# Almost did a Luke and ended up on the wall of shame



## mlappin (Jun 25, 2009)

Almost got hung in the muck this AM, I blame it on the lack of breakfast.

Tracks on the left were from the other articulated tractor we spray with, the tractor carries the tank so basically just the tractor cut those ruts, but that was four or five days ago so I figured wha the heck. By time I finally hit dry ground I was about out of engine. Diff locks are great but when you have all 8 spinning and barely moving, it can get ugly.










Last year most of this was under water till about August.

For the uninitiated, when working muck and your spinning, don't head to bare ground, usually it's bare cause its too wet for even weeds to grow.

If it is soft don't head to worked ground either as now that its loose, the tires on whatever your pulling will start to push that ahead of them.

In two of our fields if your in the low spot and start spinning, DON'T head to the high spot, its 2-3 foot higher than everything else because for decades a spring has been bringing dirt up, if the low spot is wet then the high spot is about two foot of soup.

Know when to quit, it's pretty easy to yank something out if it just barely got hung, not so easy if the person spun tires and has the frame of everything down in the dirt.

Three point equipment is your friend, in the past we've threatened to built a three point frame so we can carry a little 12 foot disc. I've had that 12 foot disc behind a 4-150 White before and got hung where somebody else did. Had to walk back to the pickup and get a dirt shovel just to get dirt moved so I could get to the hitch pin so I could get unhooked from the disc, lock it up, then yank it out backwards with a 1 1/2" kinetic recovery rope.

Did that last pass and said it was time to chuck it in the f*ck it bucket and go where I could make a little dust.


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## haybaler101 (Nov 30, 2008)

Desperate times, desperate measures. I hate turning around in the middle o the field.


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## Thorim (Jan 19, 2015)

haybaler101 said:


> Desperate times, desperate measures. I hate turning around in the middle o the field.


Some times the better part of valor is discretion or so I've been told lol


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## rjmoses (Apr 4, 2010)

FEL is my best friend. Can't count the number of times I used it get myself unstuck, especially on my little JD 4710 compact with turf tires. I can get that little darlin' stuck on dry, flat ground. (Turf tires have their place--on turf!)

Ralph


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## luke strawwalker (Jul 31, 2014)

LOL Thanks for the vote of confidence!

BIL and nephew just kept egging me on... "just give 'er hell and keep going!" Yeah, right! "It might be a little sticky down there but you shouldn't have much trouble". Yeah right... about the time I have the 4890 wallering down 2 feet deep and the disk wheels sunk in nearly that deep behind it. "A little trouble".

Well, finally got my chops, more or less. Didn't get stuck at all the last 2-3 days I was disking. Came close a time or two, but didn't stick it again. Course I was accused of "pussing out" of some spots where *they* said I could have gone. I was like "there it is show me how it's done". No takers, though. I'm like "put up or shut up". Oh well.

Thing is, with the 4890 Case, it's a big 4WD, BUT, it's NOT an ARTICULATED 4WD... It don't "fold in the middle" to steer-- both the front AND rear axles steer like a regular MFWD front axle does. SO, it has only ONE brake pedal for all four wheels, and NO diff lock. You get one or two big pair of duals spinning and the others are pretty useless. Can't even use the old "punch the brakes on the spinning wheel" trick to transfer power to the tire with traction.

Well, it's all behind us now. Everything's planted, and I'm getting ready to head south to the land of the burning sun and 150% humidity, where the state bird is the friggin' mosquito. At least I'm not the only one-- Chuck managed to stick the 1780 12/23 row bean planter twice with the 2390 2wd and I had to tug him out with the 4890 after I parked the disk and basket for the season, and Mike (nephew) did some wallowing with the 1070 2wd pulling the 6 ton urea cart, though he managed to get himself out after wallowing around awhile. Look over and he's tearing back and forth for ten minutes slipping and sliding forward and reverse trying to get out of a mudhole, and he FINALLY did. Still got a little 2 acre wethole behind the barn here that Chuck was thinking about planting today, but chickened out after walking out in it beforehand; didn't want to stick the other nephew's 4850 FWA Deere and 16 row 7200 corn planter, even though it's nearly out of pop up fertilizer AND seed.

"Ya gotta be brave" he says. "Yep", I said, "But 'bravery' implies action that has good results. 'Bravery' that ends up BADLY is 'stupidity'". Discretion is the better part of valor, indeed.

Funny thing was, I got stuck in some spots I didn't think she'd go down, and managed to tiptoe out into some spots that I figured were too wet. Live and learn...

Later! OL J R


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## mlappin (Jun 25, 2009)

Almost got hung today in that low ground, came down a long sand hill, was going to turn around and head back up it, waited a bit too long to start to turn and the front tires were plowing, hit the left brake and it worked momentarily then completely disappeared, straightened the front wheels out, mashed the foot throttle, flicked the diff lock and headed for a high spot I knew to be a sand knob next to the woods. Did a three point turn around and headed back where I cam from in a slightly different track.

Another helpful hint for muck, don't stop in a wet spot, just don't. On my friends muck when chopping corn if you had a row plug on the chopper you reached back and worked that lever several times to reverse the corn head, if it was the outside row that was plugged you moved over and chopped one row the rest of the away across the field, or just pull out and head for a sand hill to unplug it, you did not ever stop on the muck or that would be where you'd sit.

Not sure whats up with that brake but I'm guessing the friction material let loose and disintegrated, about 2 hours later had to change hydraulic filter when the restriction light came on.

