Page 7 - Farm & Ranch

Pomeroy, Washington is a Norman Rockwellesque farm town that doubles as NASA’s testing ground for Mars rovers. At the end of the last Ice Age, 2,000-foot-high glacial dams shattered repeatedly, sending cataclysmic floods ripping across the Pacific Northwest. The wild water often hit 65 miles an hour, gouging lakes and razor-edged ravines, and revealing a starkly beautiful landscape of buttes and basalt-pillar colonnades. These “Channeled Scablands” are so otherworldly that NASA tested robotic rovers bound for Mars among the region’s coulees and dry waterfalls. The torrents also eddied, piling fertile dirt several hundred feet deep, while the wind blew the lighter silt and volcanic ash into dunes. This produced the undulating farmland of Eastern Washington’s Palouse, where spotted horses once helped harvest the nation’s riches... Read more

When it comes to motor oils, the debate rages around whether or not to opt for synthetics. When this question came in for #AskNorth40, we went to Jerrad White, one of our store managers, for a quick overview. He advocates synthetics over standard oil for numerous reasons, some of which are more mileage between oil changes, less overall oil changes and better-operating temperatures. Those all sound nice- but what does that really mean? Let's get into it. The Structure of Synthetic Oils VS Standard Oil To begin, standard oil is a byproduct of natural oil. It is the result of a process called frictional distillation. First, it is extracted from the ground and then it's refined to remove impurities. It's made of non-uniform molecules and has a mixture of hydrocarbons which include: sulfur, nitrogen, oxygen, and metals like nickel. The oil ref... Read more

Raising Cornish Cross in Chicken Tractors Read more

Photo courtesy of Alex Few of Wildlife Services My first bee venture started decades ago when I kept a few hives at my home outside of West Glacier, Montana. I knew bears could be an issue, but lived in denial and enjoyed trouble-free hives for several years. I should have taken the grizzly licking my barbecue grill on my porch one night as a clue that I needed to be proactive, but the bear destroyed the hives before I could pound a t-post. That learning experience made it clear that all bee yards should be fenced in bear country. Bears looking for an easy meal With more people keeping bees in bear country, it’s important to understand that having a bear destroy your hives not only ruins the colonies, it potentially sets up the bear for future trouble. They are ruled by their stomachs and unprotected hives are veritable bruin bento box... Read more

The Milwaukee M18™ Cordless 2-Speed Grease Gun delivers maximum pressure and unmatched versatility, offering an industry leading 10,000 PSI max operating pressure and a patent pending pre-set grease counter that allows service and maintenance professionals to dispense precise amounts of grease. The tool’s 2-speed design offers users the ability to select between max pressure and max flow rate. Check out the video review below to learn more, or buy the product online here.   Hi, I'm Kyle Harrigan with Milwaukee Tool, and I'm here to tell you about the Milwaukee Tool M18 Grease Gun that we carry out at North 40. One of the best things about the core of this grease gun is that you can save a ton of time. No longer do you need to hand pump to grease up your tractors. You can use a one handed application M18 grease pump that will ac... Read more

Best Chicken Feeder; Best New Chicken Waterer from Little Giant Read more

A bat house provides crevices for the bats to rest and roost. As dusk settles on a warm summer evening and bats take to the sky for their nightly meals, my family loves to sit on the porch to see how many we can spot. Dipping and dodging, we can’t glimpse the insects in their sites, but we know they fill an important niche in the ecosystem, keeping insect populations in check. Bats are renowned for their insect eating proclivities and that is not lost on Dan Bachen, senior zoologist at the Montana Natural History Program. “Primarily up here they eat insects, which is why they are absolutely important,” Bachen said. In terms of agriculture, bats save farmers billions of dollars in pest control. In addition, many bat species hold imperative roles in pollination. For those reasons, and others, it’s not a pretty pi... Read more

Black Diamond 25-Ton Log Splitter Review and Product Demonstration Read more

This Black Diamond 37-ton Log Splitter is for larger operations who may need a little more power than the Black Diamond 25-ton Log Splitter. If you are a logger, if the majority of your wood is "green" or hardwood, or if you are clearing large areas, then the Black Diamond 37-ton will give you the power and cycle times you need to be sure to get the job done. There are two 37-ton models from Black Diamond Log Splitters. The one below is able to transition from vertical to horizontal. If you are happy with the horizontal splitting and want to save yourself $100, you can opt for the 37-ton model that only splits in the horizontal position here. Black Diamond 37-Ton Log Splitter Engine Specifications Manual Start Engine:  Briggs & Stratton 306CC / 9.5HP Specifications: Ram Force: 37 Ton Cycle Time: 13 Sec We... Read more

What is a corn cob light? Well, as you can see from the video above, a COB LED is a light shaped surprisingly like an ear of corn. What is it? COB stands for “chip on board” and is simply that: a light emitting diode (LED) embedded into a substrate (board) that has an electric current passed through it so it will light up. That means the acronym COB matches the actual shape of the light itself. The COB LED light we are talking about in this article, and the one you see above, is the GT-Lite High Lumen LED Bulb we stock at North 40 Outfitters. If this is the first time you’ve seen a bulb like this, then you probably have a few questions. Is this light as bright as traditional halogen or CFL lights? Absolutely it is. Does this COB LED use less energy or more energy? Less… up to 80 percent less actually. Does the corn cob light get ... Read more

We scoured the Mid-States show today in search of the best new farm and ranch products coming to the market.  The Mid-States trade show is the largest show in the United States for Farm and Ranch retailers and is hosted twice a year in Minneapolis, Minnesota.  Currently only 41 businesses in Canada and the United States are invited to participate, and North 40 Outfitters is proud to be one of those 41 companies. While many of these products won’t be seeing store shelves until 2018 we wanted to be sure to give you a preview so that the North 40 Life community had the chance to see it first. Country Companion Senior The latest edition to the Country Companion line of feeds will be an updated senior horse feed to help put healthy weight on your older horses.  This feed is a pelleted feed with added oils to make the pellets softer for o... Read more

The Cardinal Rule of chicken farming? Don't get more chickens than you can care for! If you buy too many chickens for the amount of time/money/energy/space you have, chances are they are not going to flourish- and could actually get sick, or in some drastic cases, the outcome may be even worse. For example, imagine you don't have the correct watering system, or your waterer is too small for your flock -- or, you live in the Northwest where summers are hot and chickens need water. No matter the manner, without water, chickens, like people, cannot survive. Going too Big, Too Fast Chickens can also get sick if you go too big, too fast. And when that happens, it happens slowly and you might not catch it at first- Imagine your life as a chicken. If there is not enough space for the pursuit of life, liberty and the decent meal worm, you will s... Read more