Monday, February 11, 2013
Even though the sun is shining and the temperature is 46F, the strong wind makes it chilly to be outdoors. My pickup is in the body shop, I put a crease on the right rear fender recently. So, I’m driving a rental car for few days. It’s weird to get around in a car after you’re accustomed to a pickup. It seems so low to the ground, and more difficult to climb up out of it. But it’ll be okay for a few days.
Tomorrow, I will pick up one of our french guys from the airport. Victor Pichot is coming in from Buenos Aires. He has been traveling the Americas this month to get a feel for the implement business in other countries. He now operates his own business where he sells and services tilage and planting equipment. He is staying with us for a few days before his return to France. His main goal here is to experience the National Farm Machinery Show (NFMS) in Louisville, Kentucky. We hope to attend there on Wednesday. Victor says, “I want to see it all.”– an ambitious goal!
Victor will likely be comparing NFMS to SIMA—the biennial farm show in Paris. I attended SIMA in 2007 with Philip, and was strongly impressed with the massive show. There is more variety in European machinery, with more choices for producers. There seem to be many more brands (or marques, as the french call them) of machines. It seemed to me that SIMA was roughly twice the size of NFMS. SIMA was amazing–you could find beet harvesters, Russian combines, all sorts of makes of tires, and every imaginable service– from banks to broadcasters. If it touches worldwide agriculture, it is represented at SIMA! But on another note, I understand the German version of this exhibition, called “Agritechnica” is even bigger than SIMA! Hopefully, I’ll experience that someday.
I plan to take him to the Rivet at South Knox boys basketball game tomorrow evening. After all, what is a winter visit to Indiana without HS basketball?
John will be bringing home the ammonia toolbar in a few days for some repairs… mice have chewed into some of the wiring harnesses. He will have to get that into the shop here and do some replacing in order to make that machine functional. Also, we are expecting the new air drill for soybeans sometime in early March. We will need to make certain the video camera is installed on the back. This drill will be 25% bigger than the one we’ve used for 3 years. It will be a much heavier machine, over 35,000 pounds, compared to about 20,000 for the previous model. It will need all the power our JD 9330 tractor can produce, all 375 horses.
Have a good week.
