Friday, August 18, 2017

Well, there was no rain to be had this week.  We had been predicted a 40% chance on Wednesday and 60% on Thursday. (does that make a 100% chance?).  But just a sprinkle on those two days.    You can begin to see spots of moisture stress in the soybean and corn fields.  We got an email from Climate that reported a .1″ (2.5 mm) rain on 12 fields SE of Wheatland.  We were hoping for an inch!  It’s funny how you can go from too wet to too dry here in August!  One helpful thing through this dry spell — we haven’t seen temps in the 90s for the whole month so far.

Here, you can see a faint hint that the soybeans are beginning to ‘turn’ — get ripe for harvest

The yard at home is pretty dry and ‘crunchy’ when you walk across it.  Not much to mow this week.

It’s a typical August for the yard. It will not need to see the Z540M this week!

August brings a time of field days and customer appreciation events.  We took in 3 such events this week.  One was the customer appreciation event at JL Farm Equipment at Poseyville, IN on Wednesday evening.   Ross and Brandon attended and took the opportunity to begin the negotiations for a new corn planter.  John, Brandon, and I attended a FieldView training session on Wednesday noon at CPS Wheatland.  There was a meal, followed by a couple hours of Q&A with the FieldView rep, Chad Dow.  It provided us with some helpful information going into fall harvest and wheat planting time.  Then, yesterday morning, John and I traveled to Hutson’s Combine Clinic held at their Evansville store.  It was interesting.  We were introduced to the new 700 series combines, and we learned a couple valuable tips for inspecting our present combine, and getting it set properly for harvest.  Of course, a lunch was provided after — that’s a great way to get farmers to turn out for an event!  There was a pleasant breeze through the building where the event took place.

We crowd in to the presenter to hear about the new automatic control system in this S780 combine that fine-tunes the threshing system on the go. Another interesting item was a new system that automatically calibrates the yield-measuring mechanism. It is supposedly more accurate, and does not require manual calibrations.

John and Brandon are still working on trucks and the grain legs and dryer.  The combines will likely come out of storage next week for their inspection and preparation.

I’ll share with you a photo from Wednesday evening.  I’m glad I was able to capture this view.

Beautiful SWIN sunset

Have a great weekend!