I got good money for rock when I was excavating.....Every year, a few more feet and you'll have a nice pasture there. Like I've told you before, what a old timer told me, " I'd rather pick rocks than be in the shittin' nursing home". lol Thanks Dave.
Cleared rocks by hand and shovel with all my friends for Miller's milk farm 57 years ago. Thank God, wasn't as involved as yours. WOW. Doing a fine job sir.
I'm from New England and marvel at the thousands of miles of stone walls around farms and homes all of which came from rocky fields. In Spring the farmers would look out in the fields and say, "Look Mother another good crop of rocks!" It does me good to see there are still hard working Americans.
My brother-in-law inherited a poor rocky farm in Connecticut. It had been a dairy farm. But they couldn’t make a living. They both had jobs. But were in trouble for taxes. I said “ Landscapers buy boulders”. He made enough off of boulders to pay the taxes. He was so grateful he gave me a solid quartz bolder bigger than a basketball! It’s in my flowerbed today.
Used to pick rock onto a wooden sled behind a Ford Major in Delaware County. NY. There were 2 stones for every dirt. Them things reproduced at a rate that rocks needed picked each spring. They kept coming! Thank you. Stay safe.
Just one of the reasons people from Northern New England headed to the Mid-West in the Early 1800's, they got tired of the Annual Crop of Rocks. Of course all the City Folk think those Stone Walls look so Rustic!
@@Rollinghillsfarmsmn I hope you can find a rock wagon soon that you can afford. I didn't mention the compaction damage the skid steer is doing previously - running down the same track again and again. How about many small piles (or short windrows) in straight lines that you can clean up when you get a rock wagon? Your cows won't mind grazing around the pikes. They'll eat around the piles :) Best of luck to you!
@@Rollinghillsfarmsmnseems like you could have the skid steer put the rocks into a tractor bucket until capacity and then run the tractor over to the rock pile to dump
I am now going down a rabbit hole to find out how people deal with this with today's technology. I am not judging their removal method, but now am curious to see if there are better alternatives.
@@gaterunner64 A skidstear is not the machine for rocks of this size. The manufacturers have done a great job selling them - but they are not what they are cracked up to be. Save your money and go for a real machine. This is mid size excavator work. Don't buy new - and don't buy a mini. Go mid size newer model (so the hoses aren't rotted) with 2k to 7k hours. You want a hydraulic thumb or a grapple and bucket quick change. You want to be able to switch from a frost hook to a trenching bucket to your grapple quickly - depending on what comes out of the ground. Then you need to move them out of the field. An articulating off road is your best bet, but it may not be in the budget. You at least need a heavy dump trailer with balloon tires that your big tractor can pull when loaded. Dump the rocks in a single layer along your main road and set up a for sale sign. People in the suburbs will pay a bundle for natural boulders. Latch on to a handful of pond and waterfall builders and landscapers. You don't want to mess with onesy twosy retail customers. They will drive you nuts.
Here in northern Germany they took 100s of years to clear the fields of rocks, all done by hand of course. They used the rocks to pave roads, most of which have since been surfaced over with tarmac. In some of the rural villages in the east you can still see the original roads paved with rocks. All axel breakers of course.
Had a similar problem in '88. Ended up building a big grizzly with a 3" x 3" opening grid. Bought a big shovel dozer and stripped off the top 2'. Ran the soil through the grizzly. 50% was tailings and 50% went back. Every eigth bucket through the grizzly was manure to fertilize the soil. If I could have afforded it, I would have bought a jaw crusher to make all the rocks into gravel. Good Luck, Rick
Wow, great story. I’d be happy just to find someone to haul the rocks away😅. We have a gravel pit a mile up the road so I get loads from that pretty cheap.
I was going to suggest that to a prior respondent. If rocks are in your field, they're in your neighbours' fields, as well. Throw in some cashola each collectively, organize a crusher to be located to one of your properties (it will be mobile, so probably multiple drop-offs), crush the rocks and now you've got hard-core or gravel to share. One man's view -
I had a 20 acre field like this....and learned.... never dig the rock out ! Lift them out using a grapple ! Anytime I moved soil it only brought up more rocks ! Maybe fill in the lowest areas with a dozer......but move as little dirt as possible ! I bought myself a 14 foot spring tooth cultivator... 200 dollars. Went over the field dozens of times. One last trip picking up smaller rocks. Seeded it with an end gate seeder and culti -packed it . Finished ! I now rotational graze the field and make hay off of it in rotation also. Its now a highly productive field !
The Freeze Thaw Cycle brings them slowly to the top. As long as the Rocks remain Below the Frost Line, they won't move. Otherwise, slowly but surely they're coming up. One of the Few Up-Sides to Global Warming, Less of the Annual Rock picking.
@@craigsawicky1643 Not true..... freezing and thawing has nothing to do with rocks !!!! I have rocks !!!!!!!! I live next to a rock quarry and farm land next door to it. I tried an experiment.... Took the field cultivator out and cultivated it 15 times.....each time cleaned up any rocks I found.. ( picked up ) every rock I could find . Found over 1500 rocks in an area of 100 x 100 feet.. To this day.....no other rocks found.....thats 50 years later. The rock have always been there just no one ever cleaned them up ! Thats like to old saying.... a corner post is jacked out of the ground because of freezing and thawing. Its the brace that helps " lift " the corner post out of the ground ........and also to do with the wet ground during spring time. Example......take a rod........ make a small hole.....use the rod with some water...the rod will drop into the ground.....just by lifting and dropping the rod. A link....watch it !! th-cam.com/video/ML9Ga_ud5fY/w-d-xo.html Its about hydraulics.............not freezing and thawing !
