Tater digger/rock picker

[OldMcDonald]

muddstopper, since this is your thread, I feel I can add a bit more about wine. Wine is only about two and a half times the strength of beer. I used to make Blackberry wine when I was young. I had quite a few bottles when I went to Australia. When I came back my FIL told me most of them had begun leaking at the cork so he drank them. There was only one left and at 18yo it was truly magnificent. Best wine I ever made. Try to keep some for a few years. I have a proper cellar here, with the stone trough for foot pressing the grapes, vines too, but the wine I make is barely drinkable - and so is everybody else's home made that I have tried. Commercially made stuff starts at about the equivalent of $US1-30 a bottle, and similar price for 5litre casks. I drink a lot of cask stuff. I very rarely pay more than about $US3-20 for a bottle. Port is $6-50 upwards. I usually buy beer in half litre cans (I think that is fairly close to a US pint) and it costs about $US1-20.

I like the "cow wetting on rocks". It will not rain here again until October. Is pulling power not more of an issue than traction? Are you getting wheel slip now?

 

[Millwood]

OK, I'm a novice at spuds. This is my first crop on this ground. The digger I built is designed similar to the Spedo CPP-T single row unit, with some major changes so as not to tromp on Spedo's patent and get my hiney sued off. The one thing that makes it work easily is that the digger scoop stays in contact with the raised rows and moves in a 3/8 inch scooping motion with each rotation of the crank arm, lifting the soil and potatoes ahead of it, then shuffling everything onto the basket, with the dirt falling thru the separator rods and the spuds out the back and onto the ground surface. True, my digger is pulled by my tractor, but the effort is almost non-existent, with the drop in RPM about 150 which I think is more driveline need than forward effort.

Guess what I'm getting at is I don't think it matters whether it's a sawing motion or lifting motion that reduces the need for traction, it's just continuous motion against the soil, reducing the forward brute force requirement.

I have a quick, off the thread question for either of you. Since both of you are obviously experienced potato growers, I'd like to know if I did OK on my first effort? I'm averaging about 180 pounds of Burbank Russets out of each 125 foot row, or 1.44 pounds per foot. Bad, average. good?

 

[hawkeye08]

I'm not sure how to change what you have, but if you restrict the back and forward motion on the side opposite the driven part, it would in effect push side to side (if the pivot points allowed it).. perhaps it would end up being a twisting type motion, but at least not straight forward and back...

 

[muddstopper]

Millwood, I only raise enough taters to eat on, While I can remember planting spuds since I was a little fellow, I wouldnt classify myself as an experience tater grower, at least not commercialy. As for your adverage, I would consider it excellent when compared to my Kennebac's that we grow. Regional differences make a huge difference as to what type of taters to grow, while I have grew a few russets, they generaly dont do as good as kennebacs in my area.

OldMc, I kind of broke myself on drinking wine on my 21st birthday, For years i wouldnt touch the stuff. Most commercial wines, I still wont drink. For one thing, I cant stand the sulfates commercial wine makers just about have to use to prevent spoilage. we never use any sufites in our homemade wines. I prefer to simmer at 160F to kill off the bad stuff. Any hotter than that and you can set the pectin and the wine simply wont clear up. All of our wine sit for about a year before they are served. 2 years for Mead. I keep it in a small fridge in the basement. Every now and then we will have a bottle pop the top if left to sit in a wine rack. Nothing like getting up in the morning and trying to figure out where all that sticky stuff came from thats all over the floor. LOL. Not using any sulfites or Candam to stop fermentation has its risk, but I think it pays rewards when it comes to flavor. We mostly make a mucadine wine with wild muscadine grapes, but will make strawberry, apple, pear, cherry, blackberry when in season, and this year we are trying some watermellon wine. We make a lot of mead also when we can get the honey cheap enough. Funny thing is my wife and I dont drink all that much of anything, but our friends like to see us coming with bottle in hand.

 

[OldMcDonald]

Millwood, It depends on so many variables it is not possible for me to give you an answer - butyou can work it out for yourself. I have no idea about "normal" USA yields for the variety you grew. In fact I know nothing about US varieties at all other than I can buy Kennebec for planting, but I have never tried them. I am sure that some US Universities will have the information. I use them a lot when I want to know something agricultural about which I have little knowledge. Row length and yield are just the starting point. How far apart are your rows? Were the potatoes crowded by something else? Are they an early variety or a maincrop? Calculate an acre weight based on the info you have.

For guidance, UK average yields for a maincrop potato are now in the region of 18tons/acre (Imperial) which means a bit more for a US ton. Yields in other countries vary, but usually less. I would guess that anything over 12 tons would be considered reasonable for a maincrop. For an early variety - beginning to lift after about 10 weeks from planting, I would be very happy with 5 tons/acre. They are worth a lot more per pound, and it gets your customers for the year if you are growing commercially.

