Our farm got back in the air, visited the tractor doctor, did some travelling, and continued to haul grain during this Valentine’s Day week. Let’s take a look at the action!
Flying High Again
My Phantom 2 returned from a trip back to Aerial Media Pros in California. I sent it back for two reasons. My FPV (first person view) monitor quit taking a charge around New Year’s. Some loose connections were repaired and I’ll be getting a wall charger that wasn’t included in my original purchase. Until now I’ve just had some external Lipo batteries to keep the screen’s internal battery charged. The little box on top of the Phantom was also installed at AMP. It’s a Futaba GPS sensor that will relay telemetry back to my radio controls so I can keep an eye on things like distance and altitude. Spring will be here soon and I’ll really be able to put this gear to work on the farm. Look for much more to come from this.
Doctor’s Orders
The 4630 headed to town last week to address some nagging issues. It’s had some sluggish hydraulics since we purchased it at auction a little over a year ago. A small leak near the injector pump is being addressed as well. We thought it make be just a torn gasket, but there’s an internal leak. Since we don’t know the history of the pump we’re just going to have it gone through to check the rest of the internals while it’s out of the tractor. So far it seems the hydraulic issue was debris from old, worn brakes clogging some screens.
Helping the Neighbors
Well we tried to help. About a half mile from out shop is an intersection that doesn’t make for the best semi turning even in good conditions. On our way back from town Dad and I encountered a neighbors truck stuck halfway through a turn. When we get nice polished ice like this an empty truck can get stuck on a flat surface because with no weight of grain over the drive axle traction is hard to come by from a dead stop or very slow speed like this turn would require. Dad’s truck couldn’t get any traction on this icy road to budge the semi an inch. The neighbor had a tractor on the way though, and the truck was pulled out in short order. What can’t be seen here because of the snow is that all four corners of this intersection have drop offs that a driver doesn’t want his tires to risk a chance of going over.
2014 National Farm Machinery Show
Wednesday brought a trip down to Louisville, Kentucky for the annual Nation Farm Machinery Show. I’ll post more on this later, but here’s a couple of teaser pics for now! Above is a new idea in corn harvesting. Geringhoff’s Independence corn head claims to eliminate the need to follow corn rows as they were planted which is quite a departure from standard corn harvest. In the future as corn genetics allow we may be planting corn much like wheat in very narrow rows or “mass planting” with no rows at all. This would see planting populations around 50,000 plants per acre compared to the 32,000 we average today.
We run Wilson Trailers on our farm, and they had a very nice display at the show.
Trucker Hat
We’ve been hauling grain on the days we get temps above zero. Four loads of corn went out this Friday. Here Randy watches as the front hopper gets full.
A band of snow blew in South of the farm, but right through Lafayette where we were hauling corn this day. When you weigh over 80,000lbs you have to be sure you can stop! Things were getting pretty slick right here at this stop light. Driving home empty takes a little different approach to driving in bad conditions because now you’re 60,000lbs lighter!
Next week we’ll be hauling soybeans we raised for seed. As with planting and harvesting of seed beans (and popcorn) we must get all the equipment clean to deliver a pure product. A small amount of corn from Friday’s loads remain on the hopper doors. We’ll check the sides and any railings or ledges for anything that is not a soybean that comes out of the seed bin. Corn will easily show up in a sample. Everywhere we haul any grain has samples pulled from both hoppers in order to grade the load for purity, moisture, damage, foreign material, and more.
Next week will be busy for a few days hauling almost 20 loads of those seed soybeans, and that will probably including cleaning out the bin if the seed company wants them all. After next week I’m going to be gone for nearly two weeks doing farm related stuff so stay tuned for all that fun to come!
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