Wednesday, August 30, 2023
After careful and cautious consideration, we are making a change to our corn planting system. We discovered a really good deal on a JD tractor and corn planter, so we are making the switch. The tractor is a ’23 model JD 8R 340, and the corn planter is on order for next spring. We are trading in our CIH STX 420 Rowtrac and CIH 2150 planter. With the new corn planter, we should be able to manage the information generated in the field more easily. We will also be able to share guidance lines and likely apply the preplant nitrogen between the corn rows!
This change will eliminate our need for using Climate.com Fieldview to blend together the information from our red and green equipment. We don’t think we will miss the track systems on the tractor, they are rather high maintenance. We were pleased with the red corn planter– it did a nice job, so we will kinda miss it. But the flow of information among all the machines should now be seamless and much easier and more readily available through our use of JD Operations Center.
Away goes the CIH tractor and planter
In comes the JD 8R 340… the new planter should come in February.
Here, John discusses the tractor’s delivery with Gene Williams, who does many transportation deliveries for Hutson, Inc. He used to work for Hutson directly, but now works for Davis Bros, who contracts to Hutson and many other dealers for transporting farm equipment.
The guys are cleaning the pit and the grain unload area out at the elevator. The wheat is now transferred into little bin #1A, and should be okay there until we can deliver it early in 2024. John has done the hard part–climbing both grain elevators to perform maintenance and lubrication. He will check the alignment of the main belt and buckets to make sure they are running properly.
The folks from Montgomery Welding came yesterday to repair a hole in a diverter box ‘way up high on the Honeyville elevator. They had to bring in a crane to remove the pipe that runs down to the dryer, in order to do the repair on the diverter box. It was a relatively quick fix, and while the pipe was down, John painted the seams on the pipe that were beginning to rust. Why was it rusting? I have to remember that those pipes and the Honeyville leg were put up there 25 years ago! It sure does not seem like it should be that old yet, but it is!
Bringing the dryer pipe down
I removed the little hand sprayer from the bed of the Gator this morning. I think I’ve used it for the final time pre-harvest. It’s always a milestone marker when that gets put back in storage. There may be some more spots of johnsongrass pop up, but it should not be quite as urgent or ubiquitous as it has been all summer long.
I drove around the 9R 540 a bit today. I am reading the owner’s manual and trying to get familiar with it. I don’t expect a huge number of changes, but there is always something new to learn. My impression from driving it around this morning? Smooth.
As we move through this week, we plan to get the old JD 1560 drill hooked to the 6145R tractor, and get it set up to plant some rye next week. This will be a cover-crop on the Harry field where the soil conservation work took place recently. The rye will protect the bare soil from water erosion until it is time to plant corn there next spring. We will also hand-crank on some rye in the new waterway in that field. We will drill rye across that, too, to protect the soil until the fescue can get established.
Have a good rest of your week.
