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Ravenview Farm
United States
เข้าร่วมเมื่อ 15 ก.ย. 2019
This channel chronicles the ins and outs of a 100 acre family farm in southern Minnesota. There are a lot of great "big farm" channels out there, so we'll compare and contrast a bit with those operations while explaining what we do. In 2019 we switched to no-till and started doing a lot of work with cover crops and other regenerative practices, so we'll put extra emphasis on those elements and how they're making us think about farming in new and sustainable ways.
Our farm has been in the family for four generations. My wife and I plan to take over from my parents some day, and each year I get a little more involved in the operation. The farm will always be home to me, and our challenge is to find ways to make this small-scale operation work for us and our community in a way that gives us an income source, but which also allows us to be good stewards of the land and surrounding environment.
Our farm has been in the family for four generations. My wife and I plan to take over from my parents some day, and each year I get a little more involved in the operation. The farm will always be home to me, and our challenge is to find ways to make this small-scale operation work for us and our community in a way that gives us an income source, but which also allows us to be good stewards of the land and surrounding environment.
A Day on a Small Farm - Cutting Hay, Scouting, Fixing, & Selling Corn
Follow me around for a day as we do a variety of small farm jobs.
0:00 - Intro
1:31 - Cutting Hay
4:22 - Field Scouting
7:46 - Selling Corn
9:55 - Swather & Combine Maintenance
19:59 - Cracking Corn
24:34 - Conclusion
25:50 - Victory!!
0:00 - Intro
1:31 - Cutting Hay
4:22 - Field Scouting
7:46 - Selling Corn
9:55 - Swather & Combine Maintenance
19:59 - Cracking Corn
24:34 - Conclusion
25:50 - Victory!!
มุมมอง: 2 893
วีดีโอ
Excessive Moisture? Field Walk & Crop Update
มุมมอง 1.8Kหลายเดือนก่อน
Having been absent from TH-cam for quite a while, I felt like I needed to start over with a current update. In this video I take you around our fields and have a look at our current conditions. The spring and early summer have been excessively wet here, and that has affected a number of things on the farm. It's a long video, so I broke it into chapters for ya'll. I also give some insights to th...
Harvesting Corn with the 4400 Combine
มุมมอง 4.5K6 หลายเดือนก่อน
10/20/2022 - Ride along as I spend a day harvesting a semi-truck load of corn with our John Deere 4400 combine. Is there anything better in life?
Picking Corn - One Crib-Full, Please
มุมมอง 29K7 หลายเดือนก่อน
10/19/2022 - With our plans for corn harvest somewhat revised, Dad and I hammer out a day of corn picking, and fill a single crib for winter wildlife corn sales. This one doesn't need chapters. It's all good. ;0) P.S. - There are a couple of continuity errors in this video, but they're pretty well hidden. If you think you've spotted one, throw it in the comments.
Ear Corn Picking Prep & Harvesting Corn with the 4400
มุมมอง 4.9K7 หลายเดือนก่อน
10/17/22 - Today we're getting all set up to pick ear corn, and then for the first time EVER, we're heading out to harvest our own corn, on our own farm, with our very own combine. We've come a long way baby. 0:00 - Intro 2:10 - Equipment Prep 11:10 - Moisture Testing Corn 13:00 - Next Day - Combining Corn 18:28 - Plan Changes & Outro
Harvest Time - Between Corn and Beans
มุมมอง 7Kปีที่แล้ว
Odds and ends around the farm as we wrap up the last details of soybean harvest, and start moving towards corn harvest.
Finishing Soybeans, With Drone Footage!
มุมมอง 3.2Kปีที่แล้ว
Smooth sailing (for the most part) as we wrap up soybean harvest 2022. 0:00 - Rainy Start 3:29 - Drone Footage 5:03 - Conditions Improve 7:35 - Next Day 8:55 - Moving Goats 11:05 - Last of the Beans Music Credit: A Dusty Road - Dan Lebowitz From TH-cam's free music library
Harvest '22 - Getting After Some Soybeans
มุมมอง 4.1Kปีที่แล้ว
Spend a beautiful fall day with us, harvesting beans with the John Deere 4400 combine.
Prepping the 4400 Combine for Soybeans
มุมมอง 8Kปีที่แล้ว
A long overdue introduction to our John Deere 4400, along with some prep work before getting out into the fields.
