@mark-indzeris You just need a few feet of chain with links large enough to slip over the rebar, hook the other end over the foot of the jack and start cranking. They pull with the same force they lift. I have a 12?? tow chain I use. Works slick.
Can confirm.?ÿ Works even when you have to pull a 1"x1"x48" Standard Iron Bar (SIB) in our jurisdiction.?ÿ We use some "gentle" sledge persuasion before we bring over the jack.?ÿ We just tie a knot on either end to secure the chain.
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https://www.tekmet.ca/surveyor.php
(3rd item down, though the pic is kinda cruddy)
We had to pull a few when the drafter put the wrong calc file for the field crew.?ÿ A farm jack-all, 10' of chain binder, and a lot of cursing worked wonders.?ÿ A box of beer from the drafter for the crew saved the drafter from much-deserved ire.
Rating land use for livestock is based on an animal unit, standardized at 1000 pounds of live weight.?ÿ Mature cows tend to run between 900 and 1400 pounds.?ÿ In our area the standard is four acres per animal unit.?ÿ In the arid regions of the West that number can grow to 100 acres per animal unit as much of the area does not grow much in the way of usable feed.
So something on the order of 1000 beasties on 4500 acres.?ÿ Which, I think, take a couple of years to grow to a marketable size? And sell for $2500?-ish.?ÿ Yielding a gross return of about $250-$300 per year per acre? If the profit margin is 10%,?ÿ $25/acre net. Meaning an income of a little over $100k per year for a rancher with 4500 acres.?ÿ ?ÿThat is, 4500 acres is a small family operation.
These are all costs and projections from a suburban lifer with some google-fu skills but little personal experience in the matter.?ÿ ?ÿ ?ÿ ?ÿ?ÿ
Rating land use for livestock is based on an animal unit, standardized at 1000 pounds of live weight.?ÿ Mature cows tend to run between 900 and 1400 pounds.?ÿ In our area the standard is four acres per animal unit.?ÿ In the arid regions of the West that number can grow to 100 acres per animal unit as much of the area does not grow much in the way of usable feed.
So something on the order of 1000 beasties on 4500 acres.?ÿ Which, I think, take a couple of years to grow to a marketable size? And sell for $2500?-ish.?ÿ Yielding a gross return of about $250-$300 per year per acre? If the profit margin is 10%,?ÿ $25/acre net. Meaning an income of a little over $100k per year for a rancher with 4500 acres.?ÿ ?ÿThat is, 4500 acres is a small family operation.
These are all costs and projections from a suburban lifer with some google-fu skills but little personal experience in the matter.?ÿ ?ÿ ?ÿ ?ÿ?ÿ
Side note from my own personal experience--family farms are only cash-rich/financially viable when:
1. they sell the whole operation (ie. no longer farmers)
2. expand to the size they need to incorporate (ie. no longer the "family farm")
3. leverage their holdings to secure loans from the bank that take over 50 years to pay so that inflation helps them pay things off in the future (ie. so 10 to 20 years after the original farmer dies)
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Or, in short, they usually are not cash-rich.?ÿ The majority of farmers, in my area, also hold second jobs as the farm itself would just barely support a small family.?ÿ Case in point--me.
I help run our family farm.?ÿ My Dad went in full bore in the early 80's cash cropping 13 other farms and expanded our original 50 acre farm to the ~200 acres we have now.?ÿ We retired the old converted dairy barns and built 2 X 1000 head hog finisher barns around 2000 when the market crashed in 1998 and it was no longer financially viable to remain independent.?ÿ We are now part of a co-op that delivers around ~100,000 market hogs a year to a local slaughterhouse.?ÿ My surveying and engineering jobs are my secondary; my brother (my "coworker") drives a truck for a living.?ÿ My Dad paid off all of his loans a couple years ago (so a ~40 year payback).?ÿ This was before land prices exploded from $5000/workable acre to the current $25000/workable acre in our area.?ÿ All of our equipment is around 35 years or older and fixed by us.?ÿ My dad's truck was about the cheapest 2 wheel drive F-150 he could get back 12 years ago.?ÿ We are extremely mindful of costing and doing everything within our power to keep things done by the family as exterior costs are huge to a small operation like us.
Current family farms will never be paid off in our area until the children do so or the farm is sold.?ÿ
Need to lower the number drastically for the 4500 acre place. I doubt 150 head graze on it.?ÿ
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Need to lower the number drastically for the 4500 acre place. I doubt 150 head graze on it.?ÿ
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Your animal/acre estimate is dramatically different from HC's unless I've misunderstood. Which is probable.?ÿ But it would seem that a Wyoming rancher might need 4500 x 7 ?? 30,000 acres (about 7 miles square) to make of go of it??ÿ ?ÿ
@jaccen?ÿ
You have described things quite well.?ÿ Farmers/ranchers build up long term assets over time but those assets are not particularly liquid (available quickly).?ÿ Owning a million dollars worth of real estate and having $4.89 in your checking account go hand in hand.
In an arid area yes, it would probably take 30k to make a go of it, but not in the thick grass land areas.
In my area it is roughly 4 acres per animal unit.?ÿ Moe's guess of 30 acres per animal unit is very realistic for his vicinity.?ÿ We have a normal annual rainfall of 40 inches.?ÿ His area would have far less, and much of that would be in the form of snow and ice which is not immediately available to the animal.
My wife's family ranched in South Central Colorado.?ÿ Much of that land does not grow anything a cow would want to eat, but shows up in the total land area available.?ÿ Another factor is that much ranch land is grazed during different seasons only.?ÿ Spring pasture vs Fall pasture for example.?ÿ That can double the necessary acres.
