Fire Breaks

After spreading a couple of paddocks with snail bait yesterday I decided that it may be easier to burn off a few of the other paddocks that still have quite a bit of grass on them to get rid of the snails. Burning off will also destroy quite a lot of the weed seeds that may be present in the paddocks. But before any burning can be done I need to make fire breaks around the paddocks so the fire can't (or shouldn't) escape. The implement used for this task is the scarifier. Ours is a really old one, and I haven't used it for about 5 years (we don't do very much burning off).

This is the scarifier hard at it behind the John Deere 4440. I had already raked the excess grass away using the old hay rake, and in the bottom right of the picture the row of straw can just be seen. The John Deere 4440 and scarifier.

Before burning off I also need to obtain a permit from the council (during the fire ban season). That was the next job for the day. Now I just have to notify the council by phone on the day I want to actually do the burning. That day will be weather dependant. Warm weather with light winds is ideal.

In the afternoon I went back to a job I had started working on last week. That was changing the row spacing on the air seeder bar from 9inch spacings out to 12inch. That basically means the gaps between the seeding rows will be 3 inches wider, and the overall gaps between the tynes will be quite a bit wider allowing for greater trash flow. Trash flow is the amount of straw that needs to "flow" through the bar while seeding. There's quite a bit of straw on the ground this year, after quite a good harvest last year, so that is my reason for making the change.

The picture of the bar above is the before shot, as it was with 9 inch spacings. I've pretty much changed over all that side of the bar to 12 inch now. I've been taking off any of the tynes that are too worn and move too much from side to side while I've been going.