The State of Things - Before Harvest
มุมมอง 2.8Kปีที่แล้ว
Today we're talking crops, drought conditions, soil samples, and some of the ins and outs of the 2022 growing season. The whole point of this video is to set the stage for a bunch of harvest footage that I'm putting together, and which will be coming up on the channel reeeeeaaaaaal soon. So this is the boring but important prelude to everything else. 0:00 - Intro 2:27 - No-Till Drill Project 3:...
Oak Trees & Hope
มุมมอง 1.4K2 ปีที่แล้ว
Life can be a surprising thing. Happy Independence Day to everyone out there! Thanks for watching, and enjoy a little much-needed time off. I didn’t get this video uploaded before Anderson Bash, so I’m sorry to say you missed a good show. But the GoFundMe page that @MillennialFarmer has set up is still a good thing to check out if you’d like to donate a little something to help fund grain bin r...
Goats & Broiler Chickens on Pasture! #GrainBinSafety
มุมมอง 1.7K2 ปีที่แล้ว
Did you know the Millenial Farmer is running a donation campaign to provide training and equipment to first-responders, so that they are better equipped to handle grain bin entrapment accidents? Did you know you can go to a *free* SWEET CONCERT as part of that fundraiser? Did you know Dana and I will be there too? Didja? Didja? Donate! Hang out with us! It'll be fun! Links below! Exclamation po...
Early Spring Happenings & Shelling Corn for Wildlife Feed
มุมมอง 7K2 ปีที่แล้ว
We're back! After a long hiatus from TH-cam, I have a series of videos to put up from this past spring. Here we talk a little about the coming year, and run some corn through the Minneapolis-Moline sheller for wildlife feed. 0:00 - General Goings-On & Chit-Chat 13:58 - Shelling Corn
Ag Expo with the MN Soil Health Coalition
มุมมอง 7452 ปีที่แล้ว
Hanging with the crew at the MSHC booth during Ag Expo in Mankato. The Minnesota Soil Health Coalition is a nonprofit, farmer-led group that helps promote soil health practices in the agricultural community. We host field days, educational events, and provide information to farmers interested in adopting soil health practices, and we have a growing network of farmer-mentors. Farmer mentors - li...
First Snowfall on the Farm & Holiday Wishes
มุมมอง 3.5K2 ปีที่แล้ว
First Snowfall on the Farm & Holiday Wishes
2020 - Planting Cover Crops After Soybeans
มุมมอง 7K2 ปีที่แล้ว
2020 - Planting Cover Crops After Soybeans
2020 Harvest - Day 9 - A Marathon Day Picking Corn
มุมมอง 18K2 ปีที่แล้ว
2020 Harvest - Day 9 - A Marathon Day Picking Corn
2020 Harvest - Day 8 - Steady Progress Picking Corn
มุมมอง 113K2 ปีที่แล้ว
2020 Harvest - Day 8 - Steady Progress Picking Corn
2020 Harvest Day 6 & 7 - Prep & Corn Picking
มุมมอง 9K2 ปีที่แล้ว
2020 Harvest Day 6 & 7 - Prep & Corn Picking
2020 Harvest - Day 4 & 5 - Finishing Soybeans
มุมมอง 11K2 ปีที่แล้ว
2020 Harvest - Day 4 & 5 - Finishing Soybeans
2020 Harvest - Day 2 & 3 - Broken Combine
มุมมอง 9K3 ปีที่แล้ว
2020 Harvest - Day 2 & 3 - Broken Combine
2020 Harvest - Day 1 - Soybeans and... Alfalfa?
มุมมอง 10K3 ปีที่แล้ว
2020 Harvest - Day 1 - Soybeans and... Alfalfa?
John Deere 55 - Pre Harvest Tuneup 2020
มุมมอง 11K3 ปีที่แล้ว
John Deere 55 - Pre Harvest Tuneup 2020
Haybine Roller Review - Second Alfalfa Crop
มุมมอง 20K3 ปีที่แล้ว
Haybine Roller Review - Second Alfalfa Crop
Thanks for sharing 👍👍✌️
Ya know you can use those cobs to heat syrup are old farm house has a cob burner to heat the house
Where do you get your empty sacks from for your corn?
