A dairy on the prairie video, now a 10th Generation video, just need a Saskdutch Kid, Welker farms, Millennial Farmer and finish it off with a Tom Pemberton farm and my farming week will be complete. You all do great work.
Eric, your wife may not be a poop fan but I love it when you clean your barns. When I watch you doing this I always think how clean you keep your place and how calm your cows are. Looks to me like your loving care gives a good life for your critters. xo Claire
When I was little, 4-5 years old, I lived in Pennsylvania. One of our friends had a dairy and his wife had a hair salon on the farm. We'd go visit and they showed us how to milk the cows, clean the barns and milk parlor. To this day I when I watch you working in the parlor the smell comes back. The odor of the cows, the manure, the disinfectant and the smell of milk. Not to mention the humidity on summer days. 50 years since I've been in a milk parlor but I can remember the smell.
It never fails to make me laugh when they get let back into the holding pen after fresh bedding they hop on their front legs and kick up the back legs! All of them do it, from young heifers' to old cows. I wonder what instincts are making them all act like that? Funny
Think they do this when they get too exited. Know cows can do this if they are too tame, too tame cows actually makes them more dangerous cause of this. Cause they get too exited when you visit or come to clean the pen. Many who has got a knockout from a cow kicking it heels in exitement to meet them. I dont know for sure tho. Just my thinking
its because they love fresh bedding, if the cows are feeling good they'll usually always act like that with fresh bedding. Just think about how you feel when you get into bed with fresh sheets
Eric, I hope you get true joy out of producing this Real Life material for public viewing. I REALLY like your work and seeing you manage your operation. It brings me great joy to know farmers like your family still provide food so consistently for the populace. Know also that some of us out here recognise and have experienced the challenges you face and applaud your tenacity. Thankyou for describing it all so clearly and beautifully. You are a good teacher. FarmerMJ
I work on a dairy here in East Earl, so close by to you. Our milk cows are on a compost pack. We rototill on a smaller amount of bedding when we clean out in spring and fall. It works good. We just like to keep some of the old bedding and add new. Keeps the old bugs in the pack and keeps it composting. I rototill our heifer barn sometimes once a week in winter if it’s dry to save on bedding. I think you’d like it!
I’ll bet that’s easier to clean than the old heifer barn by a long shot, eh ? Nothing more gratifying than a clean barn. Kudos and Merry Christmas ! God Bless you ! He has risen !
Father in law has a pack barn, gets cultivated everyday an it works great, cows are clean and it does reduce the amount of shavings. In the summer months he doesn’t add any shavings just cultivates it daily an the fans seem to dry it out.
Use to clean a somewhat smaller barn we used to let animals go in and out during winter. Every other Saturday we cleaned it out and use pitchforks and a wheel barrow to take it out and dump on to manure pack. Then rebedded it, only to start over again two weeks later! Thanks for the video and Merry Christmas to you and your family. Enjoy you channel.
Eric has the best farm in my opinion cleanes very well, sun,air plenty of ventilation, takes very care well care of the cows 🐄 and calves, modern machinery to dao every aspect of the chores, excellent manure system. Excellent milking parlor, Great Great job Eric well done
Hello Eric, thanks for the video. Looks like you need an extra concrete slab in front of the new barn. Stay healthy and safe. Merry Christmas to you and your family.
We have a bedding pack with green sawdust and use an 8 ft chisel plow on a 3 pt with a 3020. We bed one day and til the next so on and so forth. It works great, our cows stay cleaner, and i think it balances PH levels as well so its not as acidic on the soil. We went from cleaning a 3ft high pack 2 times a year with corn stalks to once a year with sawdust and it doesnt get much over 3 feet high in a long Wisconsin winter.
For a compost bed, more than one foot is needed. Start with atleast one and a half foot. Have visited a dairy farmer here in Sweden and read about it. The most important thing is the temperature and oxygen in the bed and that it's cultivated twice a day. Open building helps to dry the bed but at the same time it must remain warm in winter time. You can always try but I don't think temperature will be enough
Probably not relatable but we poultry farmers use rice hulls for bedding and we only do a complete clean out once a year. We only clean out during the summer because we don’t need the additional heat then. New rice hulls are not as “warm” as old ones. After each flock (50/55 days) we de-cake the litter. The machine removes all the crust but allows much of it to fall back to the floor. We treat our litter each flock with PLT. This makes for great bedding.
