and are you gonna take a ride with me so we can no no so you can do what well i don't know
okay yeah you drove the baler there's no big deal you just go you just go down that follow that line
and slow down when you turn you're you're old old hand at this well thank you uncle Chris
i'm officially rolling by myself this is super exciting i cannot believe it
and i can't believe uncle chris trusted me on the first after just one lap of lessons
hello welcome to Kate's Ag right now is my first pass in the roller by myself uncle chris only gave
me one lesson it's insane but i'm very excited and i think i'll be able to do it because i did drive
a tractor basically the same as this for bailing i feel pretty comfortable with it so that's good
when i roll i'm doing half of the pass i already rolled and then when i come back i'll do half of
this pass so i make sure to double roll everything because our ruler isn't really heavy enough to
fully push the rocks in the ground like the rollers that fill up with water so we like
to go over them two times as my uncle chris said it's super fun for me to be able to roll now the
tractor does not have gps guidance like the drill so i do have to hand drive it which i don't know
that i'm driving in the straightest of lines but i'm trying my best i'm only rolling at about 10
miles an hour because when you roll at a slower speed it's easier on all of the equipment and also
i don't want to catch darcy who's in the drill because you roll at all the fields after the drill
has gone by to push the rocks down so that when you go to harvest them especially pulse crops we
roll all of our pulse crop fields because when you go to harvest them they don't grow very tall and
you have to basically put your cutter bar of your combine right on the ground and rocks can wreck a
lot of the equipment and when you roll the fields the rocks get pushed into the ground so this
field is being seeded to chickpeas some people also roll their barley fields we usually only roll
our pulse crop fields so now i'm rolling to the end here where darcy's seeded slow down and turn
although you are able to hit the hitch on the tire just like in seeding so i have to be very careful
with that um i do feel pretty comfortable with the turns because i have done quite a bit of this in
the drill and that's really the only bad thing you can do in this i would say and i'll probably go
up to about eight to ten miles an hour darcy's right over here so it's pretty cool to be in the
same field as darcy again i always love that sometimes it's sort of challenging to tell
where you've last rolled but i think i have it figured out i love driving this type of tractor
i would say this is one of my very favorites you control the speed with this little knob right here
by moving your thumb forward or backward and you can have your rabbit gear which is your fast one
or your slower one which is your snail speed actually on most of the tractors it's turtle speed
but on this one it's really interesting because it has snail rather than turtle and i learned
all of this bailing so definitely go and check out my baling videos this tractor can go like
0.2 miles an hour which is insanely crazy to me so you really never even have to stop it
it also has a clutch but you you don't need to use it although my family recommends that i do so that
i'm used to using the clutch for our equipment that does require it i think this has already
been rolled so i'm going to come out a little bit here because you also have to take into account
rolling the field double costs extra in fuel so you don't want to be rolling at triple you want to
just make sure you're doing a good job because we do not have the proper headers to cut a field like
this we usually hire custom cutters because a lot of different crops require different headers so
chickpeas require something called a flex header which basically lays flat on the ground and molds
to the ground so that you're able to pick up all of your crop whereas wheat and barley just
require traditional straight cutting headers or we also have pickup headers for if we swath our
wheat it's looking like we're going to have a really terrible harvest this year so i'm
being optimistic about it and hoping we get some rain but we did have a drought last year as well
so farmers have to prepare for those bad years by saving on the good years and not purchasing
new equipment or buying tons of land because you have to be able to if you own your land out right
that's ideal but you also if you don't you have to make your payments to your land you have to make
payments to your equipment so we like to try and own our equipment outright
um and our land the last tractor that was pulling the roller had two flat tires it was super old
so i'm very fortunate to be driving this tractor for my first rolling experience it looks like this
part had been rolled before and then it just ended so i'm not sure what happened there oh maybe that
was when we turned around with the roller i'm lining the left side of my loader up with the
line that i've rolled because that's about half my roller so that i'm able to double roll the fields
actually my line's over here so i'll have to turn around here pretty soon
so i'm slowing down it's kind of bumpy driving in the field
