My name is Clint Hardee and I am living, the American Dream. I am a 1st generation start up farmer with ground south of Kansas City Missouri. Having farm ground in the suburbs of Kansas City not in the vast rich soils of Iowa, Illinois, or Nebraska. After starting with only 50 acres of row crops and 150 hay ground in 2017, currently I’m over 1000 acres row crops and 900 acres hay ground, and always looking to expand and diversify. In this channel you will see my successes and failures as a farmer learning and growing on a year to year operation. You will see my family and people helping me grow this farm through the years, because nothing can be done without the support, help and love of god, your country and your family.
Appreciate the video, where did you get your tanks from? I’m in the same situation trying to figure out what tank and how to mount it without spending a whole lot of money
I got my tank set up from a local farmer that didnt use it anymore. I see them all the time on purple wave or BigIron all the time that don’t sell for that much. Gotta save money where and how you can.
Allowded? oh Clint, bless you. We're struggling to adjust our fingers on our 1020 too. Thanks for the video. Hope Everything is going well on your farm.
Great video do you change the hydraulic oil or just the hydraulic filters? I didn't know about the hydraulic filter in the reservoir is good to know . I have a small leak on the hydraulic pump behind the engine. I think it the same as your .Hoping Lucas oil stop conditioner will stop the small leak .
Boy, I’m lucky as a 1st gen (my family has farmed going back to the days of the Roman Empire in Italy, but it skipped a generation after grandpa died) farmer. I had a great off farm career and military reserve retirement and benefits that kick in when I turn 60. We’re a big operation, full circle with livestock. It took decades, but the key was not being dependent on off farm fertility. I grew my own with livestock and cover crops, and did buy in pig manure off and on. Another key was marketing. I pounded on that hard until I built relationships, and it enabled me to grow a lot of specialty crops. You don’t have to be organic to be regenerative, and regenerative is more important.
I wish you the best of luck! I've enjoyed watching your farming experiences and learned so much to apply to my own practices. I've been working for years on transitioning my farm land to organic. It's been a huge uphill battle that seems to always bring a guy to his breaking point every year. This is the first year that all of the land I started to transition will be certified organic. With hindsight being 20/20 I don't know if I would have transitioned anything to organic for a couple years. I don't know that I would tell a beginning farm to start with organic. It's a steep learning curve. There is no easy button by spraying. I really believe that anyone can do anything that they set their mind to. It just would have been really nice to make some decent money with the high crop prices. Then use that to help you get through the transition. I also have been through 2 drought and one flood in two years. Everyone tells me that its not normal but I'm starting to doubt it. I have a love hate for organic corn also. Anyways glad that you can make farming pencil. Its a great life.
I appriciate all you have done for me over the years. It wasn’t what I wanted to do but just couldn’t find a way around it. And the certifying agency (you know who) made things so much more difficult, stressful and cumbersome than it was eventually worth. I have so much respect for you and your professionalism and generosity with your knowledge.
Thank you. Sorry I forgot to respond to your last comment. I actually sold that last year and bought a 12 row and now I’m looking at an air drill for beans and wheat.
Hey Clint….thanks for the video. What are the specs on that bearing? I’d like to order them from an industrial bearing supply house. Bore diameter, inner width, outer diameter, outer width, flat or round outer … Thanks!
Hello i saw your comment on a video, i was wondering how you would get into farming without a lot of money. I’ve been talking about it for a while I always figured my best plan was to get an education to become a police officer and save some money over a few years for equipment and a good amount of land let me know what you think please.
Every situation is different. I started out small and I started growing a crop that offered the most premium. The 1st year i farmed around 120 acres. I farmed exclusively organically until this last year (2021). As far as equipment buy used and small. I already had a 100hp tractor I used for hay. So I bought a 6 row planter and row cultivator then re invested everything I made back into the farm each year. Think of it as a form of compounding interest, knowing your reward will be several years down the road. As far as land goes I looked for ground not being utilized or ground that wasn’t being farmed properly. Talked to the owners and secured a 5 to 10 year lease with opt out options for both. Most the ground I farmed until this year was county/state lands that nobody else wanted to farm. Then I teamed up with an older neighbor and volunteered my time and equipment to help him. In return he has helped me grow in acres and changed to conventional farming. You have to treat farming as a full time hobby until you get it sustainable. Don’t be afraid to fail. Trust me… you will. But don’t give up. If farming is something you think you will love doing, there is no middle of the road. My initial investment for seed, organic fertilizer, certification, fuel and parts was about $25,000. Have it custom harvested and custom hauled. The organic paper work and certification is a pain in the butt fyi.
It worked but wasn’t ideal. Really needed to go in the furrow. It would work ok for higher rates of fertilizer. Basically like side dressing at that point.
I do pretty darn good myself, but 100 bushel would probably make me cry with joy. The thing is, are you on a cycle of mining that ground, or are you making it better. The year to year yield chase has ruined a lot of farmland.
Great question. I just had soil samples pulled on all my fields. That particular field has enough P&K for 250 bushel corn. The PH was 6.9 to 7.2. Now it does need some micros and N for corn this year. I try and have a program for most my ground for enough nutrients for the crop uptake plus building. To speak honestly though this year will be more difficult with higher input prices over double and triple from last year. But I do what I can for soil health.
