Hay making 2014

Screenshots of the cow managing software

Mowing

Recently, I've been mowing.

The machine the tractor is attached to, is a mower conditioner, with some kind of convoyer belt in the back part. The mower has 7 "plates", each of which have two 7-8 cm long knives in them. They go 1000 rounds per minute, a bit more, I guess. They cut the grass. Green mass then goes to the back of the machine, where is the conditioner which is an axel that has "fingers", which are roughltly 25 cm long. They go also about 1000 rounds per minute (?) and they hit the grass, smash it, treat it with violence, and throws it to the back of the machine - there are sheets of metal, that directs the flow of the mass to one swath.

The machine is 3.2 meters width and the swath is appr. 1.2 - 1.4 meters width. You get a single swath if you don't use the convoyer. Every 2. drive, you low it down. It starts to round, throwing the green mass to the side of the machine - on top of the previous swath. You get double as big swath and their number will be only half. It means lesser driving with big forage equipment on the field.

You can mow 2-4 hectacres per hour. On a good field, you  can drive up to 17 kmh but usually, it's somewhere between 10 to 14 kmh.

In the picture, there's a  "butterfly swath", which has a total of three swaths gathered together. It's butterfly swath because if you drive with a butterfly mower conditioner (one mowing unit in front of the tractor and two on either side; the two in the back will "rise up" kinda like butterflies' wings) that has swathing gear in it, it will cut same amount of grass leaving only one swath with only one working width.

At least something

Perhaps I must update at least SOMETHING

This blog is not over yet. Since it is about creating stuff, mostly creative stuff, there's two videos.

I bought a Sony hd-action camcorder, a really nice toy. I like it. mostly it's fisheyish view of 120 or 170 degrees, time-lapse action and slow-motion -possibilities.

All of those, I used here in these clips

They are 6 and 8 min, both includes slo-mo takes, 2-4x-takes, time-lapses, and playing with the view.

There is some working in the dairy farm, driving two machines, feeding, cleaning, and stuff. Also a dog appears in both (first has 3 of them) and in the end of the second film, there is slo-mo video of me eating a banana as fast as I can. In the end of the second video, there's a slo-mo of an old, ugly dog eating a cookie.

Both have great bg-music, instumental ambient or (perhaps even dubstep, not sure) what you call it.

Enjoy!

Black and white, 8min
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ic6KteFffo

6min, driving etc.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUk6rB1iv34

Yessss

Well, the summer has been busy. I\ve had 4 days of holiday, and no hope of building the camera, so we'll just wait for winter.

I did order some carbonite stuff. I will sand the glass with it, should be perfect.

Also, I've started waxing my moustaches. They are small, but they will grow enormous.

There's been a lot of sitting in a tractor. We have now made 2000 tons of silage and spreaded 4000 tons of slurry to our fields. Those hungry bastards in our cowshed really eat it all during the next year. And more; there will be also the third harvest. It is the smallest of all three harvests. The equipment wrecks up every now and then and there is a LOT of work to do in the farm. Thought, this aint the most normal summer since there's a couple of other work projects too, but anyway. During a normal summer, it shouldn't be THIS heavy and busy. Days of work grow up to 14 hrs.

The milk is excellent, I've transformed into a data collecting milk quality troll during last year or two.

C ya soon.

Just updating

Nothing's happened to the camera for a month, it's been busy time. Harvesting silage is now over, and next bigger job is to spread 3 000 tonnes of slurry to the fields.

Like always, I don't have time to build the camera. And if I do, I'll spend it in some other way.

But since this is a blog about building something, I should mention that I'm building a slurry mixer. In the end, it weights about tonne, it is 6-7 meters long and it has 90-100cm wide propel. It will be operated by a 6-7 tonne tractor so it's kinda far away from the camera project but - made with hands. ... we'll see if I got energy to put pictures of it. I'm pretty exhausted nowadays so if there's a gap between periods of work, I'll spend it relaxing..

We'll see if I manage to put more updates before the summer is over.

Flu, spring, glass'n forks

I've been pretty disabled for a while, got a pretty annoying flu

See? Spring is coming!

There's the glass.. I used a sanding machine. It's not good, but since I've got another piece of glass waiting to be used, I'm gonna sand it properly; it means I have to get my hands on a jar of SiC..

There's lense, a raw version of front board and the hanger device with forks; yes, there's some progress..