Perhaps you know successful dairy farmers who milk without machines, egg producers who operate without cages, or those who farm without electricity or tractors. Such minorities are frequently overlooked by farm writers serving mainstream agriculture.

In the same vein, my recent column on mailing lists overlooked those who use Internet e-mail, but not the World Wide Web. Kitchener-Waterloo Record reporter Mike Strathdee, who is part of this group, recently wrote to request that I publish detailed subscription information for all lists mentioned in this column. When I rather cavalierly referred him to Farm & Country's website for the information, he patiently explained my oversight.

While Strathdee and I were exchanging e-mail, the Hastings Federation of Agriculture was polling members about whether they wanted to continue receiving daily weather, and market information on their mailing list. The information is available on the web and several respondents declared the information a waste of time.

Most, however, preferred to receive the information via e-mail. I recently discovered that those restricted to e-mail can get the same details about lists that the world's largest and best known directory, Liszt, offers to Web users. Try sending a blank e-mail message to: liszter@bluemarble.net. Within moments you should receive a three and a half page document describing protocols and search terms, which allow you to find, at last count, 34,132 different lists.

If you have lots of empty disk space and want a complete document showing the name and address of every list, send an e-mail to: mailserver@sri.com. In the body of your message write: send interest groups.

An excellent library of lists is available on the web at: http://www.nlc-bnc.ca/ifla/l/training/listserv/lists.htm.
Robert Irwin is Farm & Country's computer guru.

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$1,000 IN GREEN

A $1,000 gift certificate from John Deere is yours for the best farm safety idea in Canada. The Canadian Federation of Agriculture Farm Safety Innovations Contest challenges farm families to look for ways to enhance safety on the farm. Second and third prizes are also gift certificates. Deadline: June 20, 1996. For information: Canadian Federation of Agriculture, Suite 1101, 75 Albert St., Ottawa, Ont. K1P 6E7. (613) 236-3633.

KILLER CAPS

Baseball caps are as much a part of the farm landscape as ragweed - but perhaps not for long. Alberta Agriculture, Food and Rural Development specialist Karen Malyk tells Grainews that farmers should wear hard hats instead. "It's been a tough sell, but farmers are getting the message that they should wear a hard hat instead of a fabric cap when they're handling pesticides," she says. Fabric caps absorb pesticides and dust, which impregnate the cap and expose the farmer's head constantly. The head has a high absorption rate, Malyk says. Hard hats, meanwhile, deflect spray and dust, and can be cleaned.

TRACTOR SHOWDOWN

Sometime over the next seven months, a SWAT team of semi-trucks from Case IH will roll into a dealership near you to get you onto a Magnum tractor. Loaded with Magnums, and competing tractors, the trucks have started a tour of North American dealerships. The idea was announced to dealers at their recent "Desert Showdown" meeting. Case marketing manager Mitch Kaiser thinks some farmers will be swayed: "This won't be a showroom-type setting. These tractors are going into the field and they're going to be put to the test. We want farmers to compare these tractors in real-life farming applications." The company says it now has 50,000 Magnums in the field.

ROYAL VISIT
The Royal Agricultural Winter Fair is an effective agricultural education tool, a series of focus groups has found. During March, Royal organizers held focus groups in Niagara, Ingersoll, Alliston and Peterborough. The Community Outreach Initiative found that city people are losing touch with the reality of the food chain, and don't even know simple facts such as potatoes are grown in soil. Local fairs, which once served as a training ground for the Royal, are disappearing, further weakening the link with the farm.

STARK REALITY
Tractor plants are humming these days, thanks to a healthy farm economy. Chicago-based industry watcher Stark's News Service says U.S. and Canadian production of farm tractors and self-propelled combines will hit a 15-year high of 64,000 units this year, up three per cent from last year's record. Some 32,880 units will be produced by June alone, Stark's says. Retail sales also rose, by four per cent in the first quarter, to more than 28,000 units. For lawn and garden tractors, manufacturers are moving production back to North America. Stark's says New Holland has tentative plans to move its 16 to 50-hp tractors from Japan to a newly-leased plant at Dublin, Georgia.

BUYING SPREE
Canadian farmers went on a combine buying spree in March, according to the Canadian Farm and Industrial Equipment Institute. Farmers bought 51 more self-propelled combines in March compared to last March, for a 20-per-cent increase. They also bought 46 more 2WD tractors under 40-hp. Sales of other tractors, however, fell three per cent overall.

CHINA SYNDROME
Booming population growth is good for the farm machinery sector. With China's 1.2-billion population growing by an estimated 17 million a year, the Chinese government is calling for efforts to improve farm machinery, according to a Reuters report. The focus will be on grain production centres, which aim to improve efficiency on the country's millions of family farms, each averaging only 1.15 acres. One-third of China's farms are affiliated with the centres, but account for almost half of total grain output. Chinese grain harvest hit a record 466 million tonnes last year.

FIELDSIDE ASSISTANCE?
It works with cars, why not with tractors? Korean auto manufacturer Daewoo, which recently bought Austrian tractor manufacturer Steyr, may offer farmers the same benefits car buyers get, according to Farm Show. Daewoo cars carry a three-year blanket coverage included in the sticker price, covering servicing, parts, labour and repairs - and a courtesy car while yours is in the shop. The company does it by selling direct and cutting dealer overhead, with "car centres" instead of dealerships.

