I'm back to planting!

Today I planted 23 acres! Nice to be working at something that makes money again. I spent all morning washing the drill from my last missadventure. There was wet sticky mud in places I didn't know mud could go.
My wayward employee showed up for work today.  Worked quite hard but took off at 5 p.m. Had to bring me a part.
I'm planting probably 15 miles from home. At the small town of Wheatland, Oregon. I'm not sure it is a town, I'm going to look it up on Wikipedia. There is a ferry there that crosses the Willamette river.
If you follow this link to Wikipedia you will see a field which I planted last year. The photo shows the field planted to fescue. I no-tilled it to wheat last year. If you were to turn left onto the last road before the ferry, and drive down a narrow gravel road past Arcane Cellers makers of Wheatland Ale, you will find a White 2-155 and a Great Plains no-till drill parked where the road turns into a private drive. With the amount of rain that is falling at this very moment, there is a good chance it will set there for a couple days.
It is somewhat of a wonder that I got anything planted today at all.
The drill was a mess and had to be washed and all the fescue, orchardgrass, timothy, alsike clover, bits of plastic, rat turds, and whatever else Saddle Bute Ag threw in those bags of seed and ended up wedged into the seed cups of the drill, had to be vaccumed and blown out with compressed air. Then I had to install a low rate flow meter, repair various connectors that pulled apart when the three-point settled and the weight of the quick-hitch pulled everything apart. Then I had to move a pickup, then the drill. Then the hydraulic flow controll failed so the fertilizer pump only runs wide open, then I crushed the magnet that runs the run/hold switch for the GPS, fertilizer, and acre counter. I put the roading pin through the hole without checking to see if the magnet had come loose. It had and it was under the pin so when the hydraulics settled it crushed the magnet.
I called bill to bring me a new magnet. I use the special high-powered rare earth magnets that come with the Baler Stroke Counter kits we sell. The magnets are mounted in a holder which needs to be ground away before they will stick to the metal of the lift tube on the drill. Bill aparently is not Mr. delicate with the grinder as he was able to make one loose it's magnatism and broke the other in half. But, I got it all going. Unfortuantly the SprayMate II auto-rate controller is fairly hard to adjust with the pump wide open and my range adjustment control on the flow bypass is fairly touchy to adjust. I did average 7.5 gallons per acre which was close to what I wanted.
On my way to the field I nearly wiped out a large 4wd Suburban on the bridge at Amity. These people are such idiots. This guy can see I am in the middle of the bridge, there is no where to go, as is typical, he stopped right at the approach to the bridge at the very last second. I should have backed off on the throttle or stopped but I didn't. We missed by inches. Ooops...! Defensive driving is a must on a tractor, especially when you are 16 feet wide. Then there was the other little bridge on the other side of town. A lady pulled out of the next road without looking into the lane she was pulling in to. Either that or she was just to stupid to realize that there was a large tractor coming her way and she was going to have to avoid it somehow. Of course then she sped up trying to beat me to the bridge, but right at the last second she lost her nerve and slowed down. This was not good as I was timing my approach to pull off between the garbage can, the telephone pole, and the bridge guard rail-without actually stopping. So, I had to jam on the brakes to avoid another row of garbage cans. I must remember, Wednesday is garbage day in Amity. Then, I got a shy driver that followed me all the way over the Amity hill only finally get up enough nerve or frustration or whatever, and pass me on a corner, the very second I took my eyes off the rear view mirror. But, I made it!
Wife was supposed to give me a ride home and she called when school was over. I didn't need a ride as I had moved a pickup earlier. I just missed a rollover accident by Maude Williamson park. It was have been Darwin day in Yamhill county...
Bought my wife an iBook for our anniversary. It is a G4, 14" 133mhz with a write/read DVD drive. I sniped it and got it for $295. That is a real deal. This will replace the POS net book PC she bought new last winter. Now I need to sell something. Anyone need a iTronix tablet with FarmerGPS installed? I'll throw in an old MidTech GPS receiver if you want it...