@norman-oklahoma my reply was related to the 'monuments not of record' comment. There are a lot of valid surveys where the map was tossed with Geanpa's papers. Still more the maps stayed with the County Surveyor when he left office. The idea that a monument must show on a recorded map to be of value is wrong, period.
@lukenz?ÿ
I do not doubt that one bit.?ÿ Really good soils, good weather and adequate precipitation are key to providing excellent plant growth conditions.
Rating land use for livestock is based on an animal unit, standardized at 1000 pounds of live weight.?ÿ Mature cows tend to run between 900 and 1400 pounds.?ÿ In our area the standard is four acres per animal unit.?ÿ In the arid regions of the West that number can grow to 100 acres per animal unit as much of the area does not grow much in the way of usable feed.
So something on the order of 1000 beasties on 4500 acres.?ÿ Which, I think, take a couple of years to grow to a marketable size? And sell for $2500?-ish.?ÿ Yielding a gross return of about $250-$300 per year per acre? If the profit margin is 10%,?ÿ $25/acre net. Meaning an income of a little over $100k per year for a rancher with 4500 acres.?ÿ ?ÿThat is, 4500 acres is a small family operation.
These are all costs and projections from a suburban lifer with some google-fu skills but little personal experience in the matter.?ÿ ?ÿ ?ÿ ?ÿ?ÿ
Side note from my own personal experience--family farms are only cash-rich/financially viable when:
1. they sell the whole operation (ie. no longer farmers)
2. expand to the size they need to incorporate (ie. no longer the "family farm")
3. leverage their holdings to secure loans from the bank that take over 50 years to pay so that inflation helps them pay things off in the future (ie. so 10 to 20 years after the original farmer dies)
?ÿ
Or, in short, they usually are not cash-rich.?ÿ The majority of farmers, in my area, also hold second jobs as the farm itself would just barely support a small family.?ÿ Case in point--me.
I help run our family farm.?ÿ My Dad went in full bore in the early 80's cash cropping 13 other farms and expanded our original 50 acre farm to the ~200 acres we have now.?ÿ We retired the old converted dairy barns and built 2 X 1000 head hog finisher barns around 2000 when the market crashed in 1998 and it was no longer financially viable to remain independent.?ÿ We are now part of a co-op that delivers around ~100,000 market hogs a year to a local slaughterhouse.?ÿ My surveying and engineering jobs are my secondary; my brother (my "coworker") drives a truck for a living.?ÿ My Dad paid off all of his loans a couple years ago (so a ~40 year payback).?ÿ This was before land prices exploded from $5000/workable acre to the current $25000/workable acre in our area.?ÿ All of our equipment is around 35 years or older and fixed by us.?ÿ My dad's truck was about the cheapest 2 wheel drive F-150 he could get back 12 years ago.?ÿ We are extremely mindful of costing and doing everything within our power to keep things done by the family as exterior costs are huge to a small operation like us.
Current family farms will never be paid off in our area until the children do so or the farm is sold.?ÿ
That pretty much sums it up. Here in SE MO, row croppers are trying to farm anything in the hills (Crowley's Ridge) that won't wash away before harvest. That puts pressure on ground that is better suited for grazing, but the cash row crop renters are paying what cow men can't, so just finding a place is difficult. Farms in my area are not paying for themselves, I've went through a few pencils trying to make it work on paper. I am running a few cows on a farm my grandpa bought about six mo before I was born. I am fortunate to do so, it's been a source of enjoyment for me all my life. I am just trying to hang on to it.
Unless you direct sale fat cattle (market is/was around 1.20/lb live for a 1300 lb steer is more common), or raise breeding stock for a production type auction, I doubt you will see much bringing $2500. As an example, I just sold some spring calves not long ago. Heifer wt averaged 571 @ 1.37/lb = $782
I am running around a cow per 4 acres consistently, plus backgrounding fall calves on part of it all summer. So, in the summer our ratio is about one grazing unit per 2.5ac. I keep it limed, but no yearly fertilizer application.
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@aliquot?ÿ ?ÿ ?ÿI understand, but I have dozens of corners 10 feet away from where you might thinks the boundary corner would be.?ÿ I don't like to think how many might get pulled up because someone disagrees or thinks it to be inferior. The days of fieldwork and the thousands of client dollars spent for nothing.?ÿ
you are absolutely correct sir. we never know who may have moved a monument previously found. i can move any monument laterally as to maintain the distances. heck go move the next five down line that would introduce an angular error.
that you could without noticeable error without a survey.
That is not what persons who love our profession would ever do. thank you sir.
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@samlucy3874 we have files full of 1950s/1960s field notes and computations, not much in the way of narrative-what did you do and why?
I read through the old field notes. Have the filed Record of Survey??set conc mon, great??.series of bearings and distances set conc mon on 1/16th line. Pull out the notes, east end was a conc mon set 10 years to replace wooden post set by lumber companies decades before with 2 bearing trees marked with lumber company initials (2 of them). The conc mon is there but BTs are gone. None of this is on the filed map.
West end conc mon replaced wood post 10 years before with a big redwood stump faced and scribed with lumber company initials. That one was pulled and moved 14 feet, nothing on the map, no memos in the file, nothing. The stump is still there but the scribing has been erased. It??s only in the field notes, have to patiently leaf through page after page of deflection angle traverse notes to find what they did. I found the hole the conc mon came out of, still there after 50 years.
that was 5 years ago I found that.
Current project, there is a memo in the file and field notes complete with sketches. He found an 1883 stone mound in 1956. Stone mound is along side the stone (which side?), no marked stone found. So he used the stone mound for latitude (1/4s between 25 & 26) and moved it 3-1/2 feet west to line between section corners. The thing is the stone would??ve been on the east side of the mound. This is weird, never seen anything like it.
