Storm Clouds Have a Silver Lining During Corn Planting

Last week, Jeremy was busy planting corn (see video at the link below).  Jeremy and our assistant farm manager, Ben, built this planter.  It is quite the engineering marvel to me and is a unique combination of parts from the White company, John Deere, and Case IH. So far, they're pleased with its performance.  It is being pulled with our New Holland 9882 Tractor ("Big Blue") and is followed by the Case IH "air cart", which during corn planting, holds fertilizer.  The lines of boxes (16, one for each of 16 rows of corn) hold the seeds and then they are dropped individually into a slice in the soil made by the "openers", meanwhile tiny granules of fertilizer are blown by air pressure through tubes from the air cart and are dropped next to the seeds.  Using GPS and variable rate seeding technology (all a part of "precision agriculture technology") we can plant with accuracy to the fraction of an inch and match soil health and fertility to application of seed and fertilizer, making this a highly efficient process that also protects the environment.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tfx6s65pd0M

Tractor, followed by corn planter, followed by air cart.

My assistant, the Little Boy on the Prairie. With our busy farming lives, he has gotten very good at eating baby food while I am wedged into his sister's booster seat :)

Then a storm rolled in across the prairie...

 It got darker...

And darker...

And then Ben went cruising by to the next field with the "Magnum" tractor and the "Joker" to go fix some ruts left over from last year's wet weather muddy mess before Jeremy got there to plant corn.

There he is, a tiny dot in the lower right hand corner, while the storm got even closer...

At this link, you can see a video of the storm from a distance, with the peanut gallery giggling in the background :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1r0eV4EI1dU

That night the storm shut down our corn planting operation, but every cloud has a silver lining and sometimes those rainy days are blessings in disguise because Jeremy got to drop C.W. off at pre-school the next day...

"...He covers the sky with clouds; he supplies the earth with rain

and makes grass grow on the hills..." Psalm 147.

Why Farm Tours Matter.

When I heard that some friends of my family from Maryland, Carol and Scotty, were road-tripping to Alaska and that they were planning to come through North Dakota on their trek, I invited them to stop by.  We LOVE visitors!  We also LOVE farming and are always excited to share our passion for agriculture with others. 

Love this pic Carol took! Boy do I look tired and HUGE though, lol! Many sleepless nights led up to this day and many followed, but what a grand visit we had :)

I happened to be in the early stages of labor with our new son, who arrived the next morning, when Carol and Scotty visited in June, so the three of us hung out in the house in the air conditioning.  We talked about everything from farm policy and how the explosion of new regulations from the EPA is affecting our ability to grow food, to lessons my children are learning growing up on the farm.

I showed them our farm office and how Jeremy uses precision agriculture methods to help keep our land healthy and our farm efficient and profitable. Then I deferred the farm shop/ field tour to Jeremy so I could wrap up a few baby-prep projects.  From what I hear he made it pretty quick, because we were, after all, getting ready to have a new baby VERY soon.

Here Jeremy explains to Carol and Scotty about the flood of 2009. What you see in the background is what is left of a road/bridge that leads to some of our farmland.  They have yet to be repaired.

 

When our guests returned to their home after their trip, I got this message on my Facebook page:

"The wheat Jeremy gave us travelled all the way to Alaska to South Carolina and is now proudly displayed in our entertainment center for all to see and to also remind us of our visit and how important all our farmers are to our everyday lives! Bless you all - we think of you often and look forward to another visit!"

I know that farmers and ranchers everywhere are so incredibly busy, but it is well worth it to make time for a farm tour, even a quick one.  You will help others to have a better understanding of where their food comes from and they may even become life-long advocates for agriculture!

County Fair and a Lesson in Precision Ag

"My First Fawn" by C. Wilson, age 3.



"Come Get Me Papa" by C. Wilson, age 3.


My three year old daughter recently entered her first County Fair. We've been letting her practice photography with our digital camera. So on one trip to the field, on a beautiful, clear, sunny, North Dakota June day, we let her snap away.

It just so happened that Jeremy was seeding soybeans into a winter wheat cover crop. The winter wheat was only meant to cover the ground and protect it until the soybeans were planted, then it was killed off to let the soybeans grow- that's why the winter wheat in the field looks yellowed.

As Jeremy was driving along, he looked back just as a fawn went through the narrow space between the tire and the opener (big disc that could have made a fawn into mincemeat). He stopped immediately. Thank goodness the fawn made it through without a scratch. It was scared a bit, so it ran into the nearby ditch. So Jeremy and C.W. went to check it out. They crouched down and snuck up to it ever so quietly and she got the picture shown at the top of this blog post. It earned a red ribbon at the fair.

The second picture was taken by C.W.as well. It shows her little sister waiting for her Papa to come pick her up. It earned a blue ribbon at the fair.

The big machine in the background is our New Holland tractor and our Case IH air seeder. The tractor has dual wheels to spread out the weight of the tractor to keep the soil from being damaged by compaction. That big gray tank at the back (called the "air cart") has compartments for seed and fertilizer. Air is pumped through hoses in the machine that blow the seed and fertilizer into small tubes and eventually sends each one individually into a thin slice in the soil the opener (big disc) makes. Then a rubber wheel rolls over the slice in the soil and closes up the gap, leaving the seeds at exactly the right depth with a tiny grain of fertilizer next to it as food to grow.

The tractor is equipped with GPS and special electronic equipment so that we can map out each of our fields. We can layer electronic maps over each other for soil type, topography, and yield, so that we can plant and fertilize our crops with incredible PRECISION (hence, the name "precision agriculture"). We only want to plant seeds where they have optimal growing conditions and we want to fertilize just enough, because we want to ensure soil and environmental health and we don't want to spend any more money on fertilizer than we have to because it is VERY expensive.

For example, when you go out on a date, do you dump an entire bottle of perfume or cologne on your head? No! You apply a precise amount in a precise place. Well, now you know how precision ag. works, and now you know that our tractor and air seeder are pretty amazing pieces of equipment and that my husband is a genius (okay, so I'm biased about the genius part) :-)

Oh, and one last thing about the county fair. C.W. also made a batch of Holstein Cow Chocolate Chip Cookies for the fair which she insisted she make ALL BY HERSELF! She certainly did- from measuring all the ingredients to cracking the eggs. They earned a red ribbon and a "People's Choice" award.

Not bad for a first-timer :)