Last week I had the good fortune to travel to Bismarck, North Dakota to visit the folks at Bobcat and to take a close look at a herd of fine new machines. The event was designed to showcase the company’s new M-Series loaders and excavators – I will discuss those in future posts, but today I want to report on my test drive of the company’s new Toolcat 5610, which I first saw at the National Farm Machinery Show last winter. The Toolcat 5610 is a truly revolutionary machine that is part tractor, part utility vehicle and part loader. The only thing that comes close to the Toolcat 5610 in versatility is the Mercedes (Case, Freightliner, etc.) Unimog but it is in a completely different price and size class.

I will admit to being somewhat skeptical that the Toolcat 5610 would be capable of doing all of its tasks well, so you can imagine my glee when I learned that the machine would be available for operation at the Bismarck event. Let me say from the get go that I was blown away by the Toolcat 5610. The machine is not your average UTV, it is an incredibly heavy-duty tool – it weighs nearly 6000 pounds when fitted out. As such, the 5610 is an excellent platform for front and rear mounted attachments. Even though the 5610 is equipped with four-wheel independent suspension (and 4-wheel steering), it has been designed in such a way as to provide tractor-like rigidity (and stability) with a bucketful of gravel on the front lift arm. Yes, you can actually use the Toolcat 5610 as a front-end loader.

Perhaps even more impressive than the unique suspension system is the Toolcat 5610’s capacity to do farm and land maintenance work of all kinds. The rear Cat. 1 three-point hitch and 540 RPM PTO allow operators to hitch up to any of hundreds of implements from mowers to scrapers to seeders to snow blowers. From the seat, in the 5610’s comfy climate-controlled cab, I found it easier to watch the rear attachment than from the seat of many tractors. The Toolcat 5610 is fully capable of pulling and powering ground-engaging tools – it had no problem with the 6-foot rotary tiller at full depth in the Missouri River silt at the site. And I did the tilling with a solid stand seeder mounted on the front lift arm. I also experimented with a hydraulically-driven mower on the front lift arm. Impressive is about all I can think of to say.

The Toolcat 5610 may well be the perfect single machine for small farmers, acreage owners and folks who have several acres to maintain. You get a tractor, utility vehicle, loader and recreational vehicle all rolled into a single all-terrain, diesel-powered package. The Toolcat 5610 does each of its tasks well, but if you have scores of acres of hay to make or need a loader 8 hours a day most days, then you would want to make the investment in several pieces of more specialized machinery. If you are in the market for a true working partner around your place, then head on over to your local Bobcat dealer and see about arranging a weekend with the Toolcat 5610, I know you will be impressed.

Sometimes in life you react to a situation in a certain way because you instinctively know what you need to do, even if you don’t like it. I had one of those experiences at the farm last night. I was enjoying the lingering light of late dusk, sitting in my favorite lawn chair and having a phone conversation with a friend. Gus and Clover, my trusty Border Collies, were unusually attentive and quiet. In fact, they were asleep, more or less at my feet.

I noticed a bit of commotion coming from the sheep paddock but didn’t think too much about it until the female coyote came into view, pacing along the outside of my “new” sheep fence. And then I saw another and then one more, and sure enough there was a fourth inside the fence. Gus and Clover have been great at running off the wild canines – at least when they are so close to the barn, but for some reason they weren’t on task last night. The donkeys are also heck on wild dogs – they were bedded down in the corral on the other side of the barn.

iStockPhoto.com Tony Campbell

I take my role as animal husband quite seriously; part of that responsibility includes protecting the flocks from predators. I appreciate predators, especially opportunists like coyotes. I am particularly fond of coyotes because of their song, the social structure they adhere to, and because they have been so willing and able to adapt to virtually every move humans make to destroy their habitat or to eradicate them. I find no joy in killing coyotes.

Without so much as a second thought, I excused myself from the telephone and grabbed the .270 and a handful of rounds. Four shots and, just a few minutes later, it was over. Gus and Clover were hiding in the barn, the sheep, hogs and chickens were safe, and I was swept with the remorse that you can only feel when you waste a life. I wondered whether I mightn’t have somehow deterred that coyote mom and her three pups. Intellectually, I know the answer to that question is a resounding no. She was teaching her babies to live out their genetic destiny, and they all got caught in the crossfire of my animal husbandry.

Had I not been enjoying the evening outside, the scene would have played out much differently. And come morning, I would have felt the terrible remorse of having failed in my animal husbandly duties.

