Tag: Soybeans

Walking beans….again

When I was 18 years old, I couldn’t wait to get off the farm. Since I learned how to walk, my dad made me walk beans every summer. I never got paid, it was just another farm chore we had to do. Never in a million years did I think I would be walking beans 20 years later. For one, I never thought I’d come back to farm when I was 18. And two, I thought the latest technology would zap all the weeds by a laser or some sort of apparatus.

So here I am again, in the same field that I walked every summer for 18 years (give or take a few for crawling), walking beans again. The weeds are smart. They live to survive and reproduce, much like all of us and all species on earth. They have adapted to the nasty herbicide that’s been applied since around 1993. My dad didn’t have anymore free labor, so he had to start spraying herbicide the year after I left for college.

Sometimes life is funny. It always comes around full circle. Maybe I need to invent that laser weed zapper…hmmm.

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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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