2006-4-28
As of today, we are finished planting corn. It has all been sprayed and we need a little rain to activate the herbicide. That will work out alright since rain is in the forecast for the next two days.
2006-4-23
A truly beautiful day today, but an interesting one. The coulters on the great plains field finisher have hydraulic adjustments this year, but the darn things won't stay timed. Some always go deeper than the others. We also had an alternator start to fail on the 8950 that we pull the planter with. Fortunately we have more than one magnum, so we had a spare alternator. The real interesting thing today is the sprayer though. Somehow the 800 gallon tank now only holds 783 gallons. We aren't really sure where the 17 gallons of space went, but it isn't there anymore. It held 800 last week. We had a little time this afternoon, so we picked up some rocks in one field. I lost my cell phone somewhere during that, but 12 phone calls later, we located it again. It did get sprayed though, so it shouldn't have any weed problems for a while.
2006-4-22
We have over 500 acres of corn in the ground now. The weather is beautiful and the forecast is for more of the same.
| YouTube Video Planting Corn |
2006-4-20
We started planting corn here today. We have a chance of rain tonight, but the rest of the week looks like great weather for planting.
2006-4-15
Working with Treflan again today, spraying what acres we could before the wind picked up this afternoon. We also had to make sure we could immediately till all the acres we sprayed, since it is going to rain tonight. The forecast for most of this week is rain too. Treflan needs to be incorporated into the soil for it to work. Simply spraying it onto the ground, without any tillage to follow it, is pretty much useless. The instructions say to till it in withing 24-48 hours, but since there is a time limit, obviously the sooner, the better.
Only one break-down for the day - a flat tire on the great plains tillage machine. This time it was a corn stalk that caused it, which is a fairly common thing. It is amazing how hard corn stalks can be on tires. This is the second flat tire on that machine this season. The first time was a rather large screw driver that caused the problem. We always seem to find odd stuff in the fields, and have no idea how it got there. Yesterday I picked up an old fence pliers with one of the shovels on the great plains machine.
| YouTube Video Incorporating Treflan |
2006-4-14
We've been getting into the Treflan here on days when we can get in the field. Between the rain storms and the wind, it is a balancing act. We should have a pretty good run today as well, as long as the wind doesn't get too strong to spray.
2006-4-2
The spring rains have arrived and brought the usual storms too. Just after dark tonight, these pictures show a slight clearing to the south.
