I'm Phil Johnson we farm actually 60
miles north of Times Square, New York City.
I'm fourth generation here. My mother's
grandparents started it.
I don't farm here because I want to I farm here because I planted here.
We have about 270 cows right now. They're averaging just over 20,000 pounds per cow.
We produce about five million pounds of
milk a year, and that milk of course goes
to Jamaica Queens. So New York City
school children are drinking our milk and we're pretty proud of that.
We do farm about 2,300 acres. We grow about 900 acres hay crops — alfalfa such as we got here.
Grass and alfalfa pasture, and corn. We had a good year last year.
Like I mentioned, my accountants said, "Well what piece of machinery would you like to invest in, if you were going buy a new piece?"
And I said, a mower. So we started looking.
When I invest in a new piece of equipment, I like to go with the new ideas that are the best.
This mower did things that other mowers don't do.
We did look at several 13-foot center-pivot mowers from other brands, and
they required 140 horsepower — this requires 95. I'm running 1978 down here — 4340.
I run this with 37-year-old tractor that's about probably 95-100 horsepower right now. It did well even on this steep hill.
That's what we like about it.
In fact this machine has two 9-footer cutter bars that independently float.
This is a big advantage to us, I felt.
Before we had this mower we actually went through three new cutter bars one year.
Every piece of equipment I buy now I looked at
the fact that we've got to get over the road to travel these many fields we have  in many townships.
We like the fact that this machine cuts 18-foot with two 9-foot cutter bars that flex.
We like very much the fact that in a matter of seconds we can
fold this machine down hydraulically
right from the cab to 8.5 feet wide.
We can co-mingle with all the people in
the traffic and that's why we bought
this Vermeer TM1400. Because it does
fold up and gets in and out of bar ways
and up and down the road much better.
This makes it a lot safer. This has mastered our hay cutting. This has been tremendous.
This machine allows me to mow in a couple hours when I used to mow with the ones in a day.
I find it very dependable. It's nice to have a machine that you can go out and startup and run.
Now all we worry about
is that 38-year-old tractor.
I'm Phil Johnson from Goshen, New York, a dairy farmer, and this is why I switched to the TM1400 mower.