Of course aerating the compost material will help it break down faster, than none aerated organic material. It provides oxygen to the microbial organism and allow them to multiply. The more oxygen, the fast the breakdown process will occur. It's just how. A tiller or maybe even a small rack normally used to fluff hay.
The clearance to the ceiling of the new barn is pretty close. You are always on your best skills. If you are not on here before Eric, Merry Christmas to you and your family. Thanks for another great video.
Nice job on cleaning the barn, fast, effective and tidy, love seeing productive work. The door y'all repaired looks good, I see all the hard work you, your dad and the rest of your crew/family do. The first indicator is the well being of your herd, your building and your equipment. Great video, enjoyed watching. Thanks for sharing, have a great week and a very Merry Christmas to all!
Merry Christmas Eric and your family of 10th Generation. You talked about running something through your bedding in the heifer barn, does Kubota have something to do the job or could you use your old lawn mower with a attachment on the back. I love how you can move your cows from one building to another with no problems and how neat and clean your farm looks all the time. Can't wait for the day your son rides with you in the tractor,mine always did and he was sleeping within 5-10 minutes I think because of the smooth ride and the music on the radio.
Im watching Farmer P and he uses compost that he makes from his tree business and sells it aswell but really it comes in use for winter as the the cattle get heat and last awhile. just thought when you're trying different things.
I hope the scraper robot works out, I think it could save time and allow you time for other things. Time really is money! Merry Christmas to you and your hardworking family. Many 🙌 Blessings
Have you thought about a hoop barn? Less expensive than a Wooden structure. You could line it with Round bails to keep it warmer. That way you could grow your herd and not have to sell off as many.
Watching your videos makes me so much more appreciative of my milk and butter that’s for sure. Such hard work. You keep everything so meticulous. Such hard work. Thanks for sharing. ❤️
We have a compost barn that we till twice a day ours is quite deep over a foot almost 2 feet most of the year. I like it a lot we add bedding as needed 2-3 a week depending on how wet it is out.
Merry Christmas Eric to you and all of your family. I have learned a lot about dairy farms by watching your videos. Thank you for sharing your life with us.
Love your videos . Just a bit of knowledge from a fellow dairyman we tried tilling the bed pack in our dry cow and large bred heifer barn and until we had a foot or more of depth it didn’t seem to help much. That being said we live in the middle of corn country and we’re using shredded corn stalks to bed with. The tiller did help with further breaking up the stalks and making it easier to clean the pen. With your using wood shavings it may work better at less depth. As to the pack pushing on the doors we had the same problem but we put a 2x12 inside of the door and that helped to keep the pack from crowding the door open and pushing on the latches. Keep up the good work glad to see some young guys getting into the business.
Don't feel bad about driving off with the fuel nozzle still attached. I wish they put all the caps on the hood still so you would see it when you hop in the cab.
Every time I put on my spiffy new burgundy hoodie, I keep looking for the pint of Clover Farms chocolate milk in the pocket. Unfortunately I don't find any. Love the gray one I got last year and the burgundy one this year!
the only way to use less shavings is to keep the moisture out of it and thats impossible, if you work it up it lets out moisture as steam and the manure will cool of and not heat which stops the cooking process that is needed to make compost,a pile of manure left for years at an old farm is fantastic stuff on the bottom and in the middle, thats what i have noticed, keep on keepin on wish i had what u have, my grandpa didn't expand past the two son operation when his other two came along in the late 40's was so awesome as a kid with my cousin baling n fillin silo n pitching out the calf barn n milkin n grindin chop n plowin n rakin hay n when the dead wagon came to drag on a downer. holsteins 60 head operation 800 acres
We designed our steer, heifer & dry cow barns to have a higher ceiling due to us keeping the bed pack thicker. We usually only clean it out once every 3 months and then we stack it and let it compost a bit. Our dairy barns are always scraped, flushed & bedded with sand daily.
Ever thought of putting a 2X12 Plank by the door that got pushed out with manure with some brackets at each end? It work for us years ago. Put a chain through the plank to pull it out and being able to handle it with your skid steer.