Ill always say fresh cut is nothing compared to the morning 48hrs after its cut smells 1000× better
Interesting variety of summer tasks. Do the mice bother the granary?
That machine will make you an eunuch.
I love your videos, they give me inspiration to try to direct market some of my crops. With a small farm there is no way to make money selling wholesale
Great video! Nice to see you back at it again. Keep it up.
Great video, very cool on the cracked corn process. Keep them coming please.
Hi and good evening, Couldn't you just put the mill a little higher and place an empty bag under it? On a rack or trailer? Or deepen the ground under the mill a little? Then it should actually be easier? Instead of the buckets and shoveling? By the way, I like your videos very much! They are simply great in every way. What you say, how you explain everything, your farm, the great machines and also the seasonal atmosphere always. And the incredibly beautiful surroundings with you. Really fabulous! Thank you very much for that! Best regards from Schleswig-Holstein, Northern Germany! All the best, Christian 🇺🇸💕🥰
Love the swather. I haven't seen many of those in the Midwest. Yeah, I was kinda waiting for the flex funnel to dip as the water hit it, then bounce as the water pouted out, and repeat. 😆 The starter switch is a nice touch. It reminds me of the turn signal replacement switch I put on one of our band trucks back in Iowa. It was a former chicken hauling Step Van, with the original LUX Pullets logos on the sides and "Here comes Archie!" on the hood. The column-mounted turn signal failed, so I zip tied a 3-position toggle switch onto it. Oh, it also had a secondary horn from a VW Beetle that caused strange looks from people when they turned to see the behemoth making the little beep-beep. Thanks for the big ol' video!
enjoyed the video, hope to meet up with you again sometime
Good to see a video and keep them coming
Another great informative video. As I have said before love the videos with the older equipment like I farmed with dad on. Keep them coming. God bless
Drill a hole in the brace to get a scredriver through the hole.
Alfalfa starts to loose proteen once it flowers. Wait longer for a seed crop.
As I've said before, thank you for sharing your day with us. I really appreciate your commentary about what you do, why you do it the way you do, and everything in between. I look forward to seeing your harvest footage! Stay safe from unguarded roller chains!!!!
Crazy year, busy busy busy 🙂👍🏻👌
When did you get the swather
We bought it in the summer of 2021, which was the first year we grew oats on the farm. I haven't featured it because I always failed to get good camera footage of us using it, or even working on it when it needed repair. This year I took some decent footage of oat harvest though, so it'll play a role in an upcoming video.
Enjoy your videos of someone of doing farm directly to customer . Running older machinery makes it able to afford to farm small, best to you on your farm and hope your farm to consumers keeps improving for you, we used to have a guy that would stop to goose hunt here from around St Peter that loved to visit with my dad and he raised ducks outside feeding them alfalfa bales and people would come every year paying a premium for his ducks.
He was probably doing 1 of two things. 1 cleaning lead out of dirt from a back stop to melt down and turn into lead shot or sinkers etc. or less likely separating lead shot from slag after melting.
I'm pretty sure it was the former option, because there was a lot of dirt worked into the nooks and crannies of the machine when I disassembled his shaker screen.
Sounds like great progress on soil optimization. It's quite a different thing when you realize that there's no open local oats mass market and it takes more effort to find buyers and direct markets.
Indeed! There’s a local feed store that will buy a small quantity. That would be my next best option if I wasn’t direct marketing. For anyone who wanted to grow more than 10 or 20 acres in my area though, they’re looking at a long haul to get their product to a market. I think Grain Millers in St. Ansgar, IA might be the closest place, and I believe they will only take food-grade oats.
I like learning what you do for operating a small farm with alternative marketing, another channel I watch with a small farm with direct sales is a few acres farm. Best wishes on your direct marketing
Thanks Ron! When I have time to watch TH-cam videos, Pete from Just a Few Acres is one of my favorites too. I'd love to sit down with him some day and visit if the opportunity ever arose. It'd be a hoot!
@@ravenviewfarm we were in your area in June we went on 19 on our way to Hastings on the Friday before Father's day and Saturday it rained all day
@@ravenviewfarm You'd need to brush up on bad jokes. Although having a camera stand named Rod is a good start.