Close to where I live in the UK the problem of rocks was solved by making Dry Stone Walls, these marked the boundry of you land, then internal walls went up and made fields for the farm. These walls go miles and miles up and down hills. Building houses is also an option.
@@Rollinghillsfarmsmn When driving past them I sometimes stop the car and look at at a line of stone going up a hill for miles, and say to myself, I bet you did that every day of your life. How many tons? thousands and thousands of tons, some stones? how they moved them? by horse / mule on a sled?
Being from the UK too, I was thinking about dry stone walls the whole time I was watching this video. They've got an awesome resource that could be used to improve the farm LONG term.
Coming from a area where the rock wasn't bad i always wondered about the effort people had invested when i saw large rock piles. There was a old Scandinavian trick of splitting boulders with fire when the cold got intense. Thank you Dave.
I’ve heard of that. Also splitting rocks with a big hammer on sub-zero nights😅. I found a stone boat when we moved here and didn’t know what it was used for. Found out the first time I plowed a field. There were zero rocks in the rich black soil where I grew up in Goodhue County…
When I was growing up the old farmers would drill a hole in the really large boulders and then in the winter, fill the holes with water and cap the ends. The water would freeze and expand, cracking the boulder. Time consuming, but the only pain in the back part was drilling the hole by hand.
They used to pull them out with pry bars and horse teams. Then drag them over on a sled and stack them up in the edge of the woods as a fence. You got a lot of fence laying out there in those fields.
We have a stone fence around the perimeter of all three of the fields on the property. Some people just make piles in the field but the settlers here made edge rows.
I’ve seen videos of folks in the northern climes picking out the larger ones then using a very heavy roller to push the others back down so they can use their no-till planters. Trouble is, those squished stones always return. Y’all get what we down here in Texas call “real winters” which come complete with frost heave. Good luck. 🫡
That's the same reason I bought my stump bucket for, it works great. Go to dig one out, find five more. Looks like the Honda is earning it's keep. The pasture looks nice when the rocks are cleared up.
We needed to improve this pasture for sure. The Honda gives me another tractor (sort of). I’m amazed at the stump bucket. Dawn figured out it worked for rocks. I was still using the dirt bucket.
Ann and I spent our youth in Northern Minnesota and spent many springs picking rocks so I feel I can say the following with some knowledge of the process. With this in mind no matter how many rocks you pick this spring a new crop will grow for the next season.
I hope he would approve. We never met him but we greatly respect the work he did improving the property originally cleared by his father and mother. The older neighbors all knew him and passed on stories about his work ethic. Thanks for your comment.
I lived in Connecticut and built houses and they used the rocks to build stone walls was a good selling feature. The stone walls were built by the early settlers not me. Lol
All the farms around here have large rock piles in and sometimes lining the perimeter of fields. The old buildings had stone foundations too. There’s no market for selling rocks because there’s so many people give them away🙄.
I grew up in East Tennessee. Our motto was " The Lord made the earth in six days , and threw rocks at East Tennessee on the seventh day ". We would spend a week plowing and a mo th picking up rocks !
Excellent video rocks are a mess to deal with my farm used to look the same way until I got a payloader there were areas so bad I just dropped the bucket and Pushed the rocks like plowing snow then I could till it and after a few years I rolled the rocks out of soil. Patience is the only way to clean rocks
Them is BIG ROCKS ,I was a rock picker as a teenager, changed handline irrigating mint,alfalfa and potatoes each morning and evening and picked rocks mid day , ,Central Oregon was the location 8 miles from Terrebonne on Deschutes Valley Farms 🚜 lots of kicking rocks ,actually fuun , that was 1972 and 3 😁
Living here in Rock Village section Of Middleboro, Ma as soon as you opened talking rocks you caught my attention. OUr ground is made up of rock, ledge, and bigger rocks with a little soil just to tease us. I loved your video and subscribed
Mom grew up in an area of Quebec known for its rolling rocky terrain. They moved closer to the border where farming is way easier. I'm helping out on a farm that's mostly yellow soil, with some sandy fields, some that get swampy easily, others with some clay and top soil. The water table is 4 feet down or so. Ditches need digging out. Two pretty much opposite setups. Keep a good thing growing. :)
I enjoyed the video. I appreciate how hard farmers work and are always trying to improve their farms. If you want to be more efficient look into a rock bucket for the skid steer. There are several manufacturers the make 60" and 72" wide buckets which will pick up the rocks and leave the soil behind. Another option is a loader with root rake. If you know any site contractors they may have one available.
Long job.been there done that using a Pedrick rock picker and used the rock for creek crossings and bank reinforcement and make bunds for tank bases etc. The cattle will be happy to have a place to lay down free from rocks.
You need a rock bucket so you can knock the dirt loose. I’ve done several fields like this, it’s to much work to carry them one at a time away. Back in early 2000’s I removed several thousand rocks like that but with a rented excavator and my dump trailer.
Being a guy from a row home, in philly, for over 50 years; I'm envious of the type of life, guys like you lead...I'm in the suburbs in a single rancher now...I never considered the amount of work required to upkeep the grounds...I HATE IT!...:)... I can't imagine all the work THAT property has experienced! Good health to you and yours...