Just think: If you hadn't torn down the old heifer barn you could have put 25 tailenders in there and still shipped the same amount of milk. Your right about the compost system. It would take almost two feet of material to get the composting process started.You would also have to stir the pack atleast everyday to get enough oxygen into it to make it work.
on the farm were i work we usually like to power wash after cleaning out the old bedding it really helps with how it looks afterwards i would highly recommend it, love your vids by the way keep it up.
It would work with only a foot of bedding but would need to be tilled rather than cultivated. If it's deeper it can be cultivated because there's more heat being generated already. We use a tiller on the back of a little tractor and only takes about 30 minutes to do a 75x350 barn.
Do you all do that at your barn with the wood shavings??? I'm curious about this tilling bed pack etc as I've never heard of it before nor seen it and I'm also curious how it might work at the 10th gen farm with the bean stubble so they can get to saving some money again... might help level things out in the new barn as well between the younger and older cows so that they can make it thru winter without spreading manure...
Your dad on that little tractor sure did make me laugh. He was having the time of his life on there, haha. Super awesome. Anyway, another great video, Eric. Thanks for sharing! That sucks about the fuel nozzle... If your dad didn't know before he sure does now thanks to this video, lol. Anyway, Merry Christmas to you and your family!
I think it would help to "air it out" get the process started so it's raring to go one you do totally clean it out then spread it on the fields, might just work faster at helping the crops sprout up faster...might even get you more crops due to a boost
I know one thing. This family is very hard working. We don't show our appreciation the families and people who work like this enough. Let's all share this channel with at least one person every vid and get the channel to have the subs it deserves. Let try to get to 500k by the end of 2022.
Up here in Minnesota, we had a 60F day last week and it ended with a few confirmed tornadoes and extreme winds throughout the night and into the next few days
Maybe you could put the bedding in a pile and let it compost for some time? Makes cleaning out the barn faster and allows the composting process more time.
I think if you found a small garden tractor similar to that cub cadet with a tiller or if there is a tiller attachment you could find for the cub cadet it would be best. older bolens lawn tractors had tiller attachments. I have an old bolens g14 with a tiller and I love it for my garden. I think something similar would be shallow enough that you dont have to worry about letting the bedding build up too far first.
A dairy on the prairie video, now a 10th Generation video, just need a Saskdutch Kid, Welker farms, Millennial Farmer and finish it off with a Tom Pemberton farm and my farming week will be complete. You all do great work.
I subscribe all this channel for farming
Millennial Farmer is recovering from Covid. Let him rest.
@@OOpSjm really😨
@@OOpSjm Ya I know but to leave him out of the list wouldn't be right, I did start off with him.
And Kip Siegler?
Eric, your wife may not be a poop fan but I love it when you clean your barns. When I watch you doing this I always think how clean you keep your place and how calm your cows are. Looks to me like your loving care gives a good life for your critters. xo Claire
20:44 I love to watch how visually happier the heifers are once they get new bedding. Merry Christmas to you and your family, Eric.
When I was little, 4-5 years old, I lived in Pennsylvania. One of our friends had a dairy and his wife had a hair salon on the farm. We'd go visit and they showed us how to milk the cows, clean the barns and milk parlor. To this day I when I watch you working in the parlor the smell comes back. The odor of the cows, the manure, the disinfectant and the smell of milk. Not to mention the humidity on summer days. 50 years since I've been in a milk parlor but I can remember the smell.
It never fails to make me laugh when they get let back into the holding pen after fresh bedding they hop on their front legs and kick up the back legs! All of them do it, from young heifers' to old cows. I wonder what instincts are making them all act like that? Funny
Was going to comment on this very thing. It's so fun to watch them do that.
Think they do this when they get too exited. Know cows can do this if they are too tame, too tame cows actually makes them more dangerous cause of this. Cause they get too exited when you visit or come to clean the pen. Many who has got a knockout from a cow kicking it heels in exitement to meet them.
I dont know for sure tho. Just my thinking
its because they love fresh bedding, if the cows are feeling good they'll usually always act like that with fresh bedding. Just think about how you feel when you get into bed with fresh sheets
Eric, I hope you get true joy out of producing this Real Life material for public viewing.
I REALLY like your work and seeing you manage your operation. It brings me great joy to know farmers like your family still provide food so consistently for the populace.
Know also that some of us out here recognise and have experienced the challenges you face and applaud your tenacity.
Thankyou for describing it all so clearly and beautifully. You are a good teacher.
