Well Monday was a little slow, but the rest of the farm week was packed full of activity! Lots of learning, and lots of driving. Let’s take a look at the week!
Getting Schooled
I spent the whole day Tuesday at our John Deere dealer. The day consisted of several clinics on current and future technology. The awesome, new ExactEmerge™ electric drive planter was on hand for all to see, and it was certainly one of the hot topics of the day. In years past I haven’t learned much at these dealer clinics, but this was the best one I’ve attended. Our single location dealer recently merged with two other dealers to become a 16 store dealer. That combination played a big part in bringing a better clinic to our town.
Spring Has Sprung. Slightly.
Some of the flowers in front of our house decided this was the right time to come out for spring. It was another roller coaster week for temperatures in the Midwest as winter tried to hold on for a few more days. We even have a chance of accumulating snow later this next week.
Full Service
We’ve been mocking up ideas for a service trailer to begin using this spring when we hit the fields again. The front fuel tank/toolbox is the one we saved from Dad’s black truck he traded late last year. The red tank is about 40 years old. We pulled it out of storage and gave it a paint job. A generator and air compressor round out the bunch. We’re having a trailer similar in size to this one built for us that will carry all this stuff permanently. It should be able to handle a few bags of seed as well. We’ll have our own little service trailer now for a fraction of the cost of what most of these types of trailers go for on the market. It won’t be as fancy or good-looking, but it will work for us.
Loaded Up With a Loader
On Wednesday we popped over to Mowrey’s auction in Milford, Illinois hoping to get a 148 loader for our 4630. The one loader at the sale went a little higher than we wanted, but a 4020 with the same model loader sold right as we were getting ready to leave. Dad walked up to the high bidder and asked if he would be willing to sell the loader. A deal was struck, and Grandpa and I shot back over to the land of Lincoln Thursday morning to grab our prize! FYI my Cummins did awesome on its first tow of any significant distance, and the integrated exhaust brake works great!
Tow job pic.twitter.com/fKjq40aJ00
— Brian Scott (@thefarmerslife) March 20, 2014
The rack of weights had to come off the front end of the 4630 in order to make room for the loader.
The loader frame was bolted up, and we will be looking at finding a new way of mounting the steps into the cab. Nothing much to this part. The same loader frame bolts up to the 4630 just like in bolts to the 4020 it came from. No modification necessary.
The hydraulic box mounted easily to a threaded hole already in the frame of the tractor. About all that’s left to do now is figure out where we can install the controls in the cab, and we need to mount the loader on the frame.
Farmers Take Flight!
On Friday Dad and I headed to Illinois once again. My third trip across the border in as many days! This time it was for the #ColbyUAS Fly In 2014. I’ll post more on this later, but 25 agnerd farmers showed up for the event hosted at Boucher Farms (home of Potential Ag). All of us had our Phantoms on hand for a day of learning and flying fun. We had a great time being face to face with all the people who talk about this stuff daily in a facebook group and on twitter. Above is my Phantom 2 along with two others ready to fly!
Bin There, Haven’t Done That Thankfully
Seen during our travels last week. Bins full of corn should have roofs. These did not, but they were about to get new ones. A wind storm brought the whole grain leg down at this site, and obviously must have damaged these two bins as well.
Next week brings me a few more travel days, but soon it will be April. We’ll have to really start thinking about field work soon. Well, we’re always thinking about it, but it’s about time we actually get to do some again! As always we’ll probably be ready before Mother Nature. Stay tuned because there will be pictures and video of equipment in the field (definitely some from the air!) soon enough! Let me know what you think of our week in the comment section below!
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What did you learn at planter clinic?I think there is a ExactEmerge & MaxEmerge 5 at Beck Ag Center up 52 right now
Thanks for the info on the 148 attaching to the 4630. I’ve read a forum where they say it doesn’t fit.
Sure thing, Joe. It was very simple to install. I think there was one fitting for one hydraulic hose that was different, but everything bolted up the same as it came off.