@@Rollinghillsfarmsmn : ) as a general contractor, for 35 years and still wearing the tools since finding competent tradesman is like looking for a needle in a Rock field!...:)...It only hurts till it stops...:)...
I just subscribed. We didn't have much rock, but way too many old stumps(especially locust and gum) and I helped my grandfather dig, dynamite, and pull many of them out with a team and a Farmall A. Your helper can sure finesse that rock digger. Bill
She’s a great operator for sure. I’ve heard they used dynamite but never talked to somebody who actually did it…that is so cool. They did the same thing here with white pine stumps. Good that you survived.
Love what you're doing. Just watched a "rock pickin" vid from "It's a Stable Life" and "Veggie Boys" channels the other day. Fortunately for them, their rocks are small enough to be handled by a mechanical rock picker. Down here in South Texas, you find a layer of hardened, dark red sandstone on occasion, but in my neck of the woods, it's mostly just sand, sand, and more sand. Have to use creative approaches to getting anything of worth to grow, but it's home. New sub. Thanks for your vids.
The problem is he can clean up the pastures from the rocks that you can see now, but given time there will be more rocks being pushed up from underground to take their place. Maybe not as many as there is in this first clearing, but it will still be a good many to push back up.
These cut-in-half JD drills are going for $1500-2000 as deer hunting food plot seeders…but they work great on small plots in my pasture. I paid $100 for the original 12-foot drill.😅.
@@Rollinghillsfarmsmn ya🙄 And it's really not a thing here, blacktail are more loners, they don't stick to a routine. Some landowners plant little plots here and there, but it's all walk in, or maybe get a four wheeler in.
Basalt. Farms in my town have 3 TIMES this amount. Sheep literally eating grass between the cracks in rocks. My dads farm is almost this bad in parts but mine is pretty good. You'll find 8-10 YEARS after clearing, you'll HAVE MORE. The hooves literally push the soil down and more rise to the surface
Looks a lot like Glen Rock PA. Or maybe the Burren in Ireland. At least in Glen Rock the farmers of days gone by could with great effort clear the trees, stumps and rocks to create arable land. I think in Ireland the rocks were just too many and too deep so they just learned to live with them. I did get a laugh when watching the movie "War Horse" how the featured horse plowed up that hillside in short order tho! Spielberg didn't have a clue!
Rocks are why early settlers had as many sons as possible. All that untapped energy could then be used picking rocks. How many men do you figure that bobcat replaces? In Vermont after plowing you always pick rocks being sure to leave some for seed.
😅That’s probably why my son and daughter moved away after college…. We bought a commercial rock picker after they left but it was clumsy and hard to use. The skid steer replaced it and gives us a ton more uses.
For centuries there has been an occupation known as Stone Picker. They picked tens of thousands of acres where I live. A lot went into stone walls for paddocks and for building. Rocks are worth a small fortune. Here around 100 a ton and theres surprisingly few rocks in a Ton. Bigger ones go for more up to thousands each. To me you look to be removing $20 bills.
Our farm is located in the rolling hills of the Palouse region in Washington state. The glacier from the last ice age fortunately just missed our area. As a result, the 3300 acres that we farm is almost completely free of rocks, except for about 40 acres. We were left with some of the best fertile soil in the world. In some areas, the soil is 100 feet deep before reaching bedrock. But 120 miles to the NW are some of the worst rocky scablands where the topsoil was swept away in a matter of about 2 days down to bedrock, 18,000 - 15,000 years ago, at the end of the last ice age. At that time, the massive Glacial Lake Missoula (Montana) formed from the melting glaciers to the north. Then, an ice dam suddenly broke and flooded large parts of northern Idaho and central/southern Washington. The water flowed very swiftly, sweeping away the topsoil and depositing boulders everywhere. The water flowed down the Columbia River and out to the Pacific Ocean near Portland, Oregon. Geologists say that during that two-day stretch, the quantity of flowing water amounted to about 10X the volume of every other river in the world combined. It is interesting to drive around the area and see the results or that flood today.
Rocks could be remnants from the Great War of the Ancients, where asteroids were deliberately tossed through this atmosphere in an attempt to demolish all of the Little Men's great works.
Yeah definitely yeah there’s definitely a lot of money in rocks. Usually just sweep the paddock with a good heavy leveling bar on the tractor. Then heavy roll.. rocks are a good asset in a paddock being free drainage
Down here in the south along the east coast we pay good money for those rocks and boulders. Yeah I don’t think about selling in bulk. Don’t riparian lotta can be sold for ornamental things.
Nice pasture improvement. You have a serious rock issue there. The absolute worst rock pasture I've ever seen was east of Waupaca WI. I have rock but not nearly as bad as yours.
Im not a land expert, but I think a backhoe would be easier to pull them to the surface then a blade to push them into a pile?? I wish I had a farm. Nothing but respect for those who live in harmony with mumma earth...
Dawn the rock meistress. Dave field looks real nice. Are your rocks in a place when they sell you can access without tearing up your new pasture. Those are premium landscape rocks don't sell them cheap They are another income stream.
We had one but it was clumsy to use and the tractor added a lot of soil compaction in our heavy clay. The skid steer weight is distributed much better with the tracks.
The seed will grow without rolling or packing it just won’t be as smooth which is OK since this is pasture not hayfield. We use a field roller on all of our small grain fields because we want them smooth as possible for the hay crop to follow.