at eight miles an hour because when you go seating you're really maximum driving five miles an hour
i believe i'm on my line now so now i'm on my second pass of the day of my first day in the
roller actually it looks like darcy's drill is stopped so i'm wondering if he's either out of
fertilizer or seed pretty sure this has been rolled here uncle chris is coming back out
to the field as well driving about nine miles an hour so i've only got a few more passes and
i'll probably be catching up to darcy which will be super sad because i love rolling and i love
driving this tractor it's so luxurious compared to our other tractors and it's just really exciting
i would say my favorite type of field work is either combining or seeding
combining is pretty awesome and it's really incredible to see all the hard work you put
into your crop year round and finally see the fruits of that labor but seeding
is the most crucial elements one could argue because if you don't put a crop in the ground
you won't have a crop to harvest and if you don't put the crop in the ground properly you
also want to have a crop harvest so i really love seeing as well and there's so many more technical
aspects that go into seeding for example the amount of fertilizer you put on with your seed
the placement of that fertilizer different drills can do different things the timing when you start
seeding i find it to be a lot more of a technical area of farming rather than harvesting when your
crops are dry enough you harvest them with the proper equipment and you put them in the bin
whereas if you don't get seeding right then you won't have as good of a crop to harvest and then
also the planting stage during the winter deciding what fields you're going to plant which crops and
just made my turn here i'm going to try and figure out where i roll that for example if you have no
moisture in the top couple inches of your soil but a lot more deeper down then you want to plant
a crop that will have a root system that will go deeper to get the moisture out of the soil
and then if your soil is deficient in something you want to make sure to
plant a crop that could potentially replenish the soil of that deficiency so it's just a fascinating
subject really and that completely has to do with soil science and agronomy and once you
find out the perfect combination of plant soil fertilizer that's when you have a really
fantastic crop and and that's why harvest is so awesome because it's the rewarding part
i'm going about eight let's see 9.2 miles an hour and it not only shows me here
it also shows me on my dashboard as well it doesn't look like i'm driving in a very good
straight line i can tell you that much i don't know how well i would have done in the olden
days where you had to do all your seating by being able to drive in a straight line although i think
you'd probably get pretty good at it you know i kind of get sidetracked and see oh there's a
bunny running in the field let me watch that and then my tractor zigzag so i think it's important
to recognize that fault in yourself and and not do that when you're doing an important
job like seating rolling you can kind of miss some things you don't want to miss anything of course
but it's it's not like seeding the clouds are starting to look like it's raining maybe in
some areas they were really big and fluffy this morning i don't know hopefully we do get some
rain you really need it and this whole panel swivels so if i need to look at the back here
i can drive the tractor with this hand and look outside to make sure my roller is still attached
and doing its job the roller will bend a little bit like this through coolies and different things
and it's really hard to break so i don't have to be as careful with it as some other machinery that
we have on the farm it looks like darcy still stop stopped so they're probably filling now i have to
take the tractor out this way a little bit because i've already rolled this bit and that's why my
line of direction looks like this sometimes you just want to straighten it out and try and drive
in a straight line so you just kind of watch the end of the field and it's just like learning how
to drive a car your instructor will tell you to look far down the road so that you're not doing
all these little adjustments and you can see kind of your ending point and that's the same thing
that you do in the tractor although i learned how to drive a tractor before
i learned how to drive a car so that's kind of an interesting order of events i really enjoy
being out in the field because it just makes me happy to see the beautiful sky
and also to think that i'm doing tractor work in a field that my great grandfather
homesteaded and once seated with forces harvested in traditional methods me now being the fourth
generation it's truly incredible to have that level of history with the ground that you're
working and that your family's been doing it for over a hundred years our farm was homesteaded in
1912. so 2012 would have been our 100 year mark thank you so much for watching make sure to like
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which i have right here they're 100 made in the USA and this is a blue wheat design
of a photo of wheat taken at our farm during harvest time thank you again for watching bye