A couple of years ago I planted a Kansas Sweet Cherry tree in the yard to the west of the lane. I figured that grassy area would make a nice place for a small orchard. So far there are just a few fruit trees there and they seem to be doing OK. As I recall the spot where the cherry is planted has its share of crushed limestone in it – the digging wasn’t as easy as I had hoped it would be when I planted that specimen.

Earlier this spring, that little Kansas Sweet Cherry tree was the only fruit tree to pull off a crop of flowers. I really don’t know what happened to the other trees, but the cherry offered about 50 blossoms to the local pollinating insect population during some interval between extreme cold and dry blasting wind. The weekend before last, while reinforcing one of the barbed wire fences with additional strands of hot and cold wire, I noticed a small bounty of bright red cherries on my Kansas Sweet Cherry tree.

Once the fence wire was stretched and the sheep were enjoying their new paddock, I remembered those red cherries again and wondered whether they were ripe enough to eat yet. So I tugged gently at one and it practically fell off the tree and into my hand. I popped the Kansas Sweet Cherry into my mouth and was rewarded with the most amazing fresh sweet – tart cherry flavor I have experienced since picking Bings in Michigan years ago. Wow, yummy!

Needless to say, I made a light lunch out of the rest of the cherries – not one of them had been blemished by insect or weather. I spit all 25 or so pits gleefully into the yard and felt good because I had managed to pull off my first cherry crop – and unlike much of last year’s lettuce, I actually ate it instead of saving it for that “special” occasion. In the case of the lettuce last year, daughter Alaina and I enjoyed one lovely salad together and decided to hoard the rest – and then it bolted and got bitter.  Note to self: eat it when it is ready!

Just when I was sure the petroleum lobby would squash any possibility of mainstreaming biodiesel, engineers at Purdue University (my youngest daughter Alaina’s alma mater) beat back the naysayers big time. How did they do it? They used real science and a real live study to prove the value of biodiesel in big rigs.

Turns out that there are virtually no performance issues for rigs hauling loads running on a diet of B-20 (diesel blend with 20 percent biodiesel content) compared with those guzzling ultra-low-sulfur diesel, which is the current standard for road fuel in the United States. The study followed 10 semis for more than 1.5 million miles over the course of a year and kept track of idling time, average speed, engine load percentage and engine speed.

Photo: iStock David Freund

Once the study was complete and the statistics were analyzed, engineers concluded that there were no real differences in performance, fuel economy, fuel test results, engine oil analyses or service and maintenance costs in biodiesel-fueled rigs compared with those burning the ultra-low-sulfur fuel. The B-20 did cost an average of 13 cents a gallon more than the ultra-low-sulfur. It should be noted that the B-20 fuel exceeded the National Biodiesel Accreditation Commission’s standards. What does that say to the petroleum lobby, I wonder? I guess biodiesel can be good stuff, eh?

It’s my hope that engine manufacturers will now extend warranties to those who choose to run a little green through their trucks, tractors and construction equipment. Go Boilermakers!

PHOTO CAPTION:
John Lumkes found that a 20 percent blend of biodiesel fuel performed as well in trucks as the standard ultra-low sulfur diesel. Differences in the fuels' performances were statistically insignificant. (Purdue Agricultural Communications photo/Tom Campbell)

Last week, while my daughter Alaina was still visiting, we went ahead and did some chores with the DR Towable Backhoe demo unit that’s in the barn. When DR first offered to send a Towable Backhoe to Kansas for testing, I was just a little skeptical that something so seemingly small and relatively light weight could really perform, but I was burning with curiosity because of the company’s history of building awesome machines that do what they are designed to do quite well.

When the DR Towable Backhoe first arrived, I hitched it to my pickup and pulled it down the highway to the farm without incident. This particular model is equipped with fenders and lights, in addition to highway hubs and wheels. The company recommends that you don’t exceed 45 mph while towing. Even though the speed limit was 70 mph for much of my trip to the farm, I never came close to towing the backhoe at that speed but I might have been a tad over 45 a time or two. The backhoe tracked well; the drive was completely free of any white knuckle syndrome.

Setting up the DR Towable backhoe was a piece of cake. All I needed to do was to pour 10 gallons of hydraulic fluid into the reservoir and fire it up. Oops, don’t worry Julia I also added premium diesel-engine-quality motor oil to the Robin engine’s crankcase, before firing it up. It took more time to unwrap the Towable Backhoe than it did to get it ready to go to work.