Using a mini excavator with a thumb to sort through the rocky field, making rows of rocks to be loaded on to a truck for transport away would be more efficient than the tracked skid steer running back and forth with a few rocks at a time. Replacing the tracks and bottom is expensive .
@@RollinghillsfarmsmnYes, sometimes have to run what you brung. I luckily have a 3t digger with a grapple attachment and it is great for rocks. Lever them out, toss them around, rotate them into a pile, push, shove, all the options-can move even massive boulders with care. But like you say, an excavator is a luxury if you have no other use for it. Thanks for the vid.
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I got good money for rock when I was excavating.....Every year, a few more feet and you'll have a nice pasture there. Like I've told you before, what a old timer told me, " I'd rather pick rocks than be in the shittin' nursing home". lol Thanks Dave.
I agree. Long as the Kubota runs we’ll pick rocks. Love to have somebody haul them away.
Back in The Day, they used a Stone Boat, a Yoke of Oxen, and a Couple of Bars. Quieter, except for the Cussing and the Hernias.
Cleared rocks by hand and shovel with all my friends for Miller's milk farm 57 years ago. Thank God, wasn't as involved as yours. WOW. Doing a fine job sir.
You know the job! We still clear rocks every time we plant from fields that were cleared 100 years ago.
I'm from New England and marvel at the thousands of miles of stone walls around farms and homes all of which came from rocky fields. In Spring the farmers would look out in the fields and say, "Look Mother another good crop of rocks!" It does me good to see there are still hard working Americans.
Thanks.
If you haven’t seen LIDAR images of Vermont, I recommend the look see at all the hidden by vegetation stone works, have a good day.
Actually rock walls and fences are pretty much a thing unique to New England...I'm from Maine
I am from Connecticut . Haven't been back for years but you just reminded me of something that I took for granite as a kid.
@@gaterunner64 😂
Looks like beautiful fence building material. Makes you appreciate the old-timers who didn't have all the machinery we do now.
@@heidinewcombe696 must have been back breaking work but satisfying and affordable for fence and foundation.
My brother-in-law inherited a poor rocky farm in Connecticut.
It had been a dairy farm. But they couldn’t make a living. They both had jobs. But were in trouble for taxes.
I said “ Landscapers buy boulders”. He made enough off of boulders to pay the taxes.
He was so grateful he gave me a solid quartz bolder bigger than a basketball! It’s in my flowerbed today.
That’s a cool story. I may have to advertise my rocks😅
If it didn't cost so much to Haul them, people in Florida pay Big Bucks!
Hello from Madison Wi home of WKOW Channel 27
@@kelleysimonds5945 Hello Kelley. The jacket is a gift from a friend of mine who manages WKOW. Nice for windy days.
@@Rollinghillsfarmsmn It was fun to see, we're all connected in one way or another.
Good luck with all you do.
Used to pick rock onto a wooden sled behind a Ford Major in Delaware County. NY. There were 2 stones for every dirt. Them things reproduced at a rate that rocks needed picked each spring. They kept coming! Thank you. Stay safe.
They keep coming in our fields too. It seems like a full time job.
Just one of the reasons people from Northern New England headed to the Mid-West in the Early 1800's, they got tired of the Annual Crop of Rocks. Of course all the City Folk think those Stone Walls look so Rustic!
That's how it seemed to me. Those critters were breeding..
Before that summer, we all listened to rock music.. After it was all country music... well,almost.. lol!
We have thousands upon thousands of great stone fences here in New England, all from fields like yours. Good luck !
Where is your rock wagon? That's a lot of extra hours and wasted time and fuel running your skid steer back and forth.
We had a rock sled on the farm when we moved here but we could use a wagon with hydraulic dump for sure.
@@Rollinghillsfarmsmn I hope you can find a rock wagon soon that you can afford. I didn't mention the compaction damage the skid steer is doing previously - running down the same track again and again. How about many small piles (or short windrows) in straight lines that you can clean up when you get a rock wagon? Your cows won't mind grazing around the pikes. They'll eat around the piles :)
Best of luck to you!
@@Rollinghillsfarmsmnseems like you could have the skid steer put the rocks into a tractor bucket until capacity and then run the tractor over to the rock pile to dump
I am now going down a rabbit hole to find out how people deal with this with today's technology. I am not judging their removal method, but now am curious to see if there are better alternatives.
@@gaterunner64 A skidstear is not the machine for rocks of this size. The manufacturers have done a great job selling them - but they are not what they are cracked up to be. Save your money and go for a real machine. This is mid size excavator work. Don't buy new - and don't buy a mini. Go mid size newer model (so the hoses aren't rotted) with 2k to 7k hours. You want a hydraulic thumb or a grapple and bucket quick change. You want to be able to switch from a frost hook to a trenching bucket to your grapple quickly - depending on what comes out of the ground.
Then you need to move them out of the field. An articulating off road is your best bet, but it may not be in the budget. You at least need a heavy dump trailer with balloon tires that your big tractor can pull when loaded.
Dump the rocks in a single layer along your main road and set up a for sale sign. People in the suburbs will pay a bundle for natural boulders. Latch on to a handful of pond and waterfall builders and landscapers. You don't want to mess with onesy twosy retail customers. They will drive you nuts.
That drag and that little Grain drill, it’s worth its weight That’s awesome to have something like that.
