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.

The Farmer's Daughters

This weekend C.W. got to spend some time "working" on the farm with her Papa. We carefully analyzed this situation and sent her on the safest of missions. She was to sit in the pick-up (securely strapped in her car seat) and color while he greased the tractor, then they went to town for parts. I'm told she measured just about every bolt in the bolt section of our local hardware store.

She looked so darned cute on the way out the door, I couldn't help but snap a picture. It's out of focus (I blame it on the wee red head squirming in my other arm), but I don't care. It was a priceless vision. One moment, she is the most elegant tiny ballerina and the next she's sporting her farming gear and a blaze orange hunting vest. Jeremy insisted on the orange vest. I agreed with him that she should wear it, but I thought to myself, if there is a hunter out there that shoots at something blue, with pink princess boots on, that hunter has