to the river bridge. In late winter the roadsides would grow up in wild ryegrass, in spring it would get thick and lush and be 3 feet tall or better, and almost too thick to walk through. The state didn't cut roadsides until the flowers had bloomed and gone to seed, but where there was a lot of ryegrass it choked out the wildflowers anyway. I could almost always beat them to it. Back then it was really good hay, despite what some would say. I eventually quit cutting roadside hay because there was SO much garbage in it... that and we had a TON of suburbanites move into the area and traffic was atrocious. The main thing was, the gubmint in their infinite wisdom decided to "outlaw" burning tires or burning old motor oil and made it "illegal" to throw away old oil filters in the trash, so ALL that crap started getting dumped on the roadsides... along with all the rest of the burger wrappers and bags, paper cups, beer bottles, and cans... The Zweegers drum mower would just blow through paper and cans, no problem, and it shattered the bottles into a million pieces that fell out as the hay was raked and rolled over multiple times to make a windrow... but the cans and paper ended up in the windrow. In the OLD days (80's and very early 90's) before that drunk Ann Richards became gubner, they used to cut the roadsides at least 3X per year... and they cut it in LOW GEAR with the shredder running *almost* on the ground, so EVERYTHING got pulverized to a fine mush coming out the back of the shredder... paper and stuff was pulverized and rotted down into the soil with the clippings, so the roadsides stayed pretty clean, as stuff down near the soil's surface would stay moist and damp and rapidly get broken down by microbes and fungi back into the soil. Ann Richards stopped all that, and now they cut the roadsides MAYBE once a year, and not low and slow anymore, just knock it down and chop it a bit. More to come... OL J R :)

[@lukestrawwalker]

Continued... Last time I cut hay on the roadsides was the killer drought of '96, and I had to FIGHT the highway department for the hay ANYWAY... I was cutting and this DOT guy pulls up and he's all apologetic but telling me I can't do that, some stupid woman boss got appointed over them thanks to affirmative action or whatever and she was "Hitler's widow" just a total b!tch looking to make EVERYBODY'S life miserable because she had been given an ounce of power... He told me how she sent a crew out with a truck and trailer to load road hay out of a guy's barn! He commented how it USED to be a great place to work but she basically ruined it for everybody, and even guys who had "letters of permission" to cut the roadsides from previous bosses, she wasn't recognizing and telling them NO. I thought about it a minute or so and said, "Who's HER BOSS??" He gets this big sh!t-eating grin on his face, whips out a card, and starts writing his home and office number on it while telling me ALL ABOUT the guy and everything... He was relishing that I was going over her head. I called the guy and explained that 40,000 head of cattle had already died in the drought in S. Texas and hinted that "it might look MIGHTY BAD on the TV news if someone called and told them how the state was REFUSING to allow farmers to harvest road hay, cutting it FOR FREE and saving the state having to spend money to do it just for it to go to waste, rather than allow them to cut and bale it to keep these poor animals alive... He agreed and told me "well, first off if anything happens, we're NOT LIABLE"... "Yup, never expected yall to be!" and second "Don't leave round bales on the roadsides overnight-- if someone runs off into one and gets killed, it'll be your responsibility". I put his mind at ease, "I've been cutting road hay since I was 11, I don't want to get killed any more than anyone else, so I have no problem waiting for traffic to clear for the tractor. I only dropped bales on the roadside ONE TIME and found that by the time I got the trailer and tractor and hay forks and then tried picking up bales off the side of the road on the sloped ditch banks and load them onto a trailer on an angle on the same sloped roadside, that it was a HUGE PITA and it required someone else to drive the truck as well... I started just making a bale, when the baler was full and traffic was clear, I'd hit the road in road gear back to the farm, drop the bale on the turning row on the farm, then run back down the road to where I left off... sure at the very ends up near town it might take me 15 minutes round trip to dump a bale, but it SAVED me time and work and worry not having to pick them up off the roadsides later. SO I don't drop bales on the roadsides..." He was happy, I was happy, and we all know what the "Karen's" are... LOL:) Anyway, as I was cutting, I realized why nobody baled road hay anymore-- used to be "first come first served" whoever cut it first got it, but everybody had stopped over the years. I'd be cutting with the drum mower and hear a "FOOM!" from the back, look back and see an OIL FILTER someone threw in the ditch thrown by the hay mower, usually bouncing down the roadside like a cannonball at about 50 mph... I got to where I'd stop if a car was approaching from behind, because a couple of them pinwheeled up onto the pavement and could have hit an oncoming car. I dodged a number of car tires people had thrown in the ditch, as well as piles of lumber and garbage and even a toilet someone had tossed over a guardrail!!! People just dumping trash EVERYWHERE, particularly tires and oil filters since they charge to dispose of them and it's "illegal" to burn them... idiots! I ended up feeding all that hay in a slough on the farm, so that I could pick up all the cans the baler picked up afterwards, and let the trash rot down in one spot... I picked up 15 big lawn and garden trash bags of crushed aluminum cans on the area where I fed those bales-- got us through the drought though which was the important thing, but after that I never bothered cutting road hay again. In the late 90's they started spraying salt water and Roundup or whatever on the roadsides to kill them, and now the roadsides are no longer grass, but weeds... huisache thorn bushes springing up everywhere and morningglory and other weeds/vines and just general garbage weeds growing instead of good grass, so they've basically DESTROYED the roadsides anyway... nothing of value growing there anymore! OL J R :)

