One 245 horsepower Puck Agitation Boat does the work of four tractors and four agitators, says a custom slurry applicator. It also does a better job cleaning out the lagoon. Ian Branson, who owns Branson’s TBHS in Brandon, said he used four tractors powering four agitators for the first 10 years that he was in […] Read more
Ron Lyseng
Stories by Ron Lyseng
Can you picture a farm without a truck?
Any farmer buying a truck between the first and second world wars probably bought new simply because used trucks weren’t available. Most of these pre-war trucks stayed on their original farm until they could no longer pull themselves down a hill. Thousands of them are rusting away in the bush on the same farm where […] Read more
Steel ribs improve friction, eliminate draper drive slippage
Tungsten ribbed rollers eliminate swather slippage and double the belt life
Swathing canola is a hassle when draper drive rollers slip because they’re wet or become coated with canola oil. MacDon thinks it has a solution. Conventional swather drives use a steel roller with a hard rubber layer vulcanized to the outer surface. They depend on friction to drive the belt. The problem with this system […] Read more
Dull discs wallop dirt, improve soil
BRANDON — Farmers are interested in tillage equipment again as they look to attack crop residue and work the soil. “There’s really not much choice for a lot of us,” says Aaron Yeager, Canadian importer of the Kelly Diamond Disc Chain Harrows from Australia. He has sold 125 units to prairie farmers in three years. […] Read more
Growers boost wheat yields, protein content
Intensive management | Farmers must exercise caution to avoid excess tillering
What if you grew 100 bushel wheat with 15 percent protein last year and the elevators gobbled it up, leaving you with empty bins before February? “Well, we get to do a lot of snowmobiling,” said Nick Scharf, who grew 6,000 acres of soft spring wheat with brother Matthew on their farm west of Saskatoon […] Read more
The reality of 100 bushel per acre wheat
Wheat agronomist Phil Needham admits his four primary cornerstones for growing 100 bushel spring wheat in central Saskatchewan seem basic, but they work. Needham makes as many as 80 presentations a year outlining his four principles of growing big wheat crops, usually with a handful of those workshops on the Canadian Prairies, where he has […] Read more
Wheat row spacing requires narrow focus: grower
New way of working | Agronomist Phil Needham says Western Canadian farmers should rethink wide row spacing
Western Canadian farmers and the folks who build their seeding equipment seem to have a love affair with wide row spacing, but is it a healthy relationship? Phil Needham says not. Needham feels the love-in is based more on emotion than rational thought. He said it might not be healthy at all, especially for the […] Read moreAir ambulance serves farmers
STARS active on Prairies | Half the helicopter service’s missions are farm accidents
BRANDON — Half of the STARS helicopter ambulance missions on the Prairies are farm accidents. The other half are highway or industrial accidents, many of which involve farm families, says Troy Pauls, a flight paramedic with Manitoba STARS. “STARS doesn’t serve urban centres. We’re based in Winnipeg, but we operate exclusively in rural areas, so […] Read moreSTARS success story
Young boys love playing around flowing water in the spring. Despite all the warnings, they never quite comprehend the danger. That describes eight-year-old Sammuel Gross in April 2009 during the Manitoba flood. Sammuel was part of a group of children playing near a fast flowing creek at his home on the Westroc Colony north of […] Read more
Device calls 911 if tractor tips
Canada had more than 20 tractor rollover deaths per year from 1990 to 2008. The total rollover death count in that period was 392, which was nearly a quarter of all farm fatalities. Tractor rollovers remain the leading cause of death on Canadian farms and the trend continues, as it does in the United States, […] Read more