Since our Kansas ground is hard when dry and sticky when wet, and since there are plenty of plate-size pieces of limestone in it, I used the Polaris Ranger as an anchor point when digging with DR’s diminutive hoe. It is possible to dig with the DR Towable Backhoe without attaching it to another vehicle, but the vehicle makes it pretty easy to move the hoe around and helps keep it from moving when you don’t want it to. After several uses now, I find the DR Towable Backhoe to be robust, capable and really handy for getting into tight spots and steep places that might upset a tractor.

So what do you use a little backhoe like this for? I find it to be really adept at digging holes for transplanting larger trees, cutting in relatively short waterlines (for long lines, a hydraulic excavator or trencher will cut the time substantially), digging out the broken sewer line that got crushed earlier this spring and digging large, deep holes for setting big, irregularly-shaped Osage orange posts (think butt end of a 50-year-old tree’s trunk). The 6.0 horsepower Robin gas engine is an easy recoil-starting model that has plenty of oomph to supply 2.6 gallons of hydraulic fluid per minute at 2500 psi – even under heavy load. At one point I hooked a piece of limestone ledge about 3 feet down; curling the bucket dragged the entire backhoe and Polaris Ranger toward the hole. The engine’s governor kicked in, but it didn’t lose significant speed.

At right around $5500 (including shipping), the DR Towable Backhoe’s cost is comparable to small tractor-mounted backhoe attachments. This machine is perfect for folks who use ATVs, UTVs, or garden tractors to maintain their places. If you have a compact (or larger) tractor and anticipate a moderate amount of backhoe work, then it will be difficult to decide between the DR unit and a mounted hoe. In either case, the beauty of the DR Towable Backhoe is in its self-contained nature and ease of attaching to and disconnecting from the anchor vehicle. If you use your tractor as an anchor point you may get the full digging power of the DR Towable Backhoe to boot. Other advantages to the DR hoe include being able to relocate at up to 45 mph, and being able to squeeze into places that larger machines simply won’t fit. It also takes up way less space in the shed and you can move it around with ease.

Once I was finished with the dirt work, I hooked the DR Trailing Field and Brush mower to the Polaris Ranger. Alaina and I had a lovely conversation while I clipped about 10 acres of pasture that the cattle had just been moved off of. I know that such heavy mowing isn’t really what the mower was designed for, but it continues to work like a trooper. Stay tuned for more reports on DR’s remarkable products.

My youngest daughter, Alaina, came to the farm to visit last weekend. She was between terms in her physical therapy doctoral program at George Washington University in Washington, DC. She wished to reconnect with her old man by going fishing, like we used to do when she was young. I was taken aback and touched when she requested an angling excursion. The memories of wetting lines with Alaina (and Erin) in Black Hills streams and lakes, and the prairie rivers and potholes in South Dakota are powerful indeed.

Since I hadn’t yet gone fishing here in Kansas, I was quite sure that the day would be a bust. I didn’t have time to scope out any likely spots – but a couple of fishing lakes and 110-Mile Creek are all within minutes of the farm. We stopped at the sporting-goods store for some fresh fishing supplies and licenses on the way home from the airport and headed to the local bait shop for some crawlers the next day (after a work clothing photo shoot and mowing the lawn). As luck would have it we ran into a buddy there and he told us to check out a spot on 110-Mile Creek that was just a few minutes from the farm.

We packed the old Binder with supplies and headed down the road. It was warm and relatively wind free – we both felt optimistic. Turning left off the main gravel road, we found ourselves with the truck’s front hubs locked, pushing through a muddy bottomland trail in 4-wheel-drive and low range. I am pleased to report that the 1964 International truck never gave a moment of doubt as it delivered us to the old bridge. I rigged poles and baited hooks just like I did 15 years ago. Alaina dropped her bobber-adorned line into the creek and within short order she had her first Largemouth Bass. I was thrilled, she was thrilled. In a moment of reverie I saw a much younger us sitting on the banks of French Creek or Legion Lake or the 81 Ponds – all in South Dakota. But this time we were catching bass and crappie and bluegill instead of trout, pike and perch.

By the time the night crawlers ran out, Alaina and I were ready to head home. It was the first time I can remember that she didn’t fall asleep on my shoulder on the drive. Of course, since we were only 3 minutes from the farm, there was little chance for that. When we were younger, we fished to stock the freezer. Last weekend, we released every fish we caught. I think we were both a little relieved that we could just visit and make homemade pizza for supper instead of cleaning a mess of pike. We talked about the big bass that got away long after our evening campfire had died to glowing embers. We marveled at how it would have tasted slow roasted over that bed of Osage Orange coals.