Monday, August 1, 2016
At 7 am, the rain started coming down. There was mild thunder in the area. When the rain stopped, we’d received a nice 1/2 inch (13mm). This was nice way to start the day, and a reminder that we’ve arrived at the typically hot and dry month of August. I guess there’s nothing really typical about the weather of 2016. For sure, we’re grateful for the added precipitation. As another farmer told me at church yesterday, this will just ruin those little soybeans…it’ll make big beans outta them!
View from the porch at the office this morning…
See how green the lawn is in the picture? Often, by this time of year, the grass is brown and dormant in the dry conditions, but not this year, at least not yet.
Today’s rain will delay my return to running the bush hog. I want to return to some roadsides along US 50 to clean up the appearance again. Hopefully, this August pass will be sufficient to keep it nice for the remainder of the year.
This will be a busy week. There are 2 special field days to attend, one Tuesday for Monsanto and the other on Thursday for CPS. And on Wednesday, we will have a visitor to the farm from Australia–we’re devoting the entire day to showing him our farm and 4 other agricultural businesses. Should be a packed day. The Peterbilt semi is off at McAllister’s repair shop to fix an oil leak.
Later today, we will go to the Huey farm where the soybean planter (air drill) is stored. We will remove the spare wheel/tire and the rearview camera. We’ve traded off the drill and those components will be saved back to install on the new one when it arrives. It’s a neat thing to anticipate a new machine. We are looking forward to the cost savings made possible by section control on the new drill.
The spare wheel and tire rest in the back of the shop, awaiting installation on the new air drill, which should come sometime this winter.
So, August is starting well in SWIN. Crops look pretty good. We will be using our drone this week to scout above the corn and evaluate the quality of the upcoming harvest. (about 6 weeks away!) This device had one of its motors quit running smoothly. John went to YouTube and found the way to repair it. He had to solder in a new logic board on that arm of the quad-copter, but now it’s running fine. Took about $30 for parts and some tedious soldering work.
Have a great week!
