Thursday, February 21, 2013
It started out as sleet about 330pm, and moved on to become a full-fledged snowfall by 5pm. Pat tells me the roads were slick as she came home from work. We postponed tonight’s small group Bible study until next Thursday. Local schools let out early, and tonight’s local basketball games have been reset to Friday night. This looks and feels like ‘basketball tourney time’ in Indiana. (The girls touney is at semi-state level, and the boys tourney begins next week) This will be a good night for staying in!
Pat arrived here after work, and said the roads are slick.
The place turned white from 330 to 5 pm, and it’s still coming down after 6 pm. It’ll be nice to be home, if only to be looking out at all this.
John and I have been discussing field operations, and we think that the next day when we have dry enough soil conditions, we will begin to apply anyhdrous ammonia, more commonly known as NH3– which is our corn crop’s nitrogen source. Not sure when that will occur, but he has the machine prepared. I wrote the application prescriptions, and those are now installed into GS3 system in the 9360R tractor. We’re ready to hook up an ammonia tank-wagon and begin. Because of the difficulties we experienced with the metering system last spring, we will begin cautiously– initially using a flat-rate. Once we are convinced that the metering-control system is working properly, we will move on to the variable-rate application. We are very hopeful that the things John learned last spring, along with the improvements made by Capstan, will allow us to apply NH3 with more confidence in its accuracy.
I showed Brandon Knight (Ross’ grandson, and ag student at Vincennes University) today a little bit about how I set up the NH3 prescriptions. There will be dozens more to create for planting soybeans. I do not yet have enough information from the seed dealer to write them. But once the dealer reports to us the seeds/pound for each variety, I will begin to write the planting prescriptions. This year, I hope to include Brandon in the process, so that he can learn this vital task. It is never too soon to have another trained person who can perform what is needed.
Going home now…
