# New ditch hay rules in MN



## stack em up

http://www.house.leg.state.mn.us/members/pressrelease.asp?pressid=26862&party=2&memid=15301

And this may be the end of my road mowing days. I swear I can't make shit like this up.....


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## r82230

Here in Michigan we don't make ditch hay, but if the state allowed it, it would seem to belong to the land owner (we have the opportunity to pay property taxes on our land, which includes the ROW).

Being the state cuts our ROW twice a year, they don't seem to be worried about the birds and bees (which could be looked as a positive in regards to weeds).

I been envious of those of you who could harvest the ROW (which would almost be free to the state verses our system of taxpayers paying someone to mow), but with your situation, I am not as envious anymore.

Larry


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## JD3430

Thats what a state's constituents get when they vote a clown like Al Franken into office.


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## RuttedField

Come to Maine if you want to see stupidity. 400 miles of interstate, half of which is in the middle of nowhere (literally, look it up on the map from Orono to Houlton), and the state mows it. They don't even do a good job. They got brand new tractors, brand new bat wing flail mowers and mow half of the right of way. Then they pay arborists to go in every 5 years and clean up the saplings that grew up that could have (should have) been cut with the flail mower.

400 MILES!

As for habitat, the Fed NRCS Conservationist tried to give me grief for farming right up to the rock walls and not letting saplings grow up for "habitat'. I told him my forefathers, who worked their tils off cutting trees, digging stumps, and getting the field rid of rocks...and all with nothing more than an axe and ox, would kill me if I let it grow back for "habitat". I got neighbors on all four sides of me that clear cut their woods off, there is plenty of "habitat" there, they don't need the margins of my fields too.

When I was in Ireland, you never saw a landmower. They GRAZE right up to the edge of the hot top, and in parks, they have cows and sheep grazing. Granted it typically is after tourist season, but they have signs up, "This park is currently being grazed"... It makes sense to me.


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## stack em up

JD3430 said:


> Thats what a state's constituents get when they vote a clown like Al Franken into office.


I place WAAAAAYYYYYYYY more blame on the worthless idiots at Pheasants Forever. They're the ones pushing for all this bull crap. In fact, they are becoming one of the most powerful lobbies Iin the state. Outbidding farmers for land.


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## luke strawwalker

I USED to take a lot of road hay. Course, that was then, this is now.

It was basically "first come first served". Whoever cut it first got it, unless the highway dept. had scheduled their ******** to shred before you got it baled up... weather made me wait longer than I normally would one year and I got it cut, and the next day was fixing to go rake and the ******** were out shredding it up with raggedy old tractors and batwings, running wide open in creeper gear, so there was nothing left. Oh well, it happens... at least I didn't have it raked...

I used to cut from the river about 6 miles west of me to the western edge of town about 5 miles the other way. Used to make some REALLY nice, leafy winter ryegrass (which grows wild here wherever the livestock doesn't eat it off as fast as it comes out of the ground).

The "rules" were kinda fast-n-loose. Whoever got to it first got it, period. Technically, you were supposed to ask permission of the landowner adjacent to the ditch to cut it for hay, but nobody bothered... one year I was hooking up to the mower and a neighbor came through and cut it, including in front of my place... but I didn't cry about it or make a stink-- it was just an "unwritten rule" that whoever cut it first got it. No biggie... You were "supposed" to wait until the wildflowers had gone to seed-- that puts the ryegrass getting kinda old, but I didn't mind some seed heads on it so long as it wasn't starting to dry down or hadn't fully gone to seed. Some years some guys would kinda "jump the gun" and start mowing for hay in the middle of wildflower season, which I tried to not do... a lot depends on the year...

Then we got that old drunk Ann Richards for a governor... she decided that having the ******** shred the ditches 3-4 times a year was too much, and slashed the budget so now it only gets cut once a year... This was bad for a few reasons... First, when they shredded it several times a year, the batwings running at a half-walking pace at full throttle would simply PULVERIZE all the garbage and trash thrown out of car windows into PULP and mix it up with the grass that had been ground to a pulp as well, which the new grass rapidly grew up through and the rain would rapidly decompose the clippings and pulverized paper as well... so the ditches stayed CLEAN, more or less. The pulped grass would take shredded up aluminum cans down to the soil surface so the hay mower missed most of that crap the next time around, and bottles were usually either shattered by the mowers or pushed down to the ground surface and settled into the dirt, either way they weren't much of a problem either. Mowing several times a year also helped to establish the grass and wipe out weeds and brush, which was mowed off and outcompeted by the grass.

Once they quit shredding the roads but once a year, everything REALLY went to pot. The trash and garbage and cans and bottles would build up in the grass in the ditches and, since it was unpulverized by shredders, it would simply sit there INTACT until you were trying to make hay. HUGE mess, and most of it's ending up in the windrow. A disk or drum mower will take out the bottles by shattering them practically into dust, and the rake will sift the broken glass out onto the dirt, but cans and garbage float right through and end up in the windrow. What a mess!

