Wednesday, March 25, 2020

Seed for #plant 20 is coming home today, even though the morning is quite foggy.   Our dealer has delivered the DeKalb corn seed to the farm.  There are 3 hybrids that we plan to use for our corn crop.

The big black boxes were placed in our ‘toolshed’ — one of the few remaining original buildings from when we moved here in 1958.  Its construction is of concrete blocks, and it has a concrete floor.  We replaced the roof on it a few years ago.  Back in ’58 it could contain nearly all the machinery and trucks that we needed for the farm.  Today, it houses the mowers, some other supplies, and provides the space for our seed corn inventory.

John unloads the boxes from the second load of seed corn to arrive here at the farm today.

Stacked in the toolshed, the corn seed waits along with us for #plant20

Yesterday, the seed dealer also delivered many mini-bulk bags of our soybean seed to the local Nutrien plant.  There, the seed will be unloaded and processed through Nutrien’s seed treatment equipment.  It is in that process that a specific fungicide coating is applied to the seeds.  That’s where the yellow seeds take on a bright pink color.  We sent our seed tender truck/trailer this morning over to Nutrien to bring home a load of treated soybean seed.  We have two varieties in the truck now; we will utilize a total of 3 different varieties.  We will send the tender truck back to Nutrien to pick up additional loads of seed as we go through the planting season.  Nutrien and the dealer will house our inventory and we will retrieve it as needed.  Nutrien is very conveniently located for us, about 2 miles away.

The bright pink soybean seeds, now coated with fungicide, and ready to load the soybean air drill. Near hopper in this picture has Asgrow 33X0, while the distant hopper has AG34X9.

Another .3″ (8mm) rain fell yesterday evening, and more is predicted for the weekend.  The foggy morning feels colder than the 42ºF (5C).   The sun is supposed to come out this afternoon, and get us up to 64º.  That will be welcome, as will the 70+ predicted for tomorrow!

Bring on the sunshine.