Nice update. Has been pretty wet here most of the spring and early summer. Getting dry now! Are you going to the Greater northern Minnesota get together at Jon Stevens next month? MN soil health coalition is hosting
Thanks Larson Valley Farm! I might attend that event if it works around our haying schedule. Rush City isn't a long way for me to go. We've been so crazy busy here that I've missed a number of MSHC events that I wanted to attend. I especially wanted to go to the Premier Soil Health event last week, but we were baling hay. I'm hoping once oat harvest is out of the way we'll slow down enough to get off the farm a little and be back out in the world, lol!
enjoy your video Mike, haven't seen you since the Soil Health Summit, look forward to learning more about your vermiculture
Hey Larry! Good to hear from you! Yep, I finally pulled the trigger and got a bunch of worms, lol. I'll have some video updates about that in the future as well. Not much to see yet since I just have a small worm bin made out of an old garbage can. Those little guys reproduce fast though, so their population will outgrow that bin by autumn, and if I can keep them cozy through the winter I'll have quite the vermicompost operation by spring of 2025. Hope you're doing well!
Love that you made another video. Love seeing how you are doing things and especially with the older equipment like I grew up on and driving. Hope to see more soon. Thank you.
Thanks Tom! I'm working on a few more videos already. My daughter has gotten interested in using the camera, so it's fun to be able to create videos together as a family. I appreciate you tuning in!
Glad to see a new video from you! Always interesting and entertaining, not to mention informative. Keep on doing what you do! I'm hoping to see your oat harvest, as it's been a long time since I've been involved in harvesting oats, or wheat. Thanks for including all of us on the farm tour!!!!!
Thanks Douglas! I get a little long-winded I know, and most people would rather see the equipment working, but I think a tour is important for context once in awhile. I'm glad you enjoyed it. I just swathed the oats down yesterday and filmed it. Of course they got rained on last night, so we'll spend a couple of days getting the combine all tuned up and ready while they dry back down. Then it's go time!
Hope someday you can build a big new barn where the old one was on the farm.
Yes!
I totally agree Rusty Relics. Having worked in the construction industry, I've already got some rudimentary plans drawn up for it. We're going to focus on fixing up some of our other buildings first, since we can do that fairly affordably. The barn will require a loan, or a wealthy patron or something (I wish, LOL!) But the farm just doesn't seem right without it, so we'll have to try to get one put up one of these years. Plus I'd love to have hay storage on the farm so we can stop renting the neighbor's barn for our hay crops.
@@ravenviewfarm Posting more often should help.
With the right mix you should be able to spray the corn once, right after planting and before the corn emerges. In a perfect world you want to apply some sort of nitrogen when it's about knee high, the corn needs that extra kick. Cover crops in the rows are good in theory but it actually cause more issues than any benefit
Totally agree on all of your points. I've enjoyed it when our interseeded covers did well, but it's just so hit and miss. I honestly think we're doing more for our soil health by having a diverse cash crop rotation and using rye in the fall, along with the compost extract now.
Oh, I forgot to ask: Why are customers requesting non-GMO animal feed corn? I’m a proponent of GMOs, because they do so much good, so I’m always curious if anti-GMO thinking is just media-based fear of something they don’t understand, or if they think the crops are saturated with Roundup that will still be there when the crop is harvested.
I really think you hit the nail on the head with the two biggest things that make people averse to GMO crops. There's definitely a severe lack of good, scientifically grounded information available to the general public. Meanwhile there are a whole slew of unqualified fringe-ideas out in the digital universe that anyone can find with a quick Google search. So that drives a lot of the apprehension people feel about GMO crops. Herbicide exposure is another big one. I'm honestly not quite sure where I stand on that issue myself. Glyphosate is a lot safer than many of the other herbicides on the market, but I do also feel that we don't understand its long term effects after repeated exposure as well as we need to. One factor that I take into consideration - but much of the general public wouldn't include in their calculus - is that there is some evidence that GMO crops don't affiliate as well with native soil biology. Interactions between mycorrhizal fungi and corn root systems have been observed to be less vigorous and effective with modern corn varieties in particular. Whether that's because of genetic modification or simply really aggressive hybridization practices is hard to say, but it is a consideration for those of us focusing on soil biology in our crop systems. Again, more studies and information are needed since the industry isn't really focusing on fungal affiliation (why would you when mainstream corn farming is focused on heavy synthetic fertilizer use?) We'll get there eventually, but it'll probably be a long road. I'm a proponent of GMO crops as well. If I start growing non-GMO corn it'll be mainly for the savings in seed cost, coupled with a desire to respond to the wishes of my customer base. As long as we can put together an effective herbicide mix for it, there's really no reason not to give it a try since it should increase my profit margin.
