Wednesday, March 18, 2015

Happy Ag Day!

If you have been a visitor to this website for very long, you are probably aware of how blessed we feel to be farmers in SW Indiana.  We appreciate the sentiment of Ag Day, and hope that it fosters an appreciation for the importance of agriculture to the life of our state,  nation, and world.   The Carnahan family of farmers believes we are fortunate to be able to live and work in the field production part of this diverse world of agriculture.  We strive each day to bring our best effort to be good stewards of our environment… to protect that precious resource of the soil and water.  Also we strive to bring forth the highest productivity from that resource.  We do all we know how to do, but still we realize that we have a partner in our progress.  Without the blessing of our Maker, our success would not amount to much.

It’s cloudy and a bit cool today… about 50ºF (10C).  Some service work continues in the shop.  The Exmark  mower and the Gator and the forklift were serviced today by John.  Brandon is on the road again with the Peterbilt, delivering corn to ADM in Newburgh.  John and I took the red stripe Mack and the water trailer to the VoMac service department in Vincennes this morning.  This afternoon, we took the JD 9330 tractor down to Huey to bring home the air drill from its storage location there.  We discovered a flat on the JD 1890 50-foot air drill that we could not get re-inflated.  So, Best One Tire is coming tomorrow to fix it and that will allow us to get the soybean drill home after that.  We were able to bring home the blue DMI ammonia application bar from its winter storage site at the Burke farm.

Things are really coming together.

I have been in the office writing prescriptions.  And that task is finished!  What a relief to have them done.  And, our Apex software has been repaired (thank you, Anthony from Hutson, Inc.) so that I can save the planting information to a card and also send it wirelessly to the tractors.

The last planting prescription to be built today was for our Roberson farm location. Here you see the 8 soil types that will be used to create the prescription map

Here is the ‘after’ shot of one of the five Roberson farm planting prescription maps. You can see the 8 soil types were classified into one of three soybean population categories. Red indicates low population 150K/ac. Yellow indicates a medium population 180K/ac. Green indicates a high planting population 195K/ac.

With the prescriptions done, they are now saved to a “Spring 15” profile in Apex, and can be called up and edited easily.  It feels good to have that prepared and ready.

Ross and Rhoda have returned from Florida.  They arrived on the one day that was 70+ degrees.  Since then, it’s been in the 50s.  It may feel a little chilly for them, but it’s good to have ’em ‘Back Home Again, in Indiana’.

Spring arrives in two days!!!