Saturday, March 15, 2014

Drove down to the Burke farm this morning.  There was no wind, and the temperature was a pleasant 30ºF.   It was a good environment to use the shoulder-held, hand-crank seeder.  I walked on a layer of fescue seed on the levee on the west side of the main field.  The traffic last summer and fall from the timber harvesters had damaged the fescue sod, and this is an attempt to re-establish it.  With nighttime frost and warmer days, this is a good time to plant these seeds.

Here on the tailgate of the pickup, is the little hand-cranked seeder that I used to spread the fescue seed at the Burke farm levee. At the bottom, you can see the spreader spinner under the bag. The crank is there on the left. The strap goes over my left shoulder, and I crank with my right hand as I walk…. and you thought I couldn’t multi-task!

After seeding the levee, I walked over most of the area where the Shepard brothers are clearing the woods, just to evaluate the progress.  It’s going to be a very nice addition of acres, but there is certainly a lot of debris to clear/sweep/bury.  They were not working early this morning, but hopefully they’ll show up this afternoon.

Upon returning to the farm, Brandon helped me wash the Platinum pickup.  It needed a good wash.

Clean again

After the pickup wash, I took to the office and completed the building of planting prescriptions for soybeans.  Brandon had most of them written, and I just finished off the last 20-or-so.  Our seed dealer is still waiting for the arrival of the final delivery of our soybean seed… if this last batch has a different seed size, it will require the writing of another prescription for each field.  But, if he can match the seed already in his inventory, there will be no more to write.  He will notify me when his next group of seed arrives at his warehouse.

There are always some last-minute details to pull together.

It’s a really pleasant day out there…approaching noon, it’s about 60ºF.  But guess what?  Snow is in tomorrow’s forecast!  Life in southern Indiana.   Yes, it would be weird to have snow yet again, but as it melts, it would take the newly scattered fescue seed from this morning’s work right into the soil for a great seedbed!  Guess you have to look on the bright side, huh?  Spring arrives, at least on the calendar, a week from tomorrow.

Planting time inches closer…