FarmerMJ
I love your farming vlogs
I work on a dairy here in East Earl, so close by to you. Our milk cows are on a compost pack. We rototill on a smaller amount of bedding when we clean out in spring and fall. It works good. We just like to keep some of the old bedding and add new. Keeps the old bugs in the pack and keeps it composting. I rototill our heifer barn sometimes once a week in winter if it’s dry to save on bedding. I think you’d like it!
Compost barn for cows is an interesting concept. In chicken keeping we call it the 'deep litter method'.
Merry Christmas guys!
Merry Christmas to you too!
I’ll bet that’s easier to clean than the old heifer barn by a long shot, eh ? Nothing more gratifying than a clean barn. Kudos and Merry Christmas ! God Bless you ! He has risen !
What would a farmer do without a skid steer? What a great machine. Clean barn.. like fresh new sheets on the bed.
Merry Christmas to all at 10 Gen. 🇨🇦
Father in law has a pack barn, gets cultivated everyday an it works great, cows are clean and it does reduce the amount of shavings. In the summer months he doesn’t add any shavings just cultivates it daily an the fans seem to dry it out.
Grate video the new barn is so easy to clean with all the gates. Vary well done !
Use to clean a somewhat smaller barn we used to let animals go in and out during winter. Every other Saturday we cleaned it out and use pitchforks and a wheel barrow to take it out and dump on to manure pack. Then rebedded it, only to start over again two weeks later! Thanks for the video and Merry Christmas to you and your family. Enjoy you channel.
Eric, Merry Christmas to you and your family! Thank you for the present of your wonderful videos you gave us this year! 🎁
Eric has the best farm in my opinion cleanes very well, sun,air plenty of ventilation, takes very care well care of the cows 🐄 and calves, modern machinery to dao every aspect of the chores, excellent manure system. Excellent milking parlor, Great Great job Eric well done
Hall and Oats in the barn, good vibes. I enjoy these longer multi-day videos!
Hello Eric, thanks for the video. Looks like you need an extra concrete slab in front of the new barn. Stay healthy and safe. Merry Christmas to you and your family.
We have a bedding pack with green sawdust and use an 8 ft chisel plow on a 3 pt with a 3020. We bed one day and til the next so on and so forth. It works great, our cows stay cleaner, and i think it balances PH levels as well so its not as acidic on the soil. We went from cleaning a 3ft high pack 2 times a year with corn stalks to once a year with sawdust and it doesnt get much over 3 feet high in a long Wisconsin winter.
G' day mate: you and all the family have a Merry Christmas and Happy new year.
I've been watching for so long, I remember when those center gates in the free stall barn used to work automatically 😅
I think a time lapse of your entire day with some narration would be pretty cool
For a compost bed, more than one foot is needed. Start with atleast one and a half foot. Have visited a dairy farmer here in Sweden and read about it. The most important thing is the temperature and oxygen in the bed and that it's cultivated twice a day. Open building helps to dry the bed but at the same time it must remain warm in winter time. You can always try but I don't think temperature will be enough
Probably not relatable but we poultry farmers use rice hulls for bedding and we only do a complete clean out once a year. We only clean out during the summer because we don’t need the additional heat then. New rice hulls are not as “warm” as old ones. After each flock (50/55 days) we de-cake the litter. The machine removes all the crust but allows much of it to fall back to the floor. We treat our litter each flock with PLT. This makes for great bedding.
Of course aerating the compost material will help it break down faster, than none aerated organic material. It provides oxygen to the microbial organism and allow them to multiply. The more oxygen, the fast the breakdown process will occur. It's just how. A tiller or maybe even a small rack normally used to fluff hay.
You should build a move able retaining wall on the inside of that heifer wall, that door won’t last very long
The clearance to the ceiling of the new barn is pretty close. You are always on your best skills. If you are not on here before Eric, Merry Christmas to you and your family. Thanks for another great video.
Merry Christmas to ya Eric and God bless you and your family.
Nice job on cleaning the barn, fast, effective and tidy, love seeing productive work. The door y'all repaired looks good, I see all the hard work you, your dad and the rest of your crew/family do. The first indicator is the well being of your herd, your building and your equipment. Great video, enjoyed watching. Thanks for sharing, have a great week and a very Merry Christmas to all!
