What is this machine?

[Hemmjo]

This video of a tractor cultivator popped up on the HomemadeTools.net. There is a brief discussion there in regard to why it is moving soil from between two rows and piling it between the center row. But no one is sure.

Has anyone seen something like this before? Have some information about it?
The forum discussion with video link

 

[Brendon-KS]

In the west a common irrigation practice is to laser-level the fields, throw up a border every 100 feet or so, and then flood the sections in between. I'm guessing that the machine in the video is creating these borders.

 

[Traditional Farmer]

In my area it'd be called a gully maker

 

[caterpillar guy]

Looks like Irrigation toguh for the water to flow with a tail water ditch at the end of the row so the excess water runs to the tail water pit to be pumped back on to the field later. Saw lots of that in Western KS 30 years ago with a ridge at the headland for the water tubes to siphon water into the rows with. Would water 4 rows at a time with 2 troughs that way less evaporation. Evaporation is a big issue in water use out western areas with the dry low humidity.

 

[Stephen Newell]

My guess it's a homemade cultivator. Don't understand the design as it would skip every other row.

 

[john in la]

If he was building a levee for irrigation he dang sure would not be excluding 3 rows with it.
And a rotary ditcher would do a much better job of building a ditch for water to flow in.

Looks like some type of cultivator.
Dig up the weeds in 2 rows and bury the weeds in the center row.
Next time you just move over 1 row to move the dirt back in the ditch.

 

[Traditional Farmer]

It gets 4 row ready to ditch irrigate in one pass,each ditch waters 2 rows.Probably used a GPS land leveler before planting.

 

[john in la]

And he is cutting the ditch between the second and third row so the first row gets no water. That makes perfect sense.