Thursday, April 27, 2017

There is a short pause in #plant17 soybeans this morning.  We received about .2″ rain last night, and the soil surface looks damp.  We will inspect the remaining fields to see if/where we can go plant today.

The drill is parked this morning, but it may not stay there for long.

On Tuesday, the service guys from Alliance Tractor came to work on our new air drill.  Some of the primary and secondary hoses that carry seed from the air cart to the seed openers had become kinked or pinched.  It was not a situation that caused a stoppage of planting, but the kinked hoses would have a shortened life.  It was fortunate that the guys that set up the drill at the dealer were the ones who came to rearrange and replace the damaged hoses.  They understood that when the drill operated in the field, that some shifting of the hoses had occurred, and it was good to find a more appropriate routing for those that had become damaged.  They were very thorough, and the result of their visit made the drill work even better.

Jeremy and Stan came to work on the drill seed hoses.

Some hoses were repositioned, two primaries and 4 secondaries had to be replaced (and repositioned).

I planted soybeans at the Burke farm last evening, and when I pulled in after 2pm, I was skeptical if I could finish planting there before the rain arrived, (or before I got too tired!).  But things went well, and I pulled out of a completed farm location at 10 pm.  The rain arrived sometime after midnight.

Took about 35 minutes to drive home.  In some ways it’s more difficult to move this bulky machine at night, but one advantage is that there was no other traffic.  I did not meet a single vehicle on our narrow county roads all the way home.  Yeah, the drill just about takes up the whole road!   It’s about 20 feet wide in road position.

A nice inch of rain would be welcome.