And cost nothing! We picked them up when nobody wanted small farm equipment…before the deer hunters started food plots.
First organic rock crop I've seen in years! If you stack them neatly you'll have a fence before you know it. ;)
Here in northern Germany they took 100s of years to clear the fields of rocks, all done by hand of course. They used the rocks to pave roads, most of which have since been surfaced over with tarmac. In some of the rural villages in the east you can still see the original roads paved with rocks. All axel breakers of course.
New Englanders know about rocks. That is why there are so many stone walls. Cleared by hand using horses and oxen, hundreds of years ago.
I live in eastern Mass....Rocks are a pain in the ass!!
It was a lot of work by big families with lots of kids.
Had a similar problem in '88. Ended up building a big grizzly with a 3" x 3" opening grid. Bought a big shovel dozer and stripped off the top 2'. Ran the soil through the grizzly. 50% was tailings and 50% went back. Every eigth bucket through the grizzly was manure to fertilize the soil. If I could have afforded it, I would have bought a jaw crusher to make all the rocks into gravel. Good Luck, Rick
Wow, great story. I’d be happy just to find someone to haul the rocks away😅. We have a gravel pit a mile up the road so I get loads from that pretty cheap.
@@Rollinghillsfarmsmn The problem is that those big piles of tailings are still here. The crusher would have eliminated them. Good Luck, Rick
Disk harrows will make you hate welding forever
I was going to suggest that to a prior respondent. If rocks are in your field, they're in your neighbours' fields, as well. Throw in some cashola each collectively, organize a crusher to be located to one of your properties (it will be mobile, so probably multiple drop-offs), crush the rocks and now you've got hard-core or gravel to share. One man's view -
@@jamesmcdonnell5617Good idea if you can trust your neighbor. Good Luck, Rick
Good morning Dave and Dawn.
I had a 20 acre field like this....and learned.... never dig the rock out ! Lift them out using a grapple ! Anytime I moved soil it only brought up more rocks ! Maybe fill in the lowest areas with a dozer......but move as little dirt as possible ! I bought myself a 14 foot spring tooth cultivator... 200 dollars. Went over the field dozens of times. One last trip picking up smaller rocks. Seeded it with an end gate seeder and culti -packed it . Finished ! I now rotational graze the field and make hay off of it in rotation also. Its now a highly productive field !
The Freeze Thaw Cycle brings them slowly to the top. As long as the Rocks remain Below the Frost Line, they won't move. Otherwise, slowly but surely they're coming up. One of the Few Up-Sides to Global Warming, Less of the Annual Rock picking.
@@craigsawicky1643 Not true..... freezing and thawing has nothing to do with rocks !!!! I have rocks !!!!!!!! I live next to a rock quarry and farm land next door to it. I tried an experiment.... Took the field cultivator out and cultivated it 15 times.....each time cleaned up any rocks I found.. ( picked up ) every rock I could find . Found over 1500 rocks in an area of 100 x 100 feet.. To this day.....no other rocks found.....thats 50 years later. The rock have always been there just no one ever cleaned them up !
Thats like to old saying.... a corner post is jacked out of the ground because of freezing and thawing. Its the brace that helps " lift " the corner post out of the ground ........and also to do with the wet ground during spring time. Example......take a rod........ make a small hole.....use the rod with some water...the rod will drop into the ground.....just by lifting and dropping the rod. A link....watch it !! th-cam.com/video/ML9Ga_ud5fY/w-d-xo.html Its about hydraulics.............not freezing and thawing !
Close to where I live in the UK the problem of rocks was solved by making Dry Stone Walls, these marked the boundry of you land, then internal walls went up and made fields for the farm.
These walls go miles and miles up and down hills.
Building houses is also an option.
I bet it was done by hand and took years.
@@Rollinghillsfarmsmn When driving past them I sometimes stop the car and look at at a line of stone going up a hill for miles, and say to myself, I bet you did that every day of your life. How many tons? thousands and thousands of tons, some stones? how they moved them? by horse / mule on a sled?
Being from the UK too, I was thinking about dry stone walls the whole time I was watching this video.
They've got an awesome resource that could be used to improve the farm LONG term.
When Abe Lincoln wasn’t splitting rails, he was picking rocks. Building character
That’s some great work - excellent video…👍
Thanks. Reminds us of how hard the immigrants worked.
Enjoyed the video Thanks, boy I thought I had rocks ,I feel sorry for you guys . Its a good thing you folks are hard workers. Good luck.
Thanks. Helps to have a strong skid steer.
That a healthy crop of rocks you got there ; )
Now thats a lot of rocks! But you are making some nice progress
Yeah, one acre cleared and 50 to go😳. Job security for the skid steer 😅.
Coming from a area where the rock wasn't bad i always wondered about the effort people had invested when i saw large rock piles.
There was a old Scandinavian trick of splitting boulders with fire when the cold got intense. Thank you Dave.
I’ve heard of that. Also splitting rocks with a big hammer on sub-zero nights😅. I found a stone boat when we moved here and didn’t know what it was used for. Found out the first time I plowed a field. There were zero rocks in the rich black soil where I grew up in Goodhue County…
@@Rollinghillsfarmsmn Wow, Goodhue county. Our farm was in Dakota county near Randolph. You guys have some great soil.
When I was growing up the old farmers would drill a hole in the really large boulders and then in the winter, fill the holes with water and cap the ends. The water would freeze and expand, cracking the boulder. Time consuming, but the only pain in the back part was drilling the hole by hand.