Merry Christmas Eric and your family of 10th Generation. You talked about running something through your bedding in the heifer barn, does Kubota have something to do the job or could you use your old lawn mower with a attachment on the back. I love how you can move your cows from one building to another with no problems and how neat and clean your farm looks all the time. Can't wait for the day your son rides with you in the tractor,mine always did and he was sleeping within 5-10 minutes I think because of the smooth ride and the music on the radio.
I think the way you are presently cleaning that barn is working great!
We use an little old ripper in our barn to stir, it really does make a difference.
Cleaning out the last corner, that is swiss genetics! 😉
Well done Eric!
Always working hard! Love that. Blessings and best wishes for Christmas and 2022!
Greetz from The Netherlands, Colijnsplaat.
John
Im watching Farmer P and he uses compost that he makes from his tree business and sells it aswell but really it comes in use for winter as the the cattle get heat and last awhile. just thought when you're trying different things.
We have a 1 cyl cubby from the 80's and she still runs like a dream. Old Sub cadets are just built well
Happy Holidays to you Eric and your family
I hope the scraper robot works out, I think it could save time and allow you time for other things. Time really is money! Merry Christmas to you and your hardworking family. Many 🙌 Blessings
Merry Christmas to you and your family! Enjoyed the video.
Hope you and your family have a wonderful Christmas 🎄
That was enjoyable to watch ! Strange how cleaning pens is so satisfying.
I think that cleaning like you just did is the way to go. Fresh and clean.
Thanks for you videos! Wishing Y'ALL a very MERRY CHRISTMAS and a BLESSED NEW YEAR !!!
GOD BLESS !!!
I hope my dad doesn't notice it. That's funny. I like when you show us that stuff. Those gates are such a great idea. Good video. Pax.
Have you thought about a hoop barn? Less expensive than a Wooden structure. You could line it with Round bails to keep it warmer. That way you could grow your herd and not have to sell off as many.
To your family and your dads family have a blessed Christmas and a happy new year ! From a warm downunder viewer !
Nice camera work thanks for taking us along you are going to have to man up on the fuel nossal sooner or later!lol👍😂
Merry Christmas to you and your family Eric!
Watching your videos makes me so much more appreciative of my milk and butter that’s for sure. Such hard work. You keep everything so meticulous. Such hard work. Thanks for sharing. ❤️
Merry Christmas to you and your family Eric
that mini tractor to push the feed is awesome :D
Great job. Beautiful farm
To be honest my favorite part of watching your channel is watching you clean the barns and manure spreading
We have a compost barn that we till twice a day ours is quite deep over a foot almost 2 feet most of the year. I like it a lot we add bedding as needed 2-3 a week depending on how wet it is out.
Merry Christmas to you and Your Family! God Bless America!
Wishing you all a blessed and happy Christmas and a healthy 2022 from the UK
Another great video Eric. Thank you very much for sharing it. Merry Christmas and Happy New Years
Merry Christmas.
Merry Christmas Eric to you and all of your family. I have learned a lot about dairy farms by watching your videos. Thank you for sharing your life with us.
Merry Christmas to you all
Love your videos . Just a bit of knowledge from a fellow dairyman we tried tilling the bed pack in our dry cow and large bred heifer barn and until we had a foot or more of depth it didn’t seem to help much. That being said we live in the middle of corn country and we’re using shredded corn stalks to bed with. The tiller did help with further breaking up the stalks and making it easier to clean the pen. With your using wood shavings it may work better at less depth. As to the pack pushing on the doors we had the same problem but we put a 2x12 inside of the door and that helped to keep the pack from crowding the door open and pushing on the latches. Keep up the good work glad to see some young guys getting into the business.
Don't feel bad about driving off with the fuel nozzle still attached. I wish they put all the caps on the hood still so you would see it when you hop in the cab.
Merry Christmas
Merry Christmas to you and the entire family. 🎄❤️✝️
I play your videos at night to help me sleep thank you for your hard work and care for your animals people farm and equipment
Merry Christmas to you and the entire family. I love the way you clearly explain things in your vids. God bless!
