I farm part time, and I also work in a public sector position which involves the environment and natural resources. I have had conversations over the more recent years with agricultural producers and I have also talked with various governmental agency staff. There are a variety of opinions out there on the benefits and the detriments to field tile. I could probably write an incredibly lengthy post on the topic itself. I would offer the comment that in our part of the country, with our heavy clay soils, installation of pattern field tile started escalating with the access to yield monitors in harvesting equipment. Following the run up and peak of commodity prices in 2012, tile was installed in our area in terms of miles, rather than thousands of feet. I will add one more comment that has fueled the installation of field tile. Looking at how and when we receive our rainfall, and the intensity of that rainfall, we no longer have most of our rain coming in showers and gentle soaking rains of an inch or less on rather frequent basis. We are in an era where we have torrential thunderstorms dumping inches in hours. This leaves massive pools and ponds on the landscape in need of draining in a timely manner, otherwise productivity will be severely impacted in a negative manner. If I was to think back about 10 years ago, and what my memories are from at least the 30 years I recall best, we had single, isolated events that came once every 15 years or 20 years, resulting in significant negative impacts to productivity. As I think about the most recent 10 years, these events have been more substantial, more frequent, and occurring practically on an annual basis. We have rivers, lakes, streams, marshes, and wetlands, which are all part of natures "storm water" system. These channels have been carved out over time based upon what the what runs off the landscape. We have single events of rainfall which are greater than the system can typically handle, and we have more water that must be artificially removed from the landscape in a rapid timeframe, so we have more and more water moving, creating more difficulty and hardship to those who live and work the land further downstream in the landscape. Margins are tight in agriculture, and by tiling we can help alleviate the variability in production caused by the changing precipitation patterns. Why I bring this up, is I feel we are in a "vicious cycle" of reacting to the changes in weather on the landscape as best we can, as ag producers, however it seems we are also sending some of those problems downstream, too. I raise this point because my family's farm is at the lower reaches of a watershed where water pools and floods due to the local "bottleneck" in the outlet. I feel we are going to have to really re-think where we can send this "storm water" once it drains off the landscape, especially since rainfall and flooding events seem to be more prevalent.
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Today's Featured Article - Timing Your Magneto Ignition Tractor - by Chris Pratt. If you have done major engine work or restored your tractor, chances are you removed the magneto and spark plug wires and eventually reached the point where you had to put it all back together and make it run. On our first cosmetic restoration, not having a manual, we carefully marked the wires, taped the magneto in the position it came off, and were careful not to turn the engine over while we had these components off. We thought we could get by with this since the engine ran perfectly and would not need any internal work. After the cleanup and painting was done, we began reassembly and finally came to t
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