[Redbaron]

Thanks for all the kind and helpful words of encouragement and helpful links. It really touches me how much you guys care, when most people on this site I have never actually seen face to face in real life. I really appreciate.

And to answer some questions, yes the 14K is a bare bones ridiculously stripped down number that includes all sorts of cheap workarounds rather than buying new equipment whenever possible. For example instead of a hydraulic roundbale unroller, a simple chain and swivel affair with a bar you sledge hammer right through the center of the bale ... 1 for the hay and one for the paper roll ... both pulled by a garden tractor I got free if I do the repairs. I was advised by the guy they sent out from the Oklahoma carbon project that they really don't even care the size of a tractor or the size of the no till drill. What they care is that it be a tractor and a drill! A farmer can watch me drive a garden tractor with a mower down an aisle and he instantly knows he will be using his own equipment, but just to whatever scale he operates. If it is a big john Deer and a flail mower or bush hog..whatever. He knows. The demonstration has value. But it is not so easy for the brain to make the leap from a hand operated simple seeder to a tractor pulled no till drill.

So I am going small but functional wherever possible. However, the smallest functional no til drill that works like the giant ones pulled by those huge John Deers still costs $7k It is small enough to be pulled by a 4 wheeler or even a garden tractor! There are other similar home style version in the hundred dollar range, but they are useless because they require a fully plowed field. So That's one place I can only go so cheap and still be a useful demonstration to a farmer.

That should give you an idea how stripped down this is but it still is expensive.

Remember the goal is not to make the best at small scale, but rather to simulate how it COULD potentially be done large scale. So some things that I know how to get around, I really can't and demonstrate fairly to another farmer how he could do it on 100 acres or 1000 acres.

It really is an intellectual challenge.

The first 5 years of the project I believe have proven the biophysical. But not at a scale useful to a commercial farmer. It's this next step I am working on now.