Tag: drilling

Planting in the dark

Planting in the dark seems silly, but when you have Mother Nature and Father Time nipping at your heels one has to do what they have to do. So here I am planting soybeans after dark and what makes this task incredibly easy is GPS, auto-steer, and a monitor that tells you how many seeds you’re planting and where. This field could never be planted in the dark otherwise, as it has all sorts of angles that requires you to see the last row planted. This technology helps us work under the gun and has been worth its weight in gold this spring. Oh wait, it’s almost the first day of summer. I’ve never said that before. “I’m planting our crops in the summer!”
Crazy.
As my dad puts it, “This spring’s a bitch.”

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How’s my outfit?

After the corn planting was complete, we started in on soybean planting. Soybeans take a shorter amount of time to mature, as they are planted later and harvested earlier. Center View Farms currently no-till drills our soybeans, meaning, we use a planter that plops the soybean seeds in a furrow it creates in the corn stalk residue and covers them up. This requires a different planting tool than our corn planter so instead of buying a drill, we custom hire this process done for now.

We help bring the seed to the field and fill up the tank so that we can keep planting at a continuous pace. The other day I had the opportunity to drive the outfit (farmers call tools and tractors outfits), that is loaded with GPS and auto steer and everything else auto so that all you have to do is lift the drill at the ends of the rows and manually turn around. I guess the auto turn around feature costs an added $6-7,000.

But it’s no time for napping, you still have to watch the monitor to make sure the drill is planting the seeds in each row at a normal rate. The monitor shows each row and the seed rate so that the operator of the “outfit” can ensure the proper amount of seeds per acre. If something goes awry, an alarm will let you know. So I guess you can take a nap.

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If you can see in the brown monitor picture, my row 24 was not planting correctly. It just so happened that the day I was operating the oufit, some bolts had come loose and misaligned the drive wheel in the back of the planter causing some planting issues. Great. The one field I get to plant will grow looking not-so uniform, missing rows, scraggly and who knows what else. Let’s hope not, but I’m sure it will be a future post on how it turns out. But hey, atleast my rows will be straight!