The 10th Day of Planting



Rain drops on a planter tire.

Well, the forecast for two days of good weather was wrong.  We have been planting this morning but we keeping getting small showers of rain.  It's not enough rain to make soil stick to the tires of the tractors or planters so Dad and Joe are still going.  If this was May 4th instead of June 4th, we would stop and wait for better weather and soil conditions but circumstances dictate otherwise. 


Soil is not sticking to the
press wheels of the
planters - yet.

The heavy rain is hanging just west of us so we will keep on pushing forward.  You will need to stay tuned and find out if we are able to finish up planting today or if we need to wait for the next break in this rainy weather or go Preventive Planting.

Dad trying to figure out why a seed drop
sensor is not communicating with the
 computer in the tractor. 

I have no idea what time Joe headed out to start planting but I had a very early morning phone call from him.  I thought maybe he was calling to wish me a great day in the weed warehouse or whisper sweet endearments in my ear.  But, I was mistaken - Dad was broken down and needed pieces and parts - NOW!.

Oh well, life of a farm wife.

The 5th Day of Planting

There were spotty showers over the area last evening so we were not able to plant right away this morning.  It was a good time to fix and tweak the planters.

 
 
 











The following are pictures of my daily views during the spring planting season.  I spend the spring in the seed warehouse and office to keep our customers going with seed.   



My view from the forklift.
 

      My view in the office.

Son #3 told me that it's really boring being in the warehouse.   I think Morton agrees.

                                        

The First Day of Planting

Needed one more bag to finish up the field.

Working on planter plumbing.

Done with this field.

The Smell of Money . . .

or, the lack of. 

Would you believe that in this picture there are thousands of gallons of liquid hog manure flowing by?

Look closely at the ditch. 

Now do you see it? 

Well, you can see a hose but not the actual manure.  While we are busy applying anhydrous ammonia which is our source of nitrogen to our corn fields prior to planting many of our neighbors, who are livestock farmers, are busy applying manure (another great source of nitrogen for corn) to their fields.  This hose is carrying manure from our neighbor's hog building to one of his fields 3 miles away.

It used to be when I was growing up when we would go by someone spreading manure in a field we would get a whiff of the manure and would comment "there is that smell of money".   (It never occurred to us to complain because that was part of living in the country.  Before I get carried away with the topic of home owners who complain about agriculture AFTER buying a home in a rural setting let me get back to my subject at hand.)  But, today we very rarely get that whiff of money because of advances in manure application. 

There are businesses that do custom manure application.  You could say they know their sh%*#.  (I know, cheap joke but I had to throw it in.)  The company comes in and runs the hose from the manure pit to the target field. 

A pumper set up to pull manure from the pit

underneath this hog building.

  Here is another view of the pumper.
                                                                               
   

    

The hose is strung along roads in the ditches, threaded

under roads through culverts, and dropped across fields. 

Here are a couple of the spools used to transport the hose.  It's a good thing as I would hate to have to untangle several miles of hose like often happens with extension cords on this farm.

 

                                                                     

 

 

   

 

 

 

   

 

 



Once the hose is threaded out to the field, the business end of the hose is attached to an applicator that injects or incorporates the manure into the soil.  Even close up to this applicator there is very little oder.  

                                                                                                          

So here are the cool facts:  This outfit can pump 1.2 million gallons of manure in 24 hours.  That is a lot of fluid! There aren't tractors pulling large manure spreaders up and down the road at all hours so there is less traffic on the roads, it's safer, it's quieter, and there is No Smell. 

 

By knifing in the manure immediately, the crop to be planted in this field will get full benefit of the nitrogen in this manure.  When manure lays on top of the field for very long some of the nitrogen volatilizes into the atmosphere and the farmer loses some of the manure value.

 

 

Sometimes I think this is what our urban neighbors believe is used on today's farms.  But, this is FAR from the truth.  If you look closely at the tractor guiding the manure applicator you will see there is a GPS antenna mounted.  When the manure application is complete, the farmer will probably receive a map of the farm that shows where the manure was applied and how much was applied. 

 

This is all good for the farmer, his crops, and the environment.





Here are a couple of other pics of the hose that I thought were interesting.

The hose really isn't that big.  The end here is about 4 inches in diameter.

When full the hose looks like one nasty boa constrictor.

 

 

Is It Over Yet?

It has been a crazy, crazy 13 days!  We finished up planting on Wednesday, May 16th, only to start replanting soybeans yesterday and today.

 Everyone is tired. 

I put up a few new videos.  If you are interested take a look on my Virtual Farm Tour tab.

Maye it will rain Sunday.

The Saturday Afternoon Pit Crew

Corn and soybean planting continue on.  It was a good week once the soil dried.  Dad stopped at home to refill the corn planter and fuel up the tractor.  We were caught up in the seed warehouse so everyone pitched in to get the planter filled and greased up.  

Aaaand They're Off . .

. . . like a herd of turtles.  Yesterday we started planting corn and soybeans.  Joe and the guys had been testing and checking all of the monitors and computers in all of tractors the past few weeks so when the soil dried,

Joe setting up one of the planter's monitors

the rain stopped and soil condition were good we could get planting.  Well, Monday was the day to start.  The guys got the planter loaded with seed and were getting ready to pull away from the shed when the GPS system on the planter tractor started wavering. 

Loading planter with seed corn.