Then, of course, again "for good intentions" the gubmint passed a law that it was now ILLEGAL to throw away in the trash or burn old oil filters, and put a fee on tires and batteries and started charging for 'disposal' of the old ones... So suddenly all THAT crap started ending up in the ditch as well...

Last time I cut road hay was 96, a few years after the latest of these changes was instituted... I had to FIGHT the gubmint for it then-- some stupid witch "Hitler's widow" who was in charge of the local highway department was sending her workers out to chase off farmers making road hay, and the guy told me she had them load hay out of a barn that a guy had cut and baled and put in the barn a few weeks before. I wouldn't have bothered but we were in a KILLER drought and road hay was about all I had access to. I finally got ahold of HER boss and explained the situation, and mentioned how bad it would look on TV if I called up the station and told them that the gubmint was refusing to allow farmers to harvest road hay to keep their livestock alive, when 40,000 head had perished due to drought in the southern part of the state already (and pictures of sad, bony cows on TV). He thought about it and said "okay" but then quizzed me on where I put the bales... He was worried that if someone ran off the road in the middle of the night and hit a round bale in the ditch and got killed or injured the state would be liable... I told him that one time YEARS before I had dropped bales in the ditch as I baled and then went back and loaded them onto a trailer to haul home, and never did that again-- too much time and trouble, having to wait for cars to pass to load, trying to pick up bales on a 3 point bale fork on an incline in the ditch, and the load on an incline was just a PITA... so for all the years after that when I got a bale finished in the baler, I'd just cut the PTO off, wait til I could pull out on the road, and drop her in road gear back to the farm and drop the bale directly on the turning row where I stacked them. Worked out to be faster and safer...

Well, when I was cutting, I was dodging all kinds of crap... nearly hit a TOILET someone dumped on the roadside, old semi tires and vehicle tires, etc... then periodically I'd hear a loud "FOOM!" come from under the drum mower curtain and look back and see an OLD OIL FILTER off a car tumbling down or across the road behind me at about 100 mph like a cannonball shot out of a cannon... which worried me because I didn't want to hit any cars with that sort of crap when they might be passing me, because it could do a lot of damage or cause injury or a wreck...

The road hay got me through, but I had to feed it in one particular spot on the farm, in a slough, because after the cows had finished off the unrolled bales, there was a "carpet" of paper garbage and flattened out pop cans left behind... and I didn't want that stuff all over the place. It got me through the drought, though, for which I was grateful. Plus, I picked up a few bags of flattened pop cans and sold them for aluminum, which gave me a little spending money for the trouble... LOL

Nowdays the roadsides have just become brushy MESSES. Johnsongrass grows up 8-10 feet high in places, and cutting it only once a year has gotten rid of all the low-growing dense sod and bunch-type grasses and left mostly weeds and brush in their place... morning glory vines and prostrate viney-type weeds, and even huisache thorn bushes are springing up everywhere... I swear in a lot of places if a car ran off the road they'd be hard pressed to even find them in all that mess! Cutting only once a year has allowed the vines, weeds, and brush to take over, and there's hardly even any wildflowers anymore, because they simply can't emerge through all that crap. Now it gets mowed once a year maybe in late June or July and that's it... which gives about 3-4 months for a new crop of vines, weeds, and brush to reestablish and overtake the grass and stuff before winter sets in...

It's a mess, but that's the gubmint for you... they'd screw up a free lunch...

Later! OL J R 

PS... Forgot that they also now SPRAY the roadsides-- I've heard guys say they're spraying with salt water and Roundup... (waste brine from wells). I'd tend to believe it because it has virtually ERADICATED all the good sod type and bunchgrasses and wildflowers and left nothing but weeds and brush in its place... and dead dry standing weeds/brush/johnsongrass 8 feet tall is JUST as hard to see around when driving or pull off the road into in an emergency as 8 foot tall LIVE green crap is...


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## slowzuki

You are the last person I thought would be asking for more government services!

They don't mow the road sides here, all ditches and rocks except on the big 4 lane highway. Every 10-15 years an excavator with mulching head drives along and chews it all back to keep it out of the power lines.


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## luke strawwalker

slowzuki said:


> You are the last person I thought would be asking for more government services!
> 
> They don't mow the road sides here, all ditches and rocks except on the big 4 lane highway. Every 10-15 years an excavator with mulching head drives along and chews it all back to keep it out of the power lines.


Why the hell not?? I pay enough taxes...

Better than having it go to black baby mama's who have 6 kids by 6 different thugs they don't even know who they are anymore...

At least I'm getting SOMETHING for my tax money when they cut the roadsides...

Later! OL J R


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