 

[OldMcDonald]

muddstopper, I enjoyed reading that paragraph. I am always interested in anything to do with wine.

I would never heat wine unless I was in Madeira. It kills the wine as well as any bacteria. If everything is clean then you should not need to use any sterilsers either. One year is a very young wine. Give them time, particularly something with a lot of tannin like blackberries. I suggest a minimum of five years, the other fruits do not need so much time, although something with high acidity like rhubarb, needs even longer for the acid to mellow. They used to reckon that rhubarb made in the birth year should be just about at its peak for the 21st Birthday. I hope your fridge is switched off and just used as a "steady temperature" storage. Do you use an air lock device on your fermenting vessels? Even after casking I have one in the top of the cask so that the wine can fully ferment out before bottling. In fact do you need to bottle? When making fruit and vegetable wines before I moved to Australia in 1979 I only made one gallon lots (the glass one gallon jars being known as demi-johns, but I do not know why) and just kept the wine in these, under an air lock, until they were ready to drink. I definitely do not fancy watermelon wine. Apples I think are best made into cider, but the others go extremely well with various spirits to make exceptionally tasty liquers. Try fresh ginger roots in a sweet white wine or cheap brandy too. Keep checking it every five minutes - seriously. Some gingers only need about 20 to 25 mins to put enough oomph into the wine or spirit. Others take a day.

 

[muddstopper]

Funny you mentioned the one gallon glass jugs. That is the size we mostly use, along with half gallon jugs. We do use an airlock. I dont like the big carboys, (5gal). They are simply to heavy to move around. Most of our wine sits under the kitchen sink while fermenting. I might have 10gal under the sink at any given time. The only wine stored in the fridge is wine that has been bottled. Maybe 6 0r 8 bottles at any given time. I dont like to use any clarifiers to help the wine clear, nor do we use any filters. We rack until clear and then bottle. With mead, this could take a year, sometimes more, before clearing. Fruit wines might take up to a year. I do use a commercial yeast, it seems to give a more consistant flavor than relying on the wild yeast. Everybody tells me I do wine making weird, but I make it to suit me so who cares. I dont see any of the nay sayers turning down a free bottle. My real specialty is applepie shine. even no drinkers can stop drinking it. Sneaks up on you to. LOL

 

[zing]

At first I thought your tiller would be too small/light to handle the vibrating action, but after watching a couple videos of the smaller ones in action it looks like it should do it. You are right about needing the bigger tires though. This video shows one close to your size (maybe a bit bigger, but still close and definitely shows that you don't need to have a CUT to run it) that works with steel paddle tires giving it lots of traction.
05092010025 - YouTube

Not sure if you want to put in this much work but here is a video that shows how you can make thoe tires yourself. Sorry about the guy spending the whole time with no shirt on. I had no control over that.
Изготовление грунтозацепов - YouTube

 

[muddstopper]

Wonder how much sunburn that fellow got and how many burn spots on his feet. I cant weld like that, I have a adversion to pain and suffering.

I had seen the other video before, but it was after I started building mine. I think instead of building steel paddle tires, I am just going to add dual wheels to mine. I have another set of tires and making and adapter for mounting will probably be a lot easier than making paddle wheels. One other thing I think I might or mightnot of done wrong is in the width of my digger. I sort of figured that since the tiller part of the original design was 22in wide, then the digger would work at that width. It might be a little wide for my light setup. Since i was more concerned with lifting rocks than I was potato's, when I started this project I wanted as wide as possible. For tater digging, you are just trying to get under the tater rows. My biggest problem now is finding time to finish and test. Its either raining or I'm working. I have changed pulley ratios and sped up the digging action by double. works pretty wicked in the shop, I just need to find dirt and not mud to put it in.

 

[muddstopper]

Got back to the digger build this wk. I had some old Steiner tractor tires laying around not being used, Just had to figure out how to mount them. The axle shaft out of the troybuilt tiller is 1in, the Stiener uses 4lug hubs. these hubs just happen to have the same bolt pattern as a couple of old hubs I had on the shelf. I took a piece of 1 7/8 shaft material, bored the center to 1 india to fit over the troybuilt axle shafts. I then turned the outside dia down to fit inside the 4lug hubs. A little welding, trueup the flange face on the lathe, and I now have big tires on the troybuilt.

Having a little slippage problem with the belt tensioner, I think I made the tensioner pulley mount a little to flimsy, it twists and lets the belt fly off. Still got a little tweaking to do, but my roundtoit seems to wander toward other projects