So, the Joe, Dad and Derk sat in the tractor for the next two hours working over the phones with equipment suppliers trying to figure what was wrong.  Making a very long story short, eventually the GPS equipment started working and Dad was off to plant corn.

Yes, three grown men can fit in a tractor cab.

The GPS/auto steer was not working in the soil finisher tractor either.  That does not make Rollie happy but at least Rollie could still run the soil finisher. 

We use GPS equipment to run the shut offs on our planter.  You have to remember because of our rolling land we farm on the contour - meaning we farm around a hill not up and over.  This helps with soil preservation.  Anyway, our planter is 16 rows (40 feet) wide and when we plant on the contour Dad needs to be able to shut off rows quickly to avoid double and triple planting parts of a field and save money on very expensive seed.  With GPS, the computers on the equipment shut off and turn on the rows as need be.  We also do some variable rate planting.  This means we vary the seeding rate of the seed corn across a field based on yield potential and soil fertility.  This is also controlled by computers and the GPS equipment is necessary.

Trying to figure out why the GPS equipment won't work!

At one precision ag forum I was reading this morning there were farmers commenting on our same problem from Texas to northwest Minnesota and Kansas to Illinois.  At least we were in good company.  Our problem was geomagnetic activity.  Yep, it went right over my head as well.  What it amounts to is that the sun is messing with our planting season!  I am now signed up for Geomagnetic A-Index of 100 or greater, Geomagnetic K-index of 6, 7, 8, and 9 Alerts and Warnings through NOAA and the Space Weather Prediction Center.  Really.  I am not making this up. 

I have heard the phrase "A slave to technology" mentioned before.  I think we might be at that point. 

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!

A Great Day for Planting Corn (and Soybeans)!

The rainbow ended right over the
Pioneer seed boxes!

What a great day for planting!  Last night about 8:00 we had a rain shower and then the sun came out, the wind stopped blowing and we had a double rainbow.

This morning started out with the sun
and just a breeze.  It was a "full crew" day.  Besides our two fulltime employees we have three spring and fall parttime helpers.  Rollie is our neighbor, landlord and ace soil finisher operator.  Chuck retired from the co-op a couple of years

Or maybe it ended in the corn field.

ago and now helps haul NH3 tanks early in the spring and then helps get seed delivered to customers and our planters.  Stan, works in town and helps us in the evenings and weekends.  He has been helping Mom and Dad for about 20 years.  Stan runs the NH3 applicator and the planters.  Then we have our intern.  Amos is an agronomy major at U of W, Plattville, we keep him busy in the Pioneer Hi-Bred department.  Without our great part-time help we would never accomplish what we do everyday. 
I snuck out of the seed warehouse today and made a seed delivery.  I hadn't been off the farm since Monday and wanted to see what was happening in the country.   Wow!  There is a lot of corn in the ground especially considering that no one really got started planting around here until Monday.  Tonight Joe and I were going through inventories and looking at customers needs and we came to the conclusion that our area is at least 40% planted. 

This is our soybean planter.  In a typical year (a phrase I use very lightly)
 we have one planter on corn and one on soybeans.  Because of the late
start to planting we are using both planters to get the corn planted.

That is amazing - in five days we can be so far along in planting completion.  I listen to the Big Show on WMT Radio at noon on the weekdays and it sounds like this is state wide.  I would like to know how acres there are per planter row in Iowa.  In other words - how many acres does each planter row plant in Iowa.  Equipment has come a long ways.  Rollie always laughs at how we can plant more corn in one day than he used to plant in an entire spring.  One of these days I'm going to sneak out of the warehouse again and hopefully take a few pictures of Dad planting and show you what the inside of a tractor during planting season looks like.

This is a seed tender.  We deliver bulk corn and soybean seed to
our customers with these.  By using bulk seed, customers eliminate LOTS
of paper bags.  Bulk seed is great for handling and for the environoment.

Do Not Be Afraid!

I repeat - Do Not Be Afraid!  After researching into historical weather records I have discovered that the yellowish white orb in the sky is in fact the sun.

It's my dad's birthday today.  Happy 71st Birthday Dad!  The only thing my dad ever wants for his birthday is to be able to plant corn.  Unfortunately, this will be one of those rare birthdays where he will not be planting.  Two weeks ago the soil temps were running right around 47F - 48F.  Then after one or two snow/slush storms the soil temps fell to 37F.  Today, the 4 inch soil temp is 42F.  To top it all off it rained and sleeted all day yesterday so it will be a while before corn planting gets started in Northeast Iowa. 

Soil thermometer at the 4 inch depth.

The soil temperature is a very important piece of information that crop farmers in the northern part of the midwest follow closely in early spring.  Corn germinates at 50F.  We like to start planting corn when the soil temps are below 50F but are definately rising and the weather is in the warming mode.  If seed sets in cold and/or wet soils for too long, the seed looses it's vigor and may not germinate or emerge healthy due to the onset of diseases.



Since he can't plant today, Dad is driving around the yard rechecking and double rechecking monitors
and electronics to make sure all is ready for when the weather does break.

Seed customers have been calling and stopping in today to pick up seed and discuss the late start to planting.  Everyone is trying to remain calm but I can tell everyone is nervous.   Let's hope the weather straightens out soon.

Joe loading a customer's seed. 
He likes to load seed once in awhile so
his forklift skills don't get rusty. :-)

Our employee "D" helping me in the warehouse since he can't be in the field.