2024, animals, Farming Update, pets, Seasons, Uncategorized

Fieldwork!

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Today’s Farming Update comes from Ben.

It’s been another crazy busy week and all the farmers have been pushing hard planting corn in the neighborhood, trying to stay ahead of the weather. Not me, but everybody else. I have finished planting oats and I picked up corn seed. Considering last week I hadn’t even gotten out in the fields yet, things picked up fast and went pretty well.

I got the old tractor, the 630 running. That’s the one I rebuilt the carburetor on last fall, and while it’s not perfect yet, it does run, and I used it to re-arrange machinery to get the grain drill out.

I started planting with 48, 50lb bags of oats

I can tell I’m getting older as my fingers are getting stiffer as I lift them up to dump in the drill.

Meyer Seeds, where I’ve been getting seed for years, and where my dad even got seed, didn’t have oat seed this year, so they got it from another local place. There are not many places selling seed oats around here. The Albert Lea Seed House is a good source, but they’re an hour away from me and much more expensive that Meyers. Meyers have done such a good job cleaning seed over the years, on the rare occasion they don’t have any, other seed is dirty and dusty, and I even found a shriveled up, desiccated mouse carcass in a bag this year. I mean, what the heck?? Do better other people. 

I had planned to  finish planting oats late Wednesday night, and wouldn’t you know I ran out of seed with about half an hour left at 9:30 PM. Every year I tell myself, “order extra seed”. It’s not a problem to return it and it’s better to have extra than to run out with half an hour left, and I don’t know, next year comes and I forget. Thursday morning I picked up 8 more bags of oat seed, and got the corn seed, too.

I use the “Boating” app to track myself in the fields. I helps to find that corner I need to get back too, especially at night.

Everything in yellow is what I planted on Wednesday. I covered 12.9 miles, averaging 4.5 mph, and was out just over 4 hours. The time also includes stops and refilling.

The closer photo show every pass. Compare that to the actual tracks in the field.



It has been fun to be back in the tractors again. My brother usually helps do fieldwork, but he’s on vacation this year. My young helper is still in school, and the other helper has become gainfully employed. I don’t mind doing it myself, it just takes a little longer. My left arm gets tired because I run all the controls with my right arm, so the left arm is constantly steering. Building up my endurance I guess. I have acquired a second tractor buddy.

We don’t all fit into the cab so well.


Luna doesn’t look happy to be left home and she doesn’t look happy to be in the tractor. I don’t know what she wants. Bailey just lays on the floor, rests her head on the door, and sleeps. Luna moves back-and-forth and is in the way of either the clutch or the brake. And if I stop in the field and we all get out, she barks and barks to get back in. I think it’s still anxiety about being left behind.
I saw bald eagles, pheasants, turkey vultures, lots of deer, turkeys, and we’ve been hearing the sandhill cranes, I just haven’t seen them yet. Waiting on the first barn swallows. Should be a scout around any day now. They usually arrive about May 6.

Soil temperatures are in the 50s and GDU (Growing Degree Units) are at 177; 123 above normal at this point. The cereal rye that I planted as a cover crop last fall greened up but never got very tall. I had it sprayed this week to terminate it. It needed to be 12 inches high to get paid for planting it. However, because those fields are gonna be corn, having 12 inches of grass there was going to be a problem with residue, and I wanted it sprayed and terminated before it started to rain and I lost control of it. So it goes. It will still add organic matter to the soil.

Late next week I’ll start dealing with lighting for commencement on May 8th, so I’ll be busy with that for a few days. The experts says 100% of potential corn yield (in our area) comes from corn planted between April 22 and May 6th. I still got time!

FAVORITE FAMOUS LAST WORDS?

47 thoughts on “Fieldwork!”

  2. Wilds’s (possibly apocryphal) last words were the first that came to my mind as well.

    Thoreau, who did not subscribe to any formal religion, on his deathbed had a conversation something like this with an attending cleric:

    Have you made your peace with your God?
    “I never quarrelled with my God.” 
    But aren’t you concerned about the next world?
    “One world at a time.”

    Liked by 4 people

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  6. Love the photo of the moon, Ben.

    I just looked some up, and my favorite so far is from Richard Feynman, physicist: “This dying is boring.”

    A close second is from Louise-Marie-Thérèse de Saint Maurice: “Good. A woman who can fart is not dead.”

    Liked by 3 people

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  7. Rise and Shine, Baboons,

    I am drawing a complete blank this morning. But Ben the moon picture is very nice, and I love the old Johnny Popper.

    Jacque

    Liked by 2 people

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  8. I like this one: Drummer Buddy Rich died after surgery in 1987. As he was being prepped for surgery, a nurse asked him, “Is there anything you can’t take?” Rich replied, “Yeah, country music.”

    Liked by 4 people

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    1. ‘Half of the people can be part right all of the time

      Some of the people can be all right part of the time

      But all of the people can’t be all right all of the time

      I think Abraham Lincoln said that

      “I’ll let you be in my dreams if I can be in yours”

      I said that’

      From Talking World War III Blues by Bob Dylan.

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  15. I’d like to have the last thing I say be something profound, but I fear that in all likelihood it won’t be. Why should anything I say on my deathbed be any more insightful or profound than my usual mundane musings?

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  16. I had to look this up; I had a notion that Emily Dickinson, who wrote so often about death, would have memorable last words. Here are the ones reported by her niece:

    ”I must go in. The fog is rising…

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    1. O.T. – Hans and I just had dinner at W.A. Frost in St. Paul. Apparently it’s a prom night. Young people dressed to the nines were everywhere. What a fun night to be out on the town.

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    1. The next step is a big step. The app makes a line the tractor is already going. For the TRACTOR to follow a line, means I need to make the line first, and then you need the mechanical connections giving the tractor the auto steering advantage. And there are multiple options for that. Newer tractors incorporate it, older tractors have a gizmo that can be attached to the steering wheel.

      And I’d have to have a satellite gizmo to record and plot the line I’d set up first. “Field Boundaries” they’re called. And those globes for the tractors can be thousands of dollars. The more precise you need, the more expensive. Course there’s always software updates. And new and improved models.

      And I can’t justify the cost yet because I don’t have enough acres or equipment.

      The same line can be used from year to year, and tillage, planting, spraying, and harvesting. And I only do two of those things.

      And different manufactures are not cross compatible.

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  19. The Boating app looks cool.

    I have the Merlin app on my phone. Last night I had a white-throated sparrow in the yard, and I brought up its song on the app. For awhile my phone and the bird sang back and forth to each other.

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      1. I’ll bet that was fun.

        This is my favorite bird song – they used to be at our Robbinsdale feeders spring and fall when migrating… Finally found the song in a book I had with a little built-in recording – The Backyard Birdsong Guide by Donald Kroodsma. (Just hunted for the book, and find that the batteries, which I replaced just once, are now corroded… 

        : |

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  20. Meanwhile, Krista is having a grand time in Ireland, and our Anna is performing flamenco dances in public right here in our own back yard. You go girls.

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