OFF TO EMERALD ISLE
University of Guelph communications wizard Owen Roberts has landed a sponsorship for a trip to an international farm journalists' congress in Dublin, Ireland. Guelph-based First Line Seeds will sponsor Roberts' trip to the International Federation of Agricultural Journalists (IFAJ) conference this month. Roberts, also Canadian Farm Writers Federation president, says the meeting, which will attract 200 farm writers from 20 countries, will be "a unique opportunity to develop new communication networks". Helping Canadian farm writers deepen their knowledge of international markets "improves the quality and depth of coverage for the entire Canadian agricultural industry," says Peter Hannam, president of First Line Seeds, a specialty soybean company which exports to the Pacific Rim. IFAJ is now on the Web:
http://www.bib.wau.nl/ifaj/ifaj-new.html

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Farmer builds hands-free hay system

By JOHN M. MUGGERIDGE

High school kids looking for summer work can give Spring Hedge Farm in Peel county a miss. Proprietors Jim and Harry Moore put up square bales all right, but they don't touch a single one of them.

Moore's bale fork grabs 10 square bales at a time, allowing for fast loading of home-built dryer

The Moores store 7,000 square hay bales and 3,000 square straw bales a year, using a home-built handling system that saves time and money and gives top-quality feed for their 40-cow dairy business in Terra Cotta.

When their hay equipment needed replacing eight years ago, the Moores contemplated investing in a "bale accumulator" that gathers bales into groups in the field. Instead, they opted for a $10,000 New Holland "Hayliner" automatic bale wagon, which gathers 105 square bales and unloads them, all from the tractor cab.

Apart from the haybine, baler, bale wagon and mower, the Moores' hay handling system is built from scratch. "I went from one project to the next. I couldn't see anything on the market that would do it," says Moore.

The New Holland Haybine lays down a nine-foot-three-inch swath, which is flat due to the heavy clay land which holds moisture. A day or two after cutting, Jim Moore does a pass with two home-built tandem rakes, which swing out hydraulically, and gather two swaths into one.

Baling is done usually the same day with a New Holland 326 square baler, forming 70- pound 38 to 40-inch-long square bales. Another tractor follows the baler, pulling the automatic bale wagon, which drops hay back at the yard in a seven-tier stack, 15 bales per tier.

From there they go to the Moores' 12-year-old home-built hay dryer, consisting of a 40-inch fan blade bought at a wrecker's, and a 10-hp motor, housed inside a 4 X 4 plywood box. Hay is stacked on pallets six inches off the ground inside a pole barn. The fan is run for about two weeks, and hay is left there for storage.

Moore can make quick work of getting hay into the mow, thanks to a home-built hay fork designed for his Massey 40 industrial loader. Consisting of a six by six-foot frame and hooks and brackets, the fork can lift 10 square bales at a time; the loader can stack 11 tiers high. Bales can be picked up five across, with ends pointing out from the loader, or two across, with ends pointing sideways, allowing Moore to "criss-cross" the bales for a tighter mow and better drying.

For storing hay in the mow, the flats of bales are loaded onto another home-built tool: a converted forage wagon with the sides removed, which runs off a tractor and conveys bales two at a time to the bale elevator.

When it comes time for feeding or loading sold hay on the truck, the fork again comes into its own.

For the Moores, it adds up to hands-free haying. Jim Moore estimates the bale fork cost $800 to $1,000 in materials, not including labour. "I spent a lot of hours standing there thinking about that bale fork before I did it...It takes a lot of patience."

Today, Moore says he can store hay about 20 per cent faster than his former system, which employed a bale thrower and wagons; and one is needed. Depending on the hay, the Moores can get 20 acres off in a day, between milkings.

"We can handle more hay in a day, get it off quicker, and not be tired by the end of the day," he says.

Labour may be cut, but hay quality doesn't suffer. Straight alfalfa is grown on tiled land, and an alfalfa-timothy-trefoil mix on untiled. Feed tests of first cut last year tested 21.07-per-cent protein, 8.6-per-cent soluble protein, 1.61-per-cent ADF and 65.5-per-cent TDN.

Hay that isn't put in front of the cows is marketed "wherever I can get rid of it," says Moore. Some goes to Florida. Five hundred round bales are also taken off a year, but Moore is nervous about doing more, with the wet lake-effect increasing risk of spoilage.

The automatic bale wagon took some getting used to, he says. "It's not an idiot-proof system," Moore says. "You have to know what you're doing to move those bales around. You have to have your eyes open."

With evening dew, bales can stick on the moving tables, and Moore makes sure to shut down completely before making adjustments. "Use a bit of common sense - they can be temperamental," he says. "As long as you know what you're doing with them, there's no problem."

Carrying 10 square bales on the loader-mounted hay fork is no more dangerous than carrying a round bale, he says. Weights are added on the three-point hitch for stability. "It's just like any loader - Don't go underneath the bales if they're in the air, and don't lift them high until you get up to the stack."

Going into his ninth year with the system, Moore says there's little he would change. "I don't regret doing it. It does at least as good a job as anything on the market, is a little more rugged, and it's less money out the door."