They used to pull them out with pry bars and horse teams. Then drag them over on a sled and stack them up in the edge of the woods as a fence.
You got a lot of fence laying out there in those fields.
We have a stone fence around the perimeter of all three of the fields on the property. Some people just make piles in the field but the settlers here made edge rows.
A small excavator would be a great machine to pick up all those rocks while leaving the soil in place. That the rockiest pasture I’ve ever seen.
That looks so much better!
Can’t wait to see it start growing.
I’ve seen videos of folks in the northern climes picking out the larger ones then using a very heavy roller to push the others back down so they can use their no-till planters. Trouble is, those squished stones always return. Y’all get what we down here in Texas call “real winters” which come complete with frost heave. Good luck. 🫡
That's the same reason I bought my stump bucket for, it works great. Go to dig one out, find five more. Looks like the Honda is earning it's keep. The pasture looks nice when the rocks are cleared up.
We needed to improve this pasture for sure. The Honda gives me another tractor (sort of). I’m amazed at the stump bucket. Dawn figured out it worked for rocks. I was still using the dirt bucket.
Ann and I spent our youth in Northern Minnesota and spent many springs picking rocks so I feel I can say the following with some knowledge of the process. With this in mind no matter how many rocks you pick this spring a new crop will grow for the next season.
You are correct
Uffda! Picked rocks in college days! But not in a field like that. God bless you in your work.
Thank you. Slow and steady when we have time.
we have an area in victoria australia called stony risers the original farmers cleared by hand and made all their fences with the rocks
Those people were tough.
Looks good. Met Mr. Erkkila many years ago I think he would approve.
I hope he would approve. We never met him but we greatly respect the work he did improving the property originally cleared by his father and mother. The older neighbors all knew him and passed on stories about his work ethic. Thanks for your comment.
I lived in Connecticut and built houses and they used the rocks to build stone walls was a good selling feature. The stone walls were built by the early settlers not me. Lol
All the farms around here have large rock piles in and sometimes lining the perimeter of fields. The old buildings had stone foundations too. There’s no market for selling rocks because there’s so many people give them away🙄.
I grew up in East Tennessee. Our motto was " The Lord made the earth in six days , and threw rocks at East Tennessee on the seventh day ". We would spend a week plowing and a mo th picking up rocks !
Been there. Worked at a camp where if I wanted to work the ground I'd dig down a few inches then work out the quarter ton rock. Wash, rinse, repeat.
A lot like Ireland I think it is ( could be Scotland LOL) where all the stones pulled from the fields became the huge stone fences you see everywhere
Excellent video rocks are a mess to deal with my farm used to look the same way until I got a payloader there were areas so bad I just dropped the bucket and
Pushed the rocks like plowing snow then I could till it and after a few years I rolled the rocks out of soil. Patience is the only way to clean rocks
Them is BIG ROCKS ,I was a rock picker as a teenager, changed handline irrigating mint,alfalfa and potatoes each morning and evening and picked rocks mid day , ,Central Oregon was the location 8 miles from Terrebonne on Deschutes Valley Farms 🚜 lots of kicking rocks ,actually fuun , that was 1972 and 3 😁
Fun when you were young is not so fun when you’re my age. That’s why we bought the Kubota.
Living here in Rock Village section Of Middleboro, Ma as soon as you opened talking rocks you caught my attention. OUr ground is made up of rock, ledge, and bigger rocks with a little soil just to tease us. I loved your video and subscribed
Thanks for subscribing. I’ll have to do a follow-up when we get back to moving rock after seeding.
Hey nice dry stone wall kits!
Hey, thanks!
THIS IS FLIPPING EPIC DAVE !!!!
Thanks. The old timers cleared the fields with horses and kids😅.
Mom grew up in an area of Quebec known for its rolling rocky terrain. They moved closer to the border where farming is way easier. I'm helping out on a farm that's mostly yellow soil, with some sandy fields, some that get swampy easily, others with some clay and top soil. The water table is 4 feet down or so. Ditches need digging out. Two pretty much opposite setups. Keep a good thing growing. :)
Sand is easier until a drought. Then it gets sad quickly.
@@Rollinghillsfarmsmn Does it ever. Couple of fields last summer baked. Off to a good start so far.
I enjoyed the video. I appreciate how hard farmers work and are always trying to improve their farms. If you want to be more efficient look into a rock bucket for the skid steer. There are several manufacturers the make 60" and 72" wide buckets which will pick up the rocks and leave the soil behind. Another option is a loader with root rake. If you know any site contractors they may have one available.
Yeah we have one. Works great for leaving soil behind after we extract the rock. Best in dry soil.
In Madison County Western North Carolina looks like Ireland with the stone walls with the rocks carried out of cropland and pastures
Long job.been there done that using a Pedrick rock picker and used the rock for creek crossings and bank reinforcement and make bunds for tank bases etc. The cattle will be happy to have a place to lay down free from rocks.
Yeah we’re planning to use these rocks under gravel for a paddock base and to build a road through a low area.
Thanks. ✌🏻👊🏼
You need a rock bucket so you can knock the dirt loose. I’ve done several fields like this, it’s to much work to carry them one at a time away. Back in early 2000’s I removed several thousand rocks like that but with a rented excavator and my dump trailer.
