Ask Steve Dave Farm And Cow And Ranch And Tractor And Truck Related Questions

[Sandstone Outcropping]

This is the most heartwarming thread on gE. Great stuff everyone.

[ben ji]

https://www.chicagotribune.com/2025/06/01/illinois-farming-ownership-climate-change/

This article is kind of wild but your standard "BIG BUSINESS IS TAKING OVER FARMING" (duh, its been get big or get out for years) with some valid points scattered in...but then we get to this part.

“Many people only own farmland because they’re related to settlers in Illinois. It’s like we’ve created our own form of land gentry,” Mary Jane Oviatt said. The 28-year-old aspiring farmer was wearing hiking boots and jeans while sitting in an indie coffee shop in Chicago’s Humboldt Park neighborhood on an April afternoon.

Mary Jane Oviatt, 28, who lives in Chicago's Humboldt Park neighborhood, is an aspiring farmer who would eventually like to buy 50 to 100 acres where she could grow fruit, vegetables, and nuts. "Unless I win the lottery or inherit a lot of money, I can't afford to buy my own farmland," Oviatt said.

No one in Oviatt’s immediate family farmed, and she arrived at the U. of I. for her undergraduate degree with plans to become an environmental lawyer.

Frequent road trips from her home in Wheaton, a town 30 miles west of Chicago, to college in central Illinois inspired her to explore agriculture.

“It seemed desolate,” she said, recalling field after field of corn stubble and dirt from fall to spring. “I had an instinct to save it, to make it green.”

She immersed herself in farming through a series of internships with small diversified farms. And since graduating, she has worked as an educator at the Savanna Institute, a Champaign-based nonprofit that promotes agroforestry, a land management technique that integrates trees with crops.

Her days are filled with Zoom meetings taken from her Chicago apartment and occasional visits to farms downstate. Eventually, she’d like to buy 50 to 100 acres where she can grow fruits, vegetables and nuts — “things people actually eat” — but every day that dream feels more out of reach.

“Unless I win the lottery or inherit a lot of money, I can’t afford to buy my own farmland,” Oviatt said.

[ben ji]

"I'd have to win the lottery to buy farmland"...No crap Mary Jane Oviatt.

I'm sure if you developed a business plan and went to a bank with a plan to show how you could possibly pay them back with your super in depth plan about how you would just grow fruits and nuts and veggies/green stuff with no experience on some of the most expensive farmland in the country they would totes give you the 1.5 million to buy 100 acres of land in central Illinois.

Maybe throw in all the internships/zoom calls/non profits you worked at, that will sway them.

[ben ji]

Hey bank guys, it's Ben ji. I grew up always eating out but worked in kitchens through college learning the basics of cooking and have a business degree. I've worked at a non profit serving homeless people meals (well basically I'm on zoom calls coordinating it) the last 5 years and would like 1.5 million to buy a spot for my restaurant and another 1 million for equipment etc.

Can we make this happen? What?!?! The system is rigged against the small guys!

[ben ji]

Sorry guys, I'm just sad and lashing out at that Chicago hipster because my dad says Sheila is gone....No feathers to indicate she was eaten, she just packed up and flew off after one lovely day at the cat ranch.

[KST8FAN]

Theae articles are always frustrating.    Not going to crap on MJs dream, but maybe start with 5-10 acres.  You can grow a lot of table food ... pick up trucks full of vegetables while you wait on the fruit and nut trees to produce.

I learned I am part of the land gentry.


Tom

Sent from my SM-S916U using Tapatalk

[KST8FAN]

Unearthed this thing in the old barn yard.  Any ideas on what this is?  I tried to buff the name on it, but can't make it out.


Tom

Sent from my SM-S916U using Tapatalk

[KST8FAN]

sw ks ranch wildflowers


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

These are lovely, BTW.


Tom

Sent from my SM-S916U using Tapatalk

[Spracne]

This looks like it may be a broken off tiller tine arm, a shank, or part of a clevis assembly from a larger piece of tillage equipment (like a cultivator or chisel plow) that was either broken or shorn off and then fashioned into a hoe-hammer hybrid, or a maul head.

[ben ji]

Unearthed this thing in the old barn yard.  Any ideas on what this is?  I tried to buff the name on it, but can't make it out.


Tom

Sent from my SM-S916U using Tapatalk

One thing I can guarantee you is that MJ's "hiking boots" she wore at the indie coffee shop look nothing like Tom's.

[ben ji]

maybe its some sort of hammer head/blacksmith tool? Put a wood piece in the middle hole and it seems like you could crunch some metal with it.

[meow meow]

i liked the part where she was concerned about the desolate dirt from fall to spring, and she is going to make Illinois green again.

[Stupid Fitz]

Anyone know how I can get in touch with MJ?

[KST8FAN]

This looks like it may be a broken off tiller tine arm, a shank, or part of a clevis assembly from a larger piece of tillage equipment (like a cultivator or chisel plow) that was either broken or shorn off and then fashioned into a hoe-hammer hybrid, or a maul head.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tappet

This is the path I am going down.  Doesn't appear to be broken off, but that one end definitely not square.


Tom

Sent from my SM-S916U using Tapatalk

[Fyodor]

This looks like it may be a broken off tiller tine arm, a shank, or part of a clevis assembly from a larger piece of tillage equipment (like a cultivator or chisel plow) that was either broken or shorn off and then fashioned into a hoe-hammer hybrid, or a maul head.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tappet

This is the path I am going down.  Doesn't appear to be broken off, but that one end definitely not square.


Tom

Sent from my SM-S916U using Tapatalk

I am not sure the geometry would work for a tappet, plus I don't see any way to fix it to a rotating shaft.  Unless there it was press fit there should be a keyway or something similar...
I am leaning toward an old timey counterweight of some kind. 

[pissclams]

i think it could be a fossil from a dinosaur.  to my untrained eye, it appears to be a dinosaur hand. 

as far as i know, there were many dinosaurs that lived throughout the great plains and i think whatever piece of history that Tom has uncovered proves that point.

[KST8FAN]

i think it could be a fossil from a dinosaur.  to my untrained eye, it appears to be a dinosaur hand. 

as far as i know, there were many dinosaurs that lived throughout the great plains and i think whatever piece of history that Tom has uncovered proves that point.

Did have a couple fossil hunters from KU inquire about our flint hills pastures a couple decades ago.  That was under water in prehistoric times, and they were searching for some salamander type creature that inhabited the shoreline.   Took them out a couple times to excavate a couple small areas. #1 got out of school to go along.

I was hoping we would uncover something big.  I was planning on bending KU over for millions to house the T(om) Rex.


Tom

Sent from my SM-S916U using Tapatalk

[ben ji]

Clearly it's a stegosaurus back spine.

[WillieWatanabe]

i see a NKO. Maybe a piece off a Ferguson NKO Cultivator?

[Spracne]

i see a NKO. Maybe a piece off a Ferguson NKO Cultivator?

I was thinking it said JOHN--

[KST8FAN]

Look at this auction steal last weekend 4 planter bins for $60.

Intend to make them into flower planters.

https://pin.it/7fJjW337C


Tom

Sent from my SM-S916U using Tapatalk

[steve dave]

I would simply not have any idea if that was a good deal or not


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[steve dave]

But I trust you on it


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[DaBigTrain]

If Tom says it’s a good deal I have to believe him because I don’t think he would lie about something like that

[steve dave]

If Tom says it’s a good deal I have to believe him because I don’t think he would lie about something like that

He fuckin’ would


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk