Tuesday, March 23, 2021

Yesterday, John Deere released an update to GPS receivers.  It is not a difficult task to update the software in our Starfire 6000 receivers, but it can be a time-consuming one.   Formerly, with our GS 2630 screens, we had to download updates to the office computer, then put the information on a thumb drive, then pop that into the screen.  Now, we click on a special page on the GS4 screen, and the update downloads over the JD Link connection!   Certainly more convenient.  John spent some time yesterday updating the R4044 and the 9520R tractor, and I’ll do the remaining 9360R tractor today.

John waits patiently for the update to download over-the- air. This one was lengthy, about an hour to load in…

Today, John has the new sprayer out to load it with water and give it the final adjustments and preparation for its initial run in the field.  Looks like that will be a herbicide/fungicide/growth regulator application to the wheat crop.  It needs to be done on the next available day after today’s rain event.  He will give me some training on the operation of this new, very sophisticated, sprayer… a JD R4044.  It has many new features making it more precise and with much greater capacity than our previous machine.  I’ll probably be the one to operate it in the first few days, while he is applying pre-plant NH3.  At least that’s the way it has worked out in the past several years.

There seems to be a mental hurdle we cross each year, connected to the Easter holiday.  We don’t normally figure on getting much work done ahead of Easter, but we expect to be fully engaged in field work after that.  So, we don’t feel great pressure to ‘get out there’ just yet, but in a couple weeks, that mentality will change!

#plant 21 on the way.