Being a guy from a row home, in philly, for over 50 years; I'm envious of the type of life, guys like you lead...I'm in the suburbs in a single rancher now...I never considered the amount of work required to upkeep the grounds...I HATE IT!...:)... I can't imagine all the work THAT property has experienced! Good health to you and yours...
Thanks. You have to enjoy hard work to live here. Some mornings it’s hard to get out of bed😊.
@@Rollinghillsfarmsmn : ) as a general contractor, for 35 years and still wearing the tools since finding competent tradesman is like looking for a needle in a Rock field!...:)...It only hurts till it stops...:)...
I just subscribed. We didn't have much rock, but way too many old stumps(especially locust and gum) and I helped my grandfather dig, dynamite, and pull many of them out with a team and a Farmall A. Your helper can sure finesse that rock digger. Bill
She’s a great operator for sure. I’ve heard they used dynamite but never talked to somebody who actually did it…that is so cool. They did the same thing here with white pine stumps. Good that you survived.
After a few winter freezes working on the rocks below, you may have more to harvest but keep at it.
Yeah they rise like zombies…
Love what you're doing. Just watched a "rock pickin" vid from "It's a Stable Life" and "Veggie Boys" channels the other day. Fortunately for them, their rocks are small enough to be handled by a mechanical rock picker. Down here in South Texas, you find a layer of hardened, dark red sandstone on occasion, but in my neck of the woods, it's mostly just sand, sand, and more sand. Have to use creative approaches to getting anything of worth to grow, but it's home. New sub. Thanks for your vids.
Welcome to our channel.
The problem is he can clean up the pastures from the rocks that you can see now, but given time there will be more rocks being pushed up from underground to take their place. Maybe not as many as there is in this first clearing, but it will still be a good many to push back up.
The old VB drill still getting it done!!
Worked up nice 👍
These cut-in-half JD drills are going for $1500-2000 as deer hunting food plot seeders…but they work great on small plots in my pasture. I paid $100 for the original 12-foot drill.😅.
@@Rollinghillsfarmsmn nice 👍
And a new drill for food plots is probably $50k now.. they were $20k+ before the plandemic..
@@GosselinFarmsEdGosselinat least. It’s a bigger business than farming.🙄
@@Rollinghillsfarmsmn ya🙄
And it's really not a thing here, blacktail are more loners, they don't stick to a routine. Some landowners plant little plots here and there, but it's all walk in, or maybe get a four wheeler in.
You could put a rock box on the disc and fill with rocks, the extra weight would make the disc dig in a little better.
Thats how New England Rock walls came about
I will never complain about my rocks again!
In Ireland, the traditional thing to do with rocks pulled out of the fields was to build stone walls around them.
There are thousands and thousands of stone walls all over New England...outside of New England not so much
You oot to check them rocks for gold! God Bless!!
Basalt. Farms in my town have 3 TIMES this amount. Sheep literally eating grass between the cracks in rocks. My dads farm is almost this bad in parts but mine is pretty good. You'll find 8-10 YEARS after clearing, you'll HAVE MORE. The hooves literally push the soil down and more rise to the surface
It's the frost that brings the rock to the surface
Looks a lot like Glen Rock PA. Or maybe the Burren in Ireland. At least in Glen Rock the farmers of days gone by could with great effort clear the trees, stumps and rocks to create arable land. I think in Ireland the rocks were just too many and too deep so they just learned to live with them. I did get a laugh when watching the movie "War Horse" how the featured horse plowed up that hillside in short order tho! Spielberg didn't have a clue!
I’ve seen the movie and laughed. I think we’re like that part of Ireland.
@@Rollinghillsfarmsmn Yes indeed! A friggin' D8 would have had to take a rain check on that field!
@@Rollinghillsfarmsmn Yes indeed! A friggin' D8 would have had to take a rain check on that field!
Rocks are why early settlers had as many sons as possible. All that untapped energy could then be used picking rocks. How many men do you figure that bobcat replaces? In Vermont after plowing you always pick rocks being sure to leave some for seed.
😅That’s probably why my son and daughter moved away after college…. We bought a commercial rock picker after they left but it was clumsy and hard to use. The skid steer replaced it and gives us a ton more uses.
But it took 15 years before sons got big enough to help. That's a long time of feeding them to get any return from the sons.
My father always said ! Lifes to short to farm ROCKS !
😅
For centuries there has been an occupation known as Stone Picker. They picked tens of thousands of acres where I live. A lot went into stone walls for paddocks and for building.
Rocks are worth a small fortune. Here around 100 a ton and theres surprisingly few rocks in a Ton. Bigger ones go for more up to thousands each.
To me you look to be removing $20 bills.
So many rocks here we can’t sell them. Ads all over FB and Craigslist.
Unbelievable the amount of rocks you have their. Hard to fathom.
Yeah. Go a half mile and hit sand with no rock. We won the rock lottery 😊
Our farm is located in the rolling hills of the Palouse region in Washington state. The glacier from the last ice age fortunately just missed our area. As a result, the 3300 acres that we farm is almost completely free of rocks, except for about 40 acres. We were left with some of the best fertile soil in the world. In some areas, the soil is 100 feet deep before reaching bedrock.
