Equipment

Merle Rabenberg left his home farm in southwest Minnesota in 1982, the same day he began dreaming of the day he would return.

With spring just a few weeks away, preparing your machines for work is one of the most important steps you can take today to ensure your success. This is prime time to check your equipment and make any necessary repairs to avoid downtime during your busy season.

We’ve come a long way from cutting and binding sheaves of hay. Yet very few folks can explain how a bale knotter works. And I won’t try. As a farm equipment mechanic, what I will try to do is tell you how to repair one.

After a long season of making hay, preparing your hay and forage equipment for winter storage can seem to be a tedious and even needless chore. After all, what could possibly happen to a round baler or trailed mower as it hibernates in your machine shed?

The current farm financial climate in Kansas has a lot of the same characteristics of the 1980s farm crisis. Then, as now, net farm income leading up to the farm crisis was near record levels but dropped very quickly.

Q. What makes a self-propelled windrower productive?

A. For commercial haymakers, productivity begins when a crop is mown, and the self-propelled windrower has always been at the forefront.