February 29, 2016
Happy Leap Day, everyone!
I read a post on twitter today, where a farmer proposed that we should add the extra “leap day” to June, for in his opinion, “who wants another February day?”
New tasks are getting accomplished today, along with a continuing one. Additional soybean planting prescriptions are being written today. Our Asgrow/DeKalb dealer, Jeff Jackson, emailed me the seed specs for about 2/3 of the Asgrow bean seed. So, I can write prescriptions for 2 more varieties. Got about half of one of them done during the morning.
The afternoon was a beautiful, sunny, dry day… so John felt compelled to bring home the soybean drill and the ammonia toolbar from their storage site at our Huey farm east of Wheatland. We took the two 4wd tractors from their storage site here down to Huey to pull the two implements home.
Driving east on US 50, headed to our Huey farm to get the soybean drill. My, the hood of the 9330 got pretty dusty while being stored this winter! We’ll fix that soon.
The drill just barely fits inside, but using that remote storage location allows every one of our machines to be stored under roof–it is important to us that our machines be kept out of the sun and rain as much as possible.
We pull out the JD air drill to take it home to prepare for spring planting. Yes, it’s a tight fit, and a real challenge to get it backed in there!
The JD 2510H ammonia toolbar comes out, too. It’s stored behind the air drill, in the back of the old quonset building at Huey.
Once it’s out in the sunshine, the drill gets a walk-around before we make the 7-mile trip home to the main farm location. It’s 57ºF, gentle breeze… and did you notice how beautiful and blue is the sky?
We will use the best days of the coming month to perform some routine maintenance on both the toolbar and the drill, so that they are fully prepared and ready when the proper day comes to go to the fields. The drill needs a new seed hose that runs from the cart to the RH outer wing of the drill. I also found a gauge wheel that should be replaced. The cart and drill will get a thorough ‘going-over’. Since we were unable to trade this soybean planter off for a new one late last summer, we will repair it and run it again. It is my hope that this summer will allow us to replace this air drill. The toolbar is now in the shop, and John is servicing the N-Ject metering and regulating system. He will also inspect the ground-engaging row units.
The JD 2510H is in the shop today. John is disassembling each valve of the N-Ject control system to give them a thorough inspection.
These are vital tasks for #Plant16.