But 120 miles to the NW are some of the worst rocky scablands where the topsoil was swept away in a matter of about 2 days down to bedrock, 18,000 - 15,000 years ago, at the end of the last ice age. At that time, the massive Glacial Lake Missoula (Montana) formed from the melting glaciers to the north. Then, an ice dam suddenly broke and flooded large parts of northern Idaho and central/southern Washington. The water flowed very swiftly, sweeping away the topsoil and depositing boulders everywhere. The water flowed down the Columbia River and out to the Pacific Ocean near Portland, Oregon. Geologists say that during that two-day stretch, the quantity of flowing water amounted to about 10X the volume of every other river in the world combined. It is interesting to drive around the area and see the results or that flood today.
Fascinating.
Lots of rocks!
The glacier wasn’t kind to us. West half of our property is sandy…
Our ancestors collected those rocks as a building resource. Barns, stone walling. whole houses. Learn to use your advantages.
Our barn and house have stone foundations. We plan to use some for a base for a road in a future video.
You could use those rocks for rock jacks , ( fence corners )
Full watch Dave
Thanks. We’ve had the worst rocks in the neighborhood since we moved here in the 80’s. Time to change things😅.
Rocks could be remnants from the Great War of the Ancients, where asteroids were deliberately tossed through this atmosphere in an attempt to demolish all of the Little Men's great works.
i 'll watch. but will give me night mares. had that job in college. rocks a nd rocks and more rocks twenty acres. north powder oregon.
They have rock grinder crusher the attaches to a big tractor and grinds the rocks to power, might be worth looking into.
My friend's family had a similarly rocky farm , or as his dad used to say , we were hit bad by the ice age.
Yeah definitely yeah there’s definitely a lot of money in rocks. Usually just sweep the paddock with a good heavy leveling bar on the tractor. Then heavy roll.. rocks are a good asset in a paddock being free drainage
Some of this land was origionally sold to the unsuspecting when it was covered with snow.
The family that settled this land came from Finland so you may be right. I’ve never been to Finland but I hear it’s rocky too.
All we have is rocks in Stafford springs. More like boulders you'd need some real heavy equipment to move mine
Try Madison County in Western North Carolina 😂😂😂
Is it bad there?
Down here in the south along the east coast we pay good money for those rocks and boulders. Yeah I don’t think about selling in bulk. Don’t riparian lotta can be sold for ornamental things.
A well managed pasture should last forever !
I could use that machine for a couple of days . Here we call them New Hampshire potatoes , yummy !
I bet you have a dealership nearby. We use that skid steer more than any other machine. That’s a stump bucket on front from ES Steel Indiana.
Glaciers: Youre welcome. Have fun.
Our best Crop is Rocks.
If I was a rock farmer I’d be a millionaire. I get a bumper crop of granite every spring that the flail cutter finds lol
Deep rich black soil with out rocks is the only way to go. We are happy we do not have this problem. Jim in Chile
Glacial Harvest !!! Now the trick is to turn the rocks into $$$ !!!
Nice pasture improvement. You have a serious rock issue there. The absolute worst rock pasture I've ever seen was east of Waupaca WI. I have rock but not nearly as bad as yours.
Explains why so many of my neighbors had backhoes and excavators when we moved here…🤔
@@Rollinghillsfarmsmn No doubt. That stump bucket works really nice for what you are doing.
Yeap another rock.farmer 😊
Not to worry there will still be more rocks appear when this crop is cleared
I guess if you wanted them gone fast, you could get a D9 or 10 to push them out. You might lose a bit of soil, but they'd be all gone in a day or two.
Fast but expensive. The cost outweighs the benefit.
Im not a land expert, but I think a backhoe would be easier to pull them to the surface then a blade to push them into a pile?? I wish I had a farm. Nothing but respect for those who live in harmony with mumma earth...
Thanks
didn't you know, rocks grow back overnight ;
Dawn the rock meistress. Dave field looks real nice. Are your rocks in a place when they sell you can
access without tearing up your new pasture. Those are premium landscape rocks don't sell them cheap
They are another income stream.
Yes: easy to access. We have plenty available. Nobody seems to want them.
Dang Glaciers
You need one of those rock pickers so you can gather up the little ones every spring.
We had one but it was clumsy to use and the tractor added a lot of soil compaction in our heavy clay. The skid steer weight is distributed much better with the tracks.
I see that you didn't use a cultipacker after seeding with your drill does it affect seed from coming up or not?
The seed will grow without rolling or packing it just won’t be as smooth which is OK since this is pasture not hayfield. We use a field roller on all of our small grain fields because we want them smooth as possible for the hay crop to follow.
Is there rocks underground as well, or just on the grounds like in the video here
Everywhere on this side of the farm. Even in the fields that were cleared they come up with the frost every year. This pasture was never cleared.
Have you ever thought about using a 3 point rock crusher attachment to work your fields?
The skid steer has proven to be the best affordable tool. A large excavator would be faster but pricey.
Using a mini excavator with a thumb to sort through the rocky field, making rows of rocks to be loaded on to a truck for transport away would be more efficient than the tracked skid steer running back and forth with a few rocks at a time. Replacing the tracks and bottom is expensive .
Yeah but we need the skidsteer for many other jobs on the farm. No other uses for a mini Excavator.
@@RollinghillsfarmsmnYes, sometimes have to run what you brung. I luckily have a 3t digger with a grapple attachment and it is great for rocks. Lever them out, toss them around, rotate them into a pile, push, shove, all the options-can move even massive boulders with care. But like you say, an excavator is a luxury if you have no other use for it. Thanks for the vid.
👍👍
I think that the ideal setup would be about a 10 ton excavator pulling a dump trailer.
You are so correct😅