Thursday, March 20, 2025

First day of spring?  It sure doesn’t feel like it!  It’s windy and chilly today, 37ºF (3C).  Just yesterday, it was 70ºF!  The weather in SWIN is very fickle.

Yesterday was a big day at Carnahan & Sons for a couple reasons.  The guys delivered to market the final loads of our 2024 corn crop.  The bins are now MT (empty).  That’s a good thing to have them MT before planting season.  After a quick tabulation, we just delivered our best-yielding corn crop ever!   So, we are grateful for that result.

Brandon D is busy in the shop on this chilly day, making this Wilson trailer look like new! It’s standard operating procedure, now that all the bins are empty, and the grain is all delivered.  The other trucks will come in for a wash, too.

Brandon D also made the Pete all shiny again

…and Brandon K polishes the wheels

The other big thing yesterday was that during the afternoon, Brandon K took the 8R340 up to the Dunn farm to apply some NH3 for the 2025 corn crop.  That was the first field work of #plant 25.  The first field went in pretty nicely, with the anhydrous “sealing” into the soil very well.  He could use this first experience to determine if the old blue toolbar, regulated by a Raven 440 controller, was working properly.  He later discovered a bit of rust plugging an orifice in the ‘cooler’ and that affected the rate of the N he was applying.  He will have to go over a small area again to make sure the needed amount of N/acre really does get applied.  It is not unusual to find such things on the first day out in the field.  I am really pleased that he can recognize quickly that a problem came up and needed a cure.

John has been battling the flu this week, and so we were only able to run one applicator yesterday.   It is too cold to run today.

Brandon D helped Brandon K replace an injection knife. It was super-windy (45mph) and unpleasant outdoors, even though the temperature was 70º

This blue applicator bar is quite old, but it still gets the job done.

Here is a screenshot of Operations Center that shows where the tractor has been through the field so far…

So, Happy Spring!  Even on this chilly day, it is nice to have winter behind us.  Good days will be back!