Market Farming

[Mark Weinheimer <mrw601 AT gmail.com>]

We have a Landpride RTA 3576, 76" chain drive forward driven tiller.  Our heavy silt loam is full of stone from gravel to boulder size.  The tiller bounces over bigger stone pretty well.  We break 6 to 10 tines per year.  We are using the tiller less often.  We rip with a Tebben Deep-Til, then disk and use an light S-tine harrow.  If it is still soddy, especially on the edges of the field, we use the tiller. We also use the tiller to rework beds for double cropping.   We make beds with a Rain-Flo 2600 Bedformer.  We use the original moldboards for plastic and we bought a second set for making wider beds where we don't use plastic.  We did twist up one moldboard on a 3 foot boulder, but we were able to heat the mounts up and bend them back into position.  We drilled and pinned the sleeves and haven't had further problems in 3 seasons, despite encountering some huge rocks.  We also twisted up one of the center fillers.  We just cut it off the mounting plate and rewelded it.  The beds get offset when we encounter big stones.  As the stones do the steering, our beds are often a bit squirrely, but they let us produce on our wet soil.  The Rain-Flo is a rugged machine, I recommend it highly.  Maybe someday I'll farm stone free, well drained soil.


Mark Weinheimer
Farm Manager
Regional Food Bank of NENY 
965 Albany-Shaker Road 
Latham, NY  12110 
(518) 339-5726
(518) 786-3691 
(518) 786-3004 Fax 
www.regionalfoodbank.net