This week we are still working on that drain tile installation. We decided to expand that project a little bit. It’s going to cost more, but we think it will be worth the effort to go ahead and cover a few more acres. If that gets us a few more bushels per acre the tile system should pay for itself fairly soon.
I haven’t been helping out with the tile much because I’ve been putting on fall fertilizer for next year’s corn crop. We aren’t covering all our corn acres just yet, and the acres we are doing are just about a half rate. We’ll come back in the spring before and/or after planting to get the rest applied.
This has been my job most of the week. The wagon if full of anhydrous ammonia which is nitrogen fertilizer. Nitrogen is a very important component to growing a great corn crop. A couple years ago we missed a pass in one field somehow. The corn in those rows made half the yield the adjacent rows produced.
Anhydrous is cold stuff!
Sometimes you have to make do with the tools you’ve got. I put these two pipe wrenches together for more leverage.
And I need more leverage to loosen the bolts that hold this broken shank on the fertilizer applicator. Most likely I hit a large rock under the surface. It must be a big one because it also broke a shear bolt on the next row over which would be 30″ away. I stuck a survey flag in the ground so we can come back and dig it out later.
The screen on the left takes care of recording data for future use and handles the GPS that steers the tractor so I don’t have to! In the middle is my iPad for keeping up with the world while I’m in the field. On the right is the rate controller for the fertilizer.
Our ryegrass cover crop is filling in pretty well I think. We purchased the grass from my friend in Oregon. Click on that grass to see her farm blog!
This wagon has a hydraulic cylinder that tilts the frame so you can just back up to a roll of drain tile, pick it up, and drive away!
This was the big planning session for the addition to the drainage we’re installing. Dad drew it on the installer’s dirty back window. Not everything we do is high tech!
And of course I voted this week!