It’s alive! 🧌 I find all this interesting. I’ve just been doing some very rudimentary reading about home composting, deciding if I should build a simple cedar composting cage or buy an ugly black plastic one with a crank. (I’d rather get out a manure fork and turn it by hand.) We could use it for the garden we plan on making next season. Maybe. Otherwise it will make some decent fill soil for that low spot in our front yard that keeps sinking where a tree used to be. Do you have any ear corn left?
Once you get started with compost - no matter how you initially do it - you'll learn a lot of lessons fairly quickly. If you have questions, I'll be happy to help with answers. We're still learning ourselves, so bear with me on the things we don't know. It's a fun journey! Regarding ear corn - we're sold out until harvest time. We actually kept a crib well into the summer this year because the commodity prices were so low, but shelled out what was left of it and sent it to the elevator earlier this month.
@@ravenviewfarm We ran out months ago, but never found time to head out your way.
Around here we put fertilizer on the ground going to corn and have never fertilized soybeans
Love your videos, really hoping to see some harvest footage this fall!
Hey you're alive, was starting to wonder lol
We're still kickin! Life has been a blur this year.
Very cool video. i like to hear about your crops and how you guys do things. Keep the videos coming
You look a lot like Peter Ostrum the Child Actor/ Vetrenarian.
Well I'll be danged! That's a new one for me, but I can see it. Now if only someone would bequeath me a chocolate factory!
Thanks for putting this on video and even the after market rollers. 3yrs old but we are still running a 492. I’m trying to get as much life out of it as possible, $20-$30k for a discbine isn’t in the forecast yet.
Hey KPVFarmer! Thanks for watching! I definitely hear you on the cost of a discbine. We've kicked it around as well, but for our acreage and hours of use each year it just makes more sense to keep the haybine tuned up and running.
Thanks so much for a great educational video. It has given me an idea for how to build my own inter-seeder! I’m excited to see how your interseeding crop does!
Hey Patrick! Thanks for watching! Full disclosure, we've almost quit interseeding our corn at this point. For us, the weather has been so erratic that we've had a heck of a time getting an interseeded cover crop to grow over the last four years or so. The last three years were really droughty, so we would interseed and hardly anything would come up. Then this year we had so much rain in late May and all of June that we couldn't get it done at all. Don't get me wrong, I still love the practice itself! It's just getting hard to justify the seed cost when barely any of it grows. Plus we've had to limit our herbicide options if we want to interseed, and the grassy weeds especially are starting to get away on us. All that to say we're still learning, and we will probably have another go at it in the future. I just need to figure out a little better balance with herbicide and timing and seed mix. My advice to you would be to keep the seed mix a little lighter than most people would recommend. Maybe 15 to 20 lbs per acre total. Keep the cost down so that it doesn't break the bank if conditions aren't favorable and the result ends up being lackluster. Best of luck! Any amount of extra diversity is good for the soil and the ecosystem!
How much does a bale go for
Thanks for making the video!
How’s the stems look with new rolls? Nice and flat?
Yep! The rollers crimp the stems every couple of inches, which really helps with letting the moisture out and getting faster dry down. Plus the bales end up feeling softer with the stems smashed, which I think makes the hay more appealing for my customers.
Awesome video
Now that you’ve had a few seasons on the rollers how do you like their wear and performance so far?
Cool old barn!
Hi there Thank you for sharing this information with us. Is machine to seed Tef available in Canada? Could you share the link
I would assume you can find one in Canada, but I'm not Canadian so I can't claim to be an expert. It's called a Brillion seeder. A quick Google search should get you started with learning about them and where you might find one to use.
@@ravenviewfarm thank you so much! I found it
Nice machinery.
Nice to see older equipment still being used & valued.
Great vids of a good machine. We ran a 1958 55 JD. for several years in the early 70's in wheat harvest and it gave us very few problems. Nothing major anyway. I don't know what year your is, but it is for sure a later one than ours and the first 55 I have seen with a straw chopper instead of the spreader.
Awesome awesome video
What kind of elevator