Post by oxbowfarm on Jun 8, 2012 21:21:31 GMT -5
Ended up taking the plunge and bought a Berta Rotary Plow for our walking tractor. Up to now we've been begging plowing done from various neighbors, many of whom are rich in agricultural equipment they barely use. Unfortunately I've been waiting and waiting for my neighbor to do some plowing until I couldn't wait any longer.
Found a different local BCS dealer than the guy we bought our BCS from. I am much much happier with the new guy, he's very knowledgeable and helped me fix some things on our tractor that hadn't been set up properly from the original dealer. He brought a test model of the rotary plow and we did a test run in some stubble ground. He was really freaked out by my rocks and was trying to talk me out of the plow, he didn't think it would work for us. We did jam the test model several times on rocks, but that is par for the course here at Oxbow Farm. We plowed the area very raggedly with it set up the way the dealer reccommended, but I was very happy with the condition of the soil the plow had been through.
Today I got out and broke in the brand new one we bought. After the dealer had left I took out the new one and practiced with it on the stubble ground and figured out how to get good performance out of it on our soil. You have to ignore a few of the recommendations from the manual. The dealer had told me to ignore the instruction to remove the shearing plates in rocky soil. The manual feels this will give you more clearance and be less likely to jam a rock, he felt that it just made room for a bigger rock to jam. I agree with him. So we left those on. The manual also said not to use the depth wheel in rocky soil and we hadn't on the demo model. But I found immediately that setting the depth wheel at a medium depth made the plow work a lot smoother. It kept it from diving down deep and hitting the lunker rocks down there that aren't gonna budge. Rocks higher up near the surface are usually small enough that the plow just flips them out of the ground. I found I could run the machine just above idle in second gear and just tool along. Every once in a while a rock would jam and kill the engine. Usually it was just a matter of disengaging the PTO and the rock would drop out. Then just pull the cord and keep going. Sometimes a jam would be pretty tight and I'd have to knock it out.
So today I plowed up a section of pasture 100 feet long by about 45 feet wide. Took a couple hours. My initial impressions are that I'm really really pleased with this tool.
Pros
Cons
Here's the finished ground with the BCS in the other corner.
Found a different local BCS dealer than the guy we bought our BCS from. I am much much happier with the new guy, he's very knowledgeable and helped me fix some things on our tractor that hadn't been set up properly from the original dealer. He brought a test model of the rotary plow and we did a test run in some stubble ground. He was really freaked out by my rocks and was trying to talk me out of the plow, he didn't think it would work for us. We did jam the test model several times on rocks, but that is par for the course here at Oxbow Farm. We plowed the area very raggedly with it set up the way the dealer reccommended, but I was very happy with the condition of the soil the plow had been through.
Today I got out and broke in the brand new one we bought. After the dealer had left I took out the new one and practiced with it on the stubble ground and figured out how to get good performance out of it on our soil. You have to ignore a few of the recommendations from the manual. The dealer had told me to ignore the instruction to remove the shearing plates in rocky soil. The manual feels this will give you more clearance and be less likely to jam a rock, he felt that it just made room for a bigger rock to jam. I agree with him. So we left those on. The manual also said not to use the depth wheel in rocky soil and we hadn't on the demo model. But I found immediately that setting the depth wheel at a medium depth made the plow work a lot smoother. It kept it from diving down deep and hitting the lunker rocks down there that aren't gonna budge. Rocks higher up near the surface are usually small enough that the plow just flips them out of the ground. I found I could run the machine just above idle in second gear and just tool along. Every once in a while a rock would jam and kill the engine. Usually it was just a matter of disengaging the PTO and the rock would drop out. Then just pull the cord and keep going. Sometimes a jam would be pretty tight and I'd have to knock it out.
So today I plowed up a section of pasture 100 feet long by about 45 feet wide. Took a couple hours. My initial impressions are that I'm really really pleased with this tool.
Pros
- Handles the rocky soil much better than the rototiller
- the plow points are small, easy to replace, and only cost $4
- able to break sod, makes us more independent and able to do tillage in a timely fashion
Cons
- Kinda pricey
- Slower than the tiller
- Possibly a little more dangerous than the tiller, it can really whip a rock out to the right side on occasion.
- Doesn't leave as nice a seedbed as the tiller, although on the stubble it was perfectly good to seed large seeds or transplant into.
Here's the finished ground with the BCS in the other corner.
