Calling Hugh MacKay

[Anonymous-0]

Hugh:
I read with interest your references to your farming days. If you don't mind, would you please refresh me as to the details of your operation....location and type of farm, (dairy/crop), number of acres, type of soil, types of crops grown, sizes of tractors, number of plows pulled, number of hours per year on given tractors, liquid/cast iron ballast vs. duals, etc.?

I am always interested in how others' run their operations. Even though you've not been operating for a few years you seem to remember/articulate the details quite well.


Thank you in advance,
Glenn F.

 

[Anonymous-0]

Id tell ya but Id hafta kill ya eh.

 

[AndrewFromNS]

Wow...that was totally unoriginal. Congratulations...

AR

 

[John M]

You may want to go to the Farmall board, I dont think Iveever seen Hugh post here on TTalk.

 

[Hugh MacKay]

Glenn: I did some quite unconventional things back in the 60s and 70s. My soil was a sandy loam only about 8' deep on top of pure gravel, very flat. This land had drainage problems up until the 1950s, as the water table was controlled by the river and streams flowing to the river. I can remember my dad telling me of his father in law warning him to be careful crossing from one dry area of farm to another with team and mower in the 30s. My dad said he laughed, thinking how could one ever get stuck with a team of horses and a mower. He assured me grandpa had the last laugh, dad almost got stuck. This land was in Nova Scotia, on one of the many river flood plains. These valleys were anywhere from 1/2 to a mile wide with farms up each side of the river. (Do not confuse these with the Annapolis Valley close to 10 miles wide.)

These valleys were close to 15 miles apart, with high ground forest land in between. Of course that forest land was part of our water sheds and water run off from forest land had to go through our farmlands via streams and river to sea. The river and streams leading to river were blocked by driftwood and gravel bars keeping water table close to surface. Our place wasn't too bad as river had good flow and fall. We had one main creek flowing to the river from the forest, 3' deep max, with a huge gravel bar at the mouth. There was another gravel bar in river at the down river end of our property. In 1950 my dad hired a guy with a Cat D6 and they pushed all that gravel up on shore. DOT saw the huge piles of gravel and wanted to buy it. Dad sold the gravel. Two years later the gravel bars were back, again dad pushed them out and again DOT bought. This happened about 4 times, and all of a sudden DOT and CNR noticed their bridge abutments on respective bridges across the creek were falling into stream. By 1960 dad had a creek 6' deep and river close to 8' deep, I'm talking field level to water level. Well the highway and railway built new bridges, dad never did sell his last pile of gravel, but he had over 200 acres of some of the best drained flood plain around. We knew it was hungry land, I mean what else could you have with 8' of soil over gravel and a perminant water table about 8' down.

Being in the dairy business, our first line of cropping approach was grow alfalfa, but it wasn't until we added corn to that rotation and getting rid of weeds that alfalfa came into it's own. We aimed for 3 years corn and 4-5 year alfalfa. all our manure went into land going into corn crop. By the late 60s we were harvesting more lbs of dry matter per acre off alfalfa than silage corn. this cropping rotation allowed us to reduce our feed and fertilizer costs to about 14% of gross milk sales.

In the spring of 1972, dad hadn't been around much all winter, but he was there to see the yearling+ replacement heifers go to pasture. He scolded me suggesting I'd never make money feeding grain to growing heifers. Well, it took me and two hired hands most of the morning convincing him the heifers had seen nothing but 21% protein alfalfa, water, salt and minerals all winter. It was a good job the oldest of the heifers knew where they were going. So feirce was the discussion, the heifers could have broke out of control at any time.

Some other things I did was get rid of chloride, wheel weights and add more rubber. I could see as early as the late 60s maximun drawbar pull with tractor weighted to the limit was causing most of our compaction problems. My big power demand was PTO, doesn't take a whole lot of tillage to feed 175 holsteins. Reduce the pounds per square inch by adding rubber.

I've got to run at this time, why don't you send me an e mail.

 

[Dave 2N]

Hugh-
Great post! We need to hear more of that from you and others who actually "did it."

 

[Hugh MacKay]

Dave: The more one thinks about growing alfalfa on that type soil, just maybe we could grow it hydroponically. Allan made the remark the other day, that I had very little soil, and he's right, yet it grew yields of alfalfa unheard of most places. Windrowing with a 9' haybine, 656 on 16.9x38 tires, I just had marginally enough clearence over the windrows with alfalfa in bud stage. I often had to put a pan under hitch to keep it from draging the windrows. We did not rake windrows together ever, those 9' windrows would keep 1066 with 890 NH harvester in 3rd maybe 4th on the low side. In that short season we only got two cuttings but each were close to or over 5 ton dry matter per acre.

Our worst fear was ice jambs during the spring run off, especially if receeding flood water froze creating ice layer with late March and April sun shining through the ice, causing alfalfa to start growing. More than one case of dynamite was used on ice jambs. The river would hold the water if the melt was slow enough.

That land will all become nonusuable in the next 25 years. In the late 80s enviormentalists started raising hell about bulldozers and excavators cleaning gravel bars out of the chanel. Government knuckled under and passed a law banning gravel removal. You couldn't even hire a dozer, the government passed a law stating they could seize and sell a piece of heavy equipment caught working in the river. Without gravel removal, the water table will rise and that land will go back to what it was in the 1930s. Hardly dare cross with a team of horses. When I left there, loaded tractor trailers could drive on it. You didn't need to worry about crushing Big O. The gravel down 8' was your drainage. Hundreds of farmers worked hard in the 40s and 50s to make that land what it was, and it will all be lost. Progress they call it, want sport fishing in the river. We even proved to them there was more spaun in the gravel where heavy equipment had worked.