Planting and losing things

A year ago I broke my hip. 

I slipped on ice in my driveway and fell hard.

It is amazing how much difference a year can make in your life. I was in pretty good shape up till last January. 

I am not complaining about my recovery. I got better really fast. Up to a point. Now I just seem to be sore all the time. Maybe I should start doing exercise on purpose instead of by accident.

I find it hard to stay positive.

We have had a long run of cold weather with a fair amount of sunshine. I took the opportunity to replant a small field of rye.

I no-tilled the rye in October at 120lbs per acre. The rye sprouted and looked like a really good stand. Then it started to disappear from the center of the field outwards. It is only a six acre patch. 

I applied slugbait two times and found dead slugs. But the damage seems to be already done. So I replanted.

The plan was to plant at night when the ground was frozen as when the sun comes out the ground gets sticky. This did not work.

When I went to get my GPS computer, the box was empty. I have no idea where I put it. My idea was to use last years field record to find and plant the field in the dark. So I got up early with the intent of planting at daybreak. Of course things went wrong. It takes as long to set up a 5 acre field as it does to set up for 100 acres. 

It was a beautiful day for planting!

No-tilling without GPS in daylight is not a big deal. It would have been nice to lay out the field with the computer as I wanted to go at an angle to my last planting.  But it all worked out fine in the end. Other than the field being 6.5 acres instead of five and I ran out of seed with 1/2 a pass left.

I imagine the computer will turn up somewhere. My daughter thinks she saw it in my pickup. My helper thinks he saw it on the bench in the shop. My wife says I left it on the kitchen table for a long time. I thought it was in my pickup. Who knows... Unfortunately FarmerGPS is not responding to my repeated emails requesting a new activation code for a different computer. Of course I did buy the program 15 years ago.

I was really hoping that the nice weather would generate some no-till planting jobs but it could be that my no-till planting business is over. Different times and different farmers.

I did find a set of keys that has been missing for several years. It was under the seat of the pickup!

In an other direction... I see that there is now a big push to promote stories of disappointed Trump voters. I was sent a video in which an angry guy was talking about farmers (Trump voters) worried that their tomatoes will rot in the field because they can't find cheap undocumented labor to pick them. 

That seems to be a stretch. My experience with Occupational Health and Safety has pretty much frightened me enough to doubt there are farmers making a serious practice of hiring undocumented workers. Also, Trump was pretty clear that his first goal was to shut down the border and ship back the illegals. So if you were depending on exploiting illegal labor for poor wages and living conditions and you voted for Trump I would have to laugh at you.

I feel much of the liberal mind set on farm labor comes from reading "Grapes of Wrath," in eighth grade.

But what do I know?