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Driftless SW Wisconsin | Yes, I will be at Waseca on Thursday, along a lot of other folks by the looks of the crowd at Lamberton today. We will be running the 40 ft bar, I will have a 6 row on display.
Thanks to all that stopped by to say hello at Lamberton today. It was nice to see so many Dawn strip till users there.
And thank you to the U of MN folks that put the demo on. The reason it was sort of fast-paced, Marc, is that they had a schedule to meet - each mfg had 10 minutes. 10 manufacturers at 10 minutes each plus a few minutes for Brad's introduction at each machine pretty much used up the 2 hours (9-11AM and 1-3PM) allotted for the field. They used to 2 hours in between 11-1 for the U of MN research presentations, farmer/user panels and lunch.
I want to say a special thanks to one of our Dawn customers who graciously loaned us his 12 row Vision bar and 135 hp Case 7110 tractor he uses to pull it. This was a real-world demo!
Please be aware also, as the Blu-jet speaker mentioned, he had set the machine across the border in Iowa only to arrive at the demo site and find he needed to essentially change everything on his 4 row demo unit in an hour this morning due to the very different conditions at the MN site.
As I tried to convey at the demo, all of the machines shown had some very real differences. One was not necessarily universally "better" or "worse" than the other, they all have different characteristics, especially depth of operation. It is important to understand the differences and make sure they match your conditions and expectations and available hp. Some machines are fall use only. Can you get it all done in the fall or do you want the capability of running in the spring too.
One of the key characteristics we find in our work is that the number of rows on the strip till machine really should be the same as the number of rows that you plant, even with the best guidance systems.
A major customer interest is strip tilling corn on corn. The results in this wheat stubble may not be too relevant to corn on corn but probably the best that can be done this time of year. My number one suggestion to folks considering strip till is to find a user who is doing what you want to do with the machine you are considering and talk to him before you change your whole farm over. Many of our customers have either watched a neighbor or started with 6 or 8 rows to check out the system. Then most have gone to 12, 16 or 24.
Overall a very well organized and executed day, in my opinion. Thank you to all responsible.
I'll attach a photo of our customer's 12 row and part of the "starting line" for those who were not there. There are more machines to the left beyond the width of my camera lens.
Jim at Dawn
Edited by Jim 7/26/2006 00:37
 (U of MN Lamberton starting line 072506 img2584.jpg)
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 U of MN Lamberton starting line 072506 img2584.jpg (41KB - 274 downloads)
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Lamberton Strip Tillage Days
