FARGO, N.D. – Crop kill from summer flooding can suddenly occur. On any given afternoon, a sudden, severe storm can dump 100 millimetres of rain on a crop that held promise just a few hours earlier.
Steve Raguse is all too familiar with the problem. The Wheaton, Minnesota, farmer has seen his share of good-looking fields turned into expansive blue lakes with nothing left but green tips sticking out above the water’s surface.
Surface drains are typically shallow with gradual sides, to allow machinery to travel without undue jostling. But that gentle drain configuration does not prompt fast water movement
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Raguse realized his surface drain systems worked better if they got a little mechanical help after big downpours. He wanted to get into the fields and give gravity a little kick with tire track trenches.
But experience also told him that driving waterlogged fields with a tractor to make temporary drain paths is not the smartest option.
When tractors get stuck, they create a new set of problems for the producer. And even if the equipment doesn’t get stuck, tractors can make a mess by causing ridges that harden into solid curbs and deep ruts.
On top of it all, the field often requires extensive tillage to work it back into shape for next year’s crop.
Potential damage to sprayers and combines from the rutted field must also be factored into any decision on whether it’s better to drive into flooded crop or leave it alone.
Raguse figured the situation required a lightweight, maneuvreable machine to run the ditches. His 4×4 all-terrain vehicle seemed a candidate, but the tires are designed for flotation in mud. Raguse needed the opposite. He needed penetration into the mud to form trenches.
He thought the ATV would work if he replaced the wide flotation tires with tall, skinny tires, similar to the narrow tires on high clearance sprayers. However, no such tires were available for ATVs. If he wanted them, he’d have to make them himself.
After hours in the shop, Raguse emerged with his first field trenching innovation. The tall, skinny solid-rubber tires gave him what he wanted: a V-shaped trench in the mud to give standing water a deep channel to follow.
His ATV Trench Wheels are one inch wide at the circumference and flare to a three inch width at the hub.
After building a number of prototypes, Raguse found a manufacturer to build his Trench Wheels. He began selling them at $995 US for a set of four with adapters to fit any ATV. In the past three years, he has sold hundreds of sets to farmers, who now use their ATVs for temporary field trenching.
“Regardless of the weather, we recommend that a farmer go in immediately after seeding and drive down all the field drains to give them some deep channels,” said Raguse.
“Even if it’s a dry spring, you never know if or when that big storm is coming. If you run your temporary drains right after seeding, then you’re ready for the rain.
“If the big rain doesn’t come that summer, so what? You can still do your spraying right over the trenches. You don’t even notice them. And it doesn’t cost you a lot of money to run an ATV up and down the drains.”
Raguse said many field drains lose their effectiveness over time because operators need to farm through them. If they aren’t maintained, they lose the ability to quickly move water. Other field drains are deliberately designed to be shallow to accommodate big machinery. Both scenarios benefit from the deep V wheel trenches running the length of the ditches.
He said producers can make deeper trenches by driving the same path two or three times, or by driving the pathway with one side of the ATV in the previous path and the other side on solid ground.
“We have a lot of customers who have gotten into the habit of leaving their ATV Trench Wheels installed through most of the summer because they cause almost no crop damage,” said Raguse.
“When the crop is still short, you can get through the field pretty easily for crop inspections, spot spraying or rock picking. Customers tell us the narrow tires don’t harm the plants.”
In a year with standing water that flows with the narrow trenches, these paths are useful in mapping fall drainage plans. The trench paths can also ground truth drainage systems that have been designed by topography maps and executed by GPS and laser control.
Although he designed the wheels with drainage in mind, Raguse said the Trench Wheels can be used for water retention and erosion control. If the trenches are made along the side of a steep hillside or around a knoll, they capture water rather than channel it downhill. This keeps water where needed and prevents soil erosion.
“The ATV Trench Wheels gave credibility to this new idea that a small temporary trench can provide enough drainage capacity to save a crop,” said Raguse. “Before that, we all thought you needed to get in there with a tractor to make big tire-sized trenches.”
Raguse conceded there’s a limit to his invention’s effective use, especially in dry conditions when deep, narrow ditches are necessary as an insurance policy against severe downpours.
The combined weight of ATV and driver are not enough to make deep scratches into dry fields. This required bigger Trench Wheels, tractor weight and tractor power.
Last year, Raguse began building and selling disc style Trench Wheels that mount on a tractor three-point hitch.
Although this is contrary to the idea of keeping tractors out of wet fields, the tractor in this situation is only used to carry the trenching device. The tractor tires do not perform the trenching.
The new Trench Wheels create the original V-shaped type of trench. But with hydraulic down force from the tractor, they press deeper trenches into difficult soil conditions. Also, the three-point hitch trenchers have a cultivator shank stinger up front to break the soil surface.
Depending on the size and capacity, Raguse sells his three-point Trench Wheels for $1,595 to $2,495 US. He has about 50 such units in the field.
Stage three of Raguse’s lineup is the power driven rotary Trench Wheel. Although this stage is the biggest departure from his unique low-budget ATV press type trencher, it also provides farmers with the greatest trenching capacity.
The five foot diameter flywheel digs the trench instead of pressing it. The trench still has a three-inch width and can still be driven over by farm implements, but now the unwanted soil is removed and thrown off to the side. This creates a more permanent indentation.
“The power driven wheel can dig a trench 18 inches deep. A narrow ditch that’s 18 inches deep isn’t typical, of course, but if you need to go through a ridge or something like that with your ditch, you can do it,” Raguse said.
“The momentum you get from a five foot diameter flywheel is tremendous, so you can use the power driven wheel to construct new waterways from scratch if you want. But I think the best application is to improve drainage where the water flow patterns are already known.”
The big wheel is mounted on a three-point hitch and driven by the tractor power take-off at either 540 or 1,000 rpm. Trench depth can be controlled manually, by laser or by computer generated topography maps.
Raguse said the hardened steel teeth are replaceable for about $18 US. They are off-the-shelf teeth used in common digging chain trenchers.
To date, Raguse has about 20 of the big power driven Trench Wheels at work in farmers’ fields. They sell for slightly under $5,000.
For more information, contact Steve Raguse at 320-563-8389 or visit www.trenchwheels.com.
