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Monday, March 4, 2013

Tiling...

Tiling is done to help improve the drainage system in fields.  When water stands on crops for extended periods of time it can damage and even kill the plants which leads to low yields and higher expenses if the crop has to be replanted.  Sometimes field tile becomes broken or is even non existent which leads to poor drainage.

The guys have been busy installing tile this winter.  It's just one of the many things we do on the farm to preserve the land.

One of the first things they have to do is dig and see if they can find the existing tile or a spot to hook the new tile into.
                       
Next they "string" (for lack of a better word) the tile down the field.  The tile is the black tube that is on the red trailer in the photo below...
With the GPS on the tractor, they drive where they want to install the tile to survey it.  Then the tractor comes back to the starting point and the software program will tell them if it will work.

Next is to put the tile in the tile plow, as seen below.... 
As the tractor drives down the field, the plow raises the soil and automatically lays the tile in the ground... 
Here's a closer look... 


  The final step is to push the dirt back over the hole...

There is also a lot of work being done inside the tractor that runs the tile plow.  There is a computer in there with GPS.  Every run of tile that is installed is saved on a flash drive.  I then download the data from the flash drive to our home computer.  On the software it looks like blue lines, but then I upload the data to Google Earth and you can see exactly where the tile was installed.  I didn't include a Google Earth map for security purposes, but I tried to provide a map of the tile data and I couldn't get it to work.  Hopefully, I described it well enough for you to understand.


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5 comments:

  1. busy farm life....thanks for sharing....it's fun learning how you get things done...

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  2. Oh I love modern day farming. We do not have tiled drained fields but are surrounded by them. I love to watch them lay the tile. Great post. B

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  3. Hi, I'm a new follower of your blog. Wow, I wish i could "borrow" your family's tile laying machinery and crew! With just 8 acres and 6 Angus cows, it's not economically feasible for me to spend much on tiling, but I could sure use it!
    Follow me at tennesseecountryliving.blogspot.com
    Ray

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  4. Drain tiling is important to keep the water irrigation running smoothly. You have to do it, so the entire field remains efficient and you can expect awesome crop yields. From where I'm standing, the guys seemed to be knowledgeable and skilled in tiling. They must have been doing it for a long time already, and it shows how great they were. How is your land, by the way? I hope that everything is good.

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