Calling Hugh MacKay

I am always interested in how others' run their operations. Even though you've not been operating for a few years you seem to remember/articulate the details quite well.

Thank you in advance,
Glenn F.

These valleys were close to 15 miles apart, with high ground forest land in between. Of course that forest land was part of our water sheds and water run off from forest land had to go through our farmlands via streams and river to sea. The river and streams leading to river were blocked by driftwood and gravel bars keeping water table close to surface. Our place wasn't too bad as river had good flow and fall. We had one main creek flowing to the river from the forest, 3' deep max, with a huge gravel bar at the mouth. There was another gravel bar in river at the down river end of our property. In 1950 my dad hired a guy with a Cat D6 and they pushed all that gravel up on shore. DOT saw the huge piles of gravel and wanted to buy it. Dad sold the gravel. Two years later the gravel bars were back, again dad pushed them out and again DOT bought. This happened about 4 times, and all of a sudden DOT and CNR noticed their bridge abutments on respective bridges across the creek were falling into stream. By 1960 dad had a creek 6' deep and river close to 8' deep, I'm talking field level to water level. Well the highway and railway built new bridges, dad never did sell his last pile of gravel, but he had over 200 acres of some of the best drained flood plain around. We knew it was hungry land, I mean what else could you have with 8' of soil over gravel and a perminant water table about 8' down.

Being in the dairy business, our first line of cropping approach was grow alfalfa, but it wasn't until we added corn to that rotation and getting rid of weeds that alfalfa came into it's own. We aimed for 3 years corn and 4-5 year alfalfa. all our manure went into land going into corn crop. By the late 60s we were harvesting more lbs of dry matter per acre off alfalfa than silage corn. this cropping rotation allowed us to reduce our feed and fertilizer costs to about 14% of gross milk sales.

In the spring of 1972, dad hadn't been around much all winter, but he was there to see the yearling+ replacement heifers go to pasture. He scolded me suggesting I'd never make money feeding grain to growing heifers. Well, it took me and two hired hands most of the morning convincing him the heifers had seen nothing but 21% protein alfalfa, water, salt and minerals all winter. It was a good job the oldest of the heifers knew where they were going. So feirce was the discussion, the heifers could have broke out of control at any time.

Some other things I did was get rid of chloride, wheel weights and add more rubber. I could see as early as the late 60s maximun drawbar pull with tractor weighted to the limit was causing most of our compaction problems. My big power demand was PTO, doesn't take a whole lot of tillage to feed 175 holsteins. Reduce the pounds per square inch by adding rubber.

I've got to run at this time, why don't you send me an e mail.

Our worst fear was ice jambs during the spring run off, especially if receeding flood water froze creating ice layer with late March and April sun shining through the ice, causing alfalfa to start growing. More than one case of dynamite was used on ice jambs. The river would hold the water if the melt was slow enough.

That land will all become nonusuable in the next 25 years. In the late 80s enviormentalists started raising hell about bulldozers and excavators cleaning gravel bars out of the chanel. Government knuckled under and passed a law banning gravel removal. You couldn't even hire a dozer, the government passed a law stating they could seize and sell a piece of heavy equipment caught working in the river. Without gravel removal, the water table will rise and that land will go back to what it was in the 1930s. Hardly dare cross with a team of horses. When I left there, loaded tractor trailers could drive on it. You didn't need to worry about crushing Big O. The gravel down 8' was your drainage. Hundreds of farmers worked hard in the 40s and 50s to make that land what it was, and it will all be lost. Progress they call it, want sport fishing in the river. We even proved to them there was more spaun in the gravel where heavy equipment had worked.