My wife heard a Prowler, with pic

Well, actually the whole neighborhood heard it. They brought this in last week to spread about forty tons of wood ash for me, and another bunch for some of my neighbors. Sure went through it in a hurry, with very little damage to the fields, even though we have had enough rain in the last month to float the Ark.

You guys that hang around the big modern machinery all the time will probably think "ho hum" but I was pretty impressed. This is the second year I have used this service, last year they spread lime for me. The outfit I used to deal with had a heavily modified Mac truck for a floater, but it was only two wheel drive, and they got in trouble with it a couple of times. Way back when I was a kid we used to go through the "pull the lime truck out of the mud" routine, at least once a year. If this rig ever got really stuck, I guess you would just have to dig a deeper hole and bury it.

I'm in my second year using wood ash. Total for 2 years is 620 tons. Around here with lime spread running $36-$38 per ton now the ash is very attractive. Ash and trucking is free here.

I bought a used manure spreader (side delivery Martin) and it's worked good. The screw and paddles takes care of any lump/chunks. Had some cutover timber ground and applied 6.5 tons per acre. On pasture and hay fields I shoot for 4 tons per acre. Have done soil test and it's brought the PH from 5.6 up to 6.7. The grass turns green within hours after a good rain behind spreading. There's a little nitrogen in the ash too.

I live about 16 miles from a wood burning power plant. The guy doing the trucking comes by here evey day so all I have to do is pick up the phone and ask for it. He has a trucking fleet and uses walking live bottom trailers. This power plant turns out 100 tons of ash per day.

The ash comes from a wood-chip fired electic generating plant in Burlington Vt. When they are running at full capacity they produce a trailer load a day, about twenty tons. It is a good lime substitute, requires about two and half tons to equal a ton of lime, but also has 4.4% potash, and some magnesium. This will be the first year I have used it straight. Before this, it was available as a lime-ash mix, less potash, but more calcium, and a more uniform consistancy. The straight ash has a few big lumps in it, which will plug the spreader and do damage. If you see them when you are loading, you can crush them with the loader before they get into the spreader.