Did manage to plant a few passes down in that wet crap, last pass was almost a waste of time, monitor was screaming at me as the drive tire was slipping so I only planted a half rate for about a 100 foot or so. Either gonna take a little disc down there, or spray with RU and 2-4d then disc, it ain't gonna dry on its own thats for sure, whenever possible and it's dry enough (not in four years now) we prefer to no-till the muck as well when feasible.


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## mlappin (Jun 25, 2009)

luke strawwalker said:


> Thing is, with the 4890 Case, it's a big 4WD, BUT, it's NOT an ARTICULATED 4WD... It don't "fold in the middle" to steer-- both the front AND rear axles steer like a regular MFWD front axle does. SO, it has only ONE brake pedal for all four wheels, and NO diff lock. You get one or two big pair of duals spinning and the others are pretty useless. Can't even use the old "punch the brakes on the spinning wheel" trick to transfer power to the tire with traction.


Neighbor has one of those, its a traction king or something. Can also crab steer it if I remember right. Articulated can inch worm your self out of a hole. Stick it in gear and crank left, then crank right, etc. Best muck tractor we had was a 4-150 White. 210hp Cat but a light tractor, was about 14000 lbs if I remember right, it would have really been awesome if it had diff locks but that didn't come till they released the 4-175 and up.


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## luke strawwalker (Jul 31, 2014)

mlappin said:


> Neighbor has one of those, its a traction king or something. Can also crab steer it if I remember right. Articulated can inch worm your self out of a hole. Stick it in gear and crank left, then crank right, etc. Best muck tractor we had was a 4-150 White. 210hp Cat but a light tractor, was about 14000 lbs if I remember right, it would have really been awesome if it had diff locks but that didn't come till they released the 4-175 and up.


Yeah, tried that with the 4890, but she doesn't like to turn much when she's digging in. If you're still moving a bit you can turn, but she tends to "bank" like a 747 into the turn and waller a little to left or waller to the right like an old sow and the outside wheels usually want to turn loose. Don't want to bust anything so I don't push her too hard.

I know enough not to keep digging til she's high centered. Course, I dug her in like a tick in a couple spots-- left ruts a couple feet deep before I had to unhitch the disk and basket, but once I did she just drove right out. Couple of the holes had water come up in them after I drove the tractor out, so yeah, just a little damp LOL Chain up and drag the disk out sideways, with the basket behind it, then hitch back up. Tons of fun...

I was clawing in some spots but as long as I'm visibly moving, even a little, I figure I got a chance. Got out of a couple spots I didn't think I would.... LOL

Later! OL J R


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## luke strawwalker (Jul 31, 2014)

In my defense, yall's dirt is a heck of a lot different than ours. Needville is on heavy black gumbo clay-- it's classified as a "medium clay loam" but for all intents and purposes, it's friggin' clay. Greasy, sticky, and slimy when wet, and you just flat don't work it when it's wet. If you do, you'll turn it into concrete that will take five years of ripping, subsoiling, plowing, disking, etc. and basically it'll STILL just look like broke-up concrete... If it's wet, you just sit and wait for it to dry out, or you'll ruin the land, basically. There's no rock in it or under it until you get down to some sand and gravel about 20 feet down; heck we don't even have bedrock until you get a couple hundred feet deep. (It was all ocean bottom at one point-- course all this Indiana ground was under a mile of ice during the Ice Age).

Shiner, on the other hand, is shallow sandy soil, overlying sandstone bedrock. "Foothills of the Ouchita Mountains" is what my Granddad said it was-- had to look that one up-- Ouchita Mountains was one of the oldest mountain chains on Earth, now buried under a couple thousand feet of sand and sandstone from central Texas through Oklahoma and into the foothills of the Ozarks. It's light sand or dark sand, but sandy nonetheless. I've plowed a few hours after an inch of rain, with water standing, and never got stuck. In places, the plow will lurch and you'll look back and see that the plow has caught and sheared off a slab of sandstone and flipped it over.

These field maps here look like a camo paint job, with all the different soil types, sidehill seeps and everything. We have some sidehill seeps at Shiner, but not too bad and they've dried up over the years-- pumping too much groundwater out at Austin and lowering the water tables regionwide.

Anyway, it's just one of the many things I've had to learn-- it's a LOT different than how we used to farm cotton and corn and sorghum and soybeans on 40 inch beds...

Later! OL J R


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## mlappin (Jun 25, 2009)

luke strawwalker said:


> In my defense, yall's dirt is a heck of a lot different than ours. Needville is on heavy black gumbo clay-- it's classified as a "medium clay loam" but for all intents and purposes, it's friggin' clay. Greasy, sticky, and slimy when wet, and you just flat don't work it when it's wet. If you do, you'll turn it into concrete that will take five years of ripping, subsoiling, plowing, disking, etc. and basically it'll STILL just look like broke-up concrete... If it's wet, you just sit and wait for it to dry out, or you'll ruin the land, basically. There's no rock in it or under it until you get down to some sand and gravel about 20 feet down; heck we don't even have bedrock until you get a couple hundred feet deep. (It was all ocean bottom at one point-- course all this Indiana ground was under a mile of ice during the Ice Age).


Sounds just like our gumbo, tiling it on 30 foot centers makes a world of difference, what used to be farmed dead last at home is now first.

Difference here at the home farm is we have a foot or a little better of topsoil, then you get the yellow clay that makes up the subsoil then a little deeper you hit the blue clay. Takes one inch of water one year to move one foot down thru blue clay. So basically when we tiled ran some of em a little shallow cause if not, they'd been in that blue clay, stick a tile in that stuff and might as well poured concrete around the tile before backfilling.


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