Thursday, March 23, 2017

Well we inched our way into spring field work today.  John is spraying burndown chemicals on some acres for soybeans.  The stuff we’re applying must delay 14 days before running the planter, so this will put us off for these acres until at least April 5.  If we can get the soybean planter running by the 10th of April, we’ll be happy.  Rain is predicted for the weekend, so this is our attempt to have some soybean acres ready to roll in early April.

John has filled his spray tank, and is correcting the tire pressure before he heads to the field to begin spraying.

Here he goes at the field at Roberson.

Ross has said he wants to apply some NH3 tomorrow for a couple corn fields.  Mr. Worland has the repairs finished at the Huey hill fields, so they’re ready for nitrogen.  The rainy weekend has Ross wanting to get some N on ahead of a rain.

So, we make a plan, but we have to show some flexibility to what the weather conditions permit!

I took the JD 7130 tractor to the Huey farm this afternoon to use the Reveal tool to grade the road there.  Mr. Worland has performed some road repairs to the crossing from the hill to the flat fields, and we had some crushed stone applied over that road repair this morning.  The grading work smoothed the stone, making for a nicer roadbed.  During that trip, I noticed some oil leaking from under the steering wheel onto the cab floor.  Upon my return to the farm shop, I proceeded to remove the dashboard coverings to see what was going on.  It was getting a little hard to figure out what pieces came apart, and how to do that… then Ross showed up to help.  He made that process go much better, and we did get enough parts of the dash removed to reveal the problem.  It was a small, gas-and-oil-filled cylinder that assists the steering wheel tilting mechanism that was leaking its oil.  We got it out, and found one online to replace it.  Once that part arrives, we’ll reassemble the dashboard of the 7130.

Here are the dash parts we took out to access the problem

This is the little gas assist cylinder that was leaking.

We will see what Friday brings.  The weather is predicted to be pretty nice.  Forecast is for 72ºF (22C).  But rain is predicted for Saturday, Sunday, and Monday.  We will see how much precipitation comes.

We are eager to see the Purdue Boilermakers play Kansas in the Sweet 16 tonight.  What a great win that would be!