Readers, you’re actually getting two weeks worth of farm pictures this time because I didn’t do a post last week.  Lucky you!  Week one was all about planting with a Friday rain delay.  On Saturday afternoon we were back to planting until just after sundown in order to finish a soybean field.  That leaves us with 250 acres of soybeans left to plant in order to finish the planting season.  Rain for 6 of 7 days kept us out of the fields all last week.  It’s been cold and wet, but I think we will probably get done later this coming week.

Plant On!

I think this a really good shot of no-till corn planting into soybean stubble.  It’s easy to see how the trash wheels sweep aside last year’s crop residue to make way for a clean seed trench.

Some no-till corn after corn action in this shot. Looks like we don’t have quite the clean sweep as we did in the first picture after soybeans, but the corn came up just fine.  We should keep a disease called Gray Leaf Spot in mind as this field grows.  Gray Leaf Spot can carry over in corn residue from one year to the next.  Almost all corn fields probably have some of this disease present every year, but it’s not often at economic levels that warrant any action.

I found a little tillage radish sprout in this same field.  This field had an oats/radish cover crop mix flown onto it last fall before harvest.  This little guy must not have germinated in the fall and waited out the winter.

Prescribed Rate

This is one of the pages I can bring up on a monitor in the tractor cab.  The colors represent seeding rates we mapped out before the season started.  The planter changes rates and colors the map accordingly as it crosses over our preplanned rates.  Cool stuff!  As we gather another round of harvest data each year we can dial in our seeding prescriptions a little more each year based on past history of a field.

Final Fill

This is the last time we put seed in the planter while finishing up a field 8 days ago.  As soon as we wrap up the last couple days of planting it will be about time to head back to the fields to feed our corn!  And wheat harvest won’t be too long after that!

New Farm Toy

And this is what we’ll be feeding all our corn with!  We’ve always used the toolbars provided by our fertilizer dealer, but lately we haven’t been totally satisfied with those rigs.  They have to go on all kinds of tractors for different customers.  It usually takes a day of fiddling around before we get any real work done with them.  And I’ve been wanting to set up a bar capable of making use of the precision technologies we have on hand.  We decided to purchase our own applicator which is a big investment, but sometimes having your own equipment that you know is cared for properly and tailored to your farm is worth the cost.  I’ll be doing a full write-up on this rig once we get some acres under it.  Right now it’s over with the guys at Kelley Engineering being plumbed with some high-tech gear!

Rainy Day Projects

The cultivator was washed and prepped for storage.  Right now it’s unhooked in the back corner of the shed 100% ready to roll for 2015.

Rainy delay project.  Clean the shop drain.  Also set the grates aside to get a fresh coat of John Deere green.  The shop is hosting a graduation party at the end of the month so we’re starting the cleanup process while we have time.

Dad’s washing down the shop walls.

Rain Makes Grain

It was actually getting borderline too dry before rain kicked us out of the tractors for a while.

I think we’ll finish planting by the end of next week, but we’ll have to wait and see.  The sun has been out for a couple of days now, but it’s not exactly very warm.  We’ll need some heat to dry out the saturated soils.  See you next week!

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