Any thoughts to a gear puller to remove that inner race? Tomorrow we are headed to get a new bearing and I'm trying to figure out how to remove that inner race. I hate the idea of a torch because my machine is covered in soybean dust right now. I didn't realize that inner race is offset. Still not sure I fully understand that.
Yeah I haven’t found a better way. Even my dealership does it the same way. I doused any area that might get hot or have an ember touch it with a lot of water and kept a water hose at the ready. As soon as I got it out I did it again.
I just bought a 9770 last December. Put it in wheat a few weeks ago. What I figured out was the more you shove into it the better it threshes the wheat. Went from a 9400 to this. Massive upgrade and a lot less of crop loss. Ive got corn coming up and looking forward to it. I got an LC1 error on my header and won’t calibrate the contour master. It didn’t affect wheat because I was carrying the head most all the time. I’m going to have a tech come out before beans this fall to look at it.
I haven’t done wheat yet. I’m really wanting to give it a shot and see how my machine does in it and how good of a crop I’ll have. My soils on most my fields aren’t the best. Only have a couple really good fields with good or great soil.
Field average that year ended up 93. Last year I hit spots over 200. Field average was 107. It’s an old sewer lagoon. Very very fertile ground. Thanks for the comment though.
That tree puller is a pretty neat piece of equipment to remove trees. Enjoyed watching you pull the kids around on the ATV. I think I was probably grinning more than they were, ha. Looking forward to your next vids. Have a fine week. 👍🏽🙂
Came close. It was a cold winter. Been so busy with farm and equipment stuff. I’m so far behind of video editing. Lol I can’t teach tayland how to do it yet. It would be all about Barbie dolls, unicorns and rainbows. Ha ha ha. I Hope things are going well out there for you guys.
Wish you would've mentioned cost. I have a six row also that i just put all the liquid hoses on and got the squeeze pump working good. Added a tank and its ready but it still could've used a few of those wide rubber wheels.. one gave me issues in beans last year getting our wet clay packed in behind it.. and its wet this year so I may need to go ahead and replace a few.. maybe some scrapers too.. boy they sure do a pretty job of planting. I love to see how straight i can make the rows with the markers. I need to figure out how to get them to both go down at the same time because i like to start away from the edge a ways so you aren't forced to follow your first crooked pass along the edge. 😆
I did the whole liquid set up for under $1,200. All the other upgrades I’ve put on over the years totaled around $3,000 minus the row cleaners. I replaced nearly every wear part I could. Shoup and Sloanexpress were life savers.
Yeah I looked at a bunch of more upgrades for it this year including that. But I’ll have some more exciting news in an upcoming video. I’ll be selling this planter.
Yes it is a big upgrade for my little farm. The 1660 was good just out dated and needed a lot of work to maintain good operation. Welcome to the channel and I hope you enjoy the videos.
Had some storms hit most the corn. I’m waiting on my corn head to get up there. Still have a few acres to do. I’ll be making a video on that shortly. Probably next week.
Yeah it seems to work really well once it’s calibrated. Really in expensive too. I’ve been thinking of putting one on my row cultivator and use it as a side dress implement as well.
Only one end. I don’t think it starts getting driven from both ends until 30’ or 35’. But I’m not really sure. Probably depends on the model number of the head.
That’s a LOT of combine! Great to know I’m not the only one spending money 😉. Video clean out👍🏻. I lost a lot of beans off my head by shattering. Seems like the bottom pods were very fragile.
Yeah all my beans this year were under 10% if not lower. The stems were still tough. In my beat field I was losing 25 bushel and up. Part was due to the machine but mostly was due to header loss. I put on that air reel and losses went down to under 1 bushel an acre including header loss. That pays for itself very very fast in those conditions. I have some more interesting videos coming up. Keep an eye open. 😁
She is doing good. She ended up “playing sick” to get out of school. But the school still made her stay home for an additional 24 hours. Pretty sad a 5year old can fool these teachers and nurses. You will just have to wait and see on the combine...🤔
Yeah the beans were hard this year. The early frost before they were mature dinged them hard. And by the time I could get in the field they were running from 8% to 11.5%. Still have corn out and gonna try and run it in the next week or so. You guys all wrapped up?
Hurry up and wait ;) I had a bunch of videos on the Q as well. Sounds very similar to my experience this year. We had a lot of cutterbar loss that could not be avoided due to the "brittleness" of the soybean pods and stems...
Mainly on shoup or Sloan express. There are also pretty good outlets for parts on tractorpartASAP.com or all states ag. Pretty simple to locate the needed parts on all those site. I’m sure there are other places you can get them but those for me I’ve found are the most reasonable for price and quality. They will beat any local dealer hands down and shipping only takes a day or two.
Yeah we have too. We haven’t gotten any rain since the beginning of September. And it wasn’t much. We did get our first frost last night. So hopefully we can get in the fields starting next week.
Well dang you sure don't look like some Hippy (more Yipee !!) I will follow you to see this GAMBLE on organic you are making I am old 75 .. so just a spectator .. not a player any more
Stephen Mortimer glad to have you. Drop comments any time. Yeah I’m no hippy or yipee. I’m a republican conservative looking to make my own way in this world by working hard to take care of my family and starting a farm from scratch. Thanks for the comment and welcome.
