Saturday, April 8, 2017

We’ve had two chilly nights in a row (33ºF, 1C) but this afternoon, the sun is out and it’s 68ºF (20C).  So, the soil is drying and warming (again) in most places.  It was a beautiful, low-wind day, allowing John to finish up his burndown herbicide spraying by late afternoon for the 2017 corn acres.  He’s cleaning out his sprayer.

John was spraying this morning in one of the last field locations ahead of the corn planter.  Check out that cloudless, blue sky!

Before returning to spraying soybean acres, John is very thorough to pressure wash out the tank, triple rinse both boom and tank, and wash all residue from the surface of the sprayer.

It certainly looks like we will be planting come Monday.  In the fields I checked today, the soil was a bit too heavy (moist) for planting, but today and tomorrow’s warm sun and wind should make the conditions nearly ideal by then.

Both planters are filled and the settings are made and re-checked.

Ross and Brandon load the corn planter with a special new DeKalb hybrid that we are testing for the first time.

Eager to get this machine rolling!

Brandon is checking each of the 60 rows on this soybean air drill to verify that the settings are correct to begin in the field.

Since Monday will be the first day of using the new soybean air drill (equipped with section control), I’ve arranged for the Greenstar specialist from the dealer to come to the field on Monday to assist me in getting the section control settings correct.  Ross has also arranged for a service man from our CIH dealer to come and assist him with the same situation on his corn planter.  Even though the forecast has rain in it for Monday night, the calendar and the soil conditions are giving us a green light for Monday!

I hope John can get some aerial shots of both the corn and soybean planters come Monday.  It may be too windy for that, but if not, he wants to document the first day of #plant17.

We like tomorrow’s forecast for sunny and 78ºF (26C).  Same for Monday…

As Mater (from the Cars movie) would say, “It’s gonna be fu-un!”