Pit Crews

It is little a too sticky to plant this morning so the pit crews are busy.  Dad, Derk and Eric are switching the eight row planter soybeans.   We go from eight rows of corn to 15 rows of soybeans. 

Our seed treater has been giving us fits since last Friday.  This morning we have people from Omaha, Minneapolis, and South Africa (Believe it or not) working on it.  We are back up and running now but yesterday was a little nerve racking. 



The inside of the control panel for the seed treater  - one of the
scariest things I have ever seen.



The black box holds 2500 pound of soybeans seed. There is a slide opening on the bottom of the box.  The seed then goes up a belt and into the treater drum where fungicide and insecticide is sprayed on the beans.  The tannish/brown thing is a drum and turns and gets the protection products evenly dispersed onto the seed.  The seed then comes out of the drum and goes up another belt and into a seed tender that we use to deliver the seed to our customers or our own planter.



Tanks that hold the crop protection products.





Seed tender being loaded with treated soybean seed.



The techs think that a lightening strike in early April is the culprit to all our problems.  But all should be better now with a new control panel.

The pit crew was also getting the field cultivator checked over and ready to go. 

Greasing the crumbler on the field cultivator

Checking to make sure all the shovels are tight.

And finally I went out to the field behind the warehouse to see how wet the field was and I saw two orioles in one of our cherry trees.  I did attempt to snap a pick before scaring them away.



I'm a slow typer so by now all the equipment is back out in the fields, soybeans are being treated and I need to hop back on the forklift!