Merry Christmas thanks for the great videos. This city boy from Chicago watches almost every one
Every time I put on my spiffy new burgundy hoodie, I keep looking for the pint of Clover Farms chocolate milk in the pocket. Unfortunately I don't find any. Love the gray one I got last year and the burgundy one this year!
the only way to use less shavings is to keep the moisture out of it and thats impossible, if you work it up it lets out moisture as steam and the manure will cool of and not heat which stops the cooking process that is needed to make compost,a pile of manure left for years at an old farm is fantastic stuff on the bottom and in the middle, thats what i have noticed, keep on keepin on wish i had what u have, my grandpa didn't expand past the two son operation when his other two came along in the late 40's was so awesome as a kid with my cousin baling n fillin silo n pitching out the calf barn n milkin n grindin chop n plowin n rakin hay n when the dead wagon came to drag on a downer. holsteins 60 head operation 800 acres
Clean and dry ! Looks very good.
You dairy guys are hard working farmers.
Happy Christmas Eric! To you and your Dad and all your family.
The way that there is a cycle, and a time for everything, is really comforting.
We designed our steer, heifer & dry cow barns to have a higher ceiling due to us keeping the bed pack thicker. We usually only clean it out once every 3 months and then we stack it and let it compost a bit. Our dairy barns are always scraped, flushed & bedded with sand daily.
I enjoy watching the cows play as they are let out into the new bedding
Good stuff Eric 👍👍👍👍 it's in upper 70 here 80 on Christmas,love it😂😂😂
Ever thought of putting a 2X12 Plank by the door that got pushed out with manure with some brackets at each end? It work for us years ago. Put a chain through the plank to pull it out and being able to handle it with your skid steer.
Another great video. Merry Christmas to you and your Family.
Just think: If you hadn't torn down the old heifer barn you could have put 25 tailenders in there and still shipped the same amount of milk. Your right about the compost system. It would take almost two feet of material to get the composting process started.You would also have to stir the pack atleast everyday to get enough oxygen into it to make it work.
on the farm were i work we usually like to power wash after cleaning out the old bedding it really helps with how it looks afterwards i would highly recommend it, love your vids by the way keep it up.
Merry Christmas and a very Happy New Year from your Texas fans!
It would work with only a foot of bedding but would need to be tilled rather than cultivated. If it's deeper it can be cultivated because there's more heat being generated already. We use a tiller on the back of a little tractor and only takes about 30 minutes to do a 75x350 barn.
Do you all do that at your barn with the wood shavings??? I'm curious about this tilling bed pack etc as I've never heard of it before nor seen it and I'm also curious how it might work at the 10th gen farm with the bean stubble so they can get to saving some money again... might help level things out in the new barn as well between the younger and older cows so that they can make it thru winter without spreading manure...
Happy Holidays to you and your family ... Cheers ...
Your dad on that little tractor sure did make me laugh. He was having the time of his life on there, haha. Super awesome. Anyway, another great video, Eric. Thanks for sharing! That sucks about the fuel nozzle... If your dad didn't know before he sure does now thanks to this video, lol. Anyway, Merry Christmas to you and your family!
Thanks for another great video. I always enjoy watching.
I think it would help to "air it out" get the process started so it's raring to go one you do totally clean it out then spread it on the fields, might just work faster at helping the crops sprout up faster...might even get you more crops due to a boost
I know one thing. This family is very hard working. We don't show our appreciation the families and people who work like this enough.
Let's all share this channel with at least one person every vid and get the channel to have the subs it deserves. Let try to get to 500k by the end of 2022.
Merry Christmas to all and God Bless
Push the bedding outside the barn, then pick it up and put it in the spreader.
LOVE ALL YOUR VIDEOS ERIC HAVE BLESSED DAY
I love your farming,
you did your job very well
🐄😘👏
Up here in Minnesota, we had a 60F day last week and it ended with a few confirmed tornadoes and extreme winds throughout the night and into the next few days
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from a fellow Western PA dairy farmer ! I hope all is well !
What we do when we clean it all out is we use corn stalk bales first then once it gets wet we use saw dust so it has a good base
Maybe you could put the bedding in a pile and let it compost for some time? Makes cleaning out the barn faster and allows the composting process more time.
Doesn't make the bedding last longer of course...
I sure like our new barn! God Bless!
I think if you found a small garden tractor similar to that cub cadet with a tiller or if there is a tiller attachment you could find for the cub cadet it would be best. older bolens lawn tractors had tiller attachments. I have an old bolens g14 with a tiller and I love it for my garden. I think something similar would be shallow enough that you dont have to worry about letting the bedding build up too far first.
You need one of the sand bed "fluffers"/agitators that Saskdutchkid uses on there sand beds.