[@roseryanrussell9919]

Go little Ford .🚜

[@Masseydriver]

What your doing is better than the grass going to waste. I agree with Bandit, nice thinking outside the box.

[@boehmfarm4276]

We're bringing impossible pasture to the cattle.

[@biggins25801]

plus it keeps the roads nice and tidy, and townships appreciate it! may get a few favors along the way

[@boehmfarm4276]

And a good collection of cans to recycle.

[@michaelwelcher8719]

I live in Indiana never herd of green chopping for salvage I’m not a full time farmer but if I had cow to feed that would have been a good ideal

[@llndmsn998]

This is the kind of equipment I'd love to have in farming simulator! Looks like I better get a PC cause stuff like this would never come to console. Great vids!

[@calebwiglesworth1009]

Leland Mason I am exactly the same I wish you could get stuff like this on console

[@beardeddragon9561]

Leland Mason i feel you think if you have this on Console it Would be sooo good

[@pattietopp3315]

Me and my family had a farm in Australia but we had to sell up because of drought

[@lukestrawwalker]

Sorry to hear that... thought "drought" and "Australia" were synonymous... BUT then things have been getting worse all over... more extreme weather all the time, and everbody has their limits... OL J R :)

[@42lookc]

Great way to keep the driveways and lanes from growing over!

[@boehmfarm4276]

I couldn't pasture them there.

[@scottviers3794]

That's one crazy looking weight bracket you have on the front of that Ford. Do similar chopping here helps stretch out the feed.You guys take care, See you next post.

[@boehmfarm4276]

Dad calls it his designer weight bracket. The blue weights came with the tractor; we incorporated the storm grates. The blue weights, we think were original to a skid steer and they just happened to have some holes line up for the front of the tractor.

[@markgamble8377]

have simular creek here.shale ledge to cross. u coulda brought ur fishing pole.

[@boehmfarm4276]

Cows get dinner and so will I in one trip! lol

[@brunoricardodamaia3708]

6610 ótimo trator para trabalhos leves.

[@pocketchange1951]

👍👌🇨🇦❤

[@Military-Museum-LP]

You looked 14 back then.

[@farmboy331]

That's nothing to cross we have times where it's up to the cab

[@boehmfarm4276]

I was thinking it would have been higher, it was out of the banks at one point, but the water receded.

[@kellykiefer2885]

I'm hoping for a similar setup myself. What is the model and hp of the tractor you're using? Thanks for the videos!

[@boehmfarm4276]

It's a 6610 Ford. 65 ponies

[@danielalamo2075]

What is the chopper brand and size and wagon that you are using? I would like to get get a set up for myself.

[@boehmfarm4276]

It's a New Holland 38, six foot cut. It's a John Deere 115 Chuck wagon.

[@jankotze1959]

Stupid question, do you mix that green gras with good green silage, looks if there is alot of wheet in there, nice video

[@boehmfarm4276]

Right now, the green chop is mostly fescue or whatever grass is growing. Here in a couple weeks, we'll have sweet corn to cut. Nothing is being mixed.

[@Theblindfarmer]

How soon do you feed that to the cows?

[@boehmfarm4276]

Within the hour, and off the wagon for next couple feedings. Grass stays the freshest.

[@Theblindfarmer]

Boehm Farm ever had any issues of bloating cattle

[@cassidylockard1527]

What is that cutter called

[@boehmfarm4276]

New Holland calls is a "crop chopper"

[@leftychance1572]

more rocks please

[@boehmfarm4276]

This isn't a gravel pit.

[@fjb5263]

Can you put this in a bag or silo?

[@boehmfarm4276]

The grass is not chopped up well enough. it will knot up and be a pain to unload. We tried flail chopped grass in a silo once. It was the worst idea ever, and biggest pain to fork out.