At this point last year I think we were done with silage and planting at home and I was well into planting for other people.
Right now I have another two or three days of silage and two days of planting for a neighbor.
I need to plant another 50 or 80 acres of ryegrass for us and 60 or 70 acres of wheat. Plus, I need to finish the neighbor's 60 acres of disked ground and I have do something about the additional 80 acres I was attempting to rent and I need to plant 20 of timothy acres at Gopher Valley and 20 acres here at home. Now this does not seem so much to those of you folks with 30ft equipment and good help but the logistics of it all gets me down.
I think I should disk at least part if not all of the wheat ground. I am very hesitant about no-tilling annual the ryegrass ground. I need to find a cover crop disk and a heavy roller and finish the neighbor's field and it is a long drive to Gopher Valley. I also need to get Yamhill wheat from Corvallis Seed and Timothy from Carlton. I have to get a fertilizer tank and the rest of the wheat seed. I have to argue with Wilco about where the wheat seed is coming from. The morons at Wilco are not buying wheat seed from my neighbor (where they have got it for 15 years) but they are using his bags.
I really need to get the other chopper fixed and try it out but I guess that is not so important. I need to chop our five acres of silage. The clover seed needs to be taken to Carlton. I have to readjust the blower fan on the 890 silage chopper. Everything on the farm needs to be cleaned and put away. And I need to plant for three other people to make some cash to live on. Oh, and I left the stacker at the last stacking job I did. (I got rained out...)
And I need to finish putting the siding on the back of our sort of shop before it really starts raining. My employee says he will really work hard and help and I am positive that he really intends to do so.
But he won't...
Here is a video of sharpening the knives on the old silage chopper.Yes, I realize I could drop that wrench in the knives and I should have had the lid down. I have heard of those who would light a smoke off the sparks from the sharpener. I think the guy is an idiot...
My wife bought me a little flipvideo camera. Sadie says they didn't pay list price for it. It came from a closeout sale.
Please tell me if you can't see or watch the video. I'm not sure I can make them smaller but I will try. I suppose it will not work with dial-up.
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Hey, that's fun. Every farm has it's own sound track. Looking forward to more. Nice shopping, wife and Sadie.
ReplyDeletePlanting ryegrass and wheat sounds like it would be really monotonous. My grandfather was a farmer and he absolutely loved being a farmer. He planted anything and everything.
ReplyDeleteCollieguy, I think I will next post a movie of the rhinos charging me. The little camera has a pretty wide angle lens so it looks less threatening than it did in real life.
ReplyDeleteReggie, Thanks for commenting. I get to talking about farming and I expect it is not so interesting for people outside the farming community. Farmers like your grandfather are a breed apart. I expect he had a pretty interesting life in many ways. If you have any pictures they would be neat to see.
Some things in farming are mindnumbingly boring. Like baling in a hundred acre field at 1 mph. Planting is more like driving somewhere but you have to drive really straight and you have to stop and do things like check the seed depth from time to time, fill the drill with seed and fertilizer. And there are things you have to watch. There is a monitor that tells you how many seeds per acre which is really important and I have a GPS guidance program that runs on a tablet computer that I watch to make sure I'm driving in the right place. Sometimes I use it to watch South Park. I suppose tedious would be a better description than boring. But, it is what I do and I get paid for every acre I plant so I'm always trying to drive straighter or get more done so it ain't so bad.
After 40 years of driving up and down the same fields I still rarely find it tedious or boring. Today it was a little uncomfortable though. Out on the open IH swather cutting flax. Though it was a nice sunny day, temps in the 50s and a strong wind had me thoroughly chilled by the time I quit just after sundown. Not bored but mighty glad to get into a warm house. I suspect the guys in the next field had the AC running in their tractor cabs though.
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