Rocking it

Kris is looking at using a rock picker to clean up the fields. Rocks are a real problem, especially when you're doing hay. Rocks can bend the knives on a discbine, and they can also shoot into tractor cab windows. (It happens!) When you chop hay with the chopper, the rocks can wreck the equipment.

We're going to pile them up for eventual landscaping use. My mom has built rock walls at my house and her house. The fields will be nicer and I'm sure our yards will be too!

There are rock piles around every field. For as long as people have been farming, they've been getting rid of rocks in their fields. They would pile them in the closest border area - because why carry them farther than you have to? They're heavy!

When I was younger, I'd sometimes go with my mom to get rocks. We'd drive the truck out to the woods and take rocks out of the massive piles. We'd marvel at the amount of them. I'd also marvel at what a great weight training program it was. My mom could lift rocks twice the size that I could! She probably still can ... but this rock picker will have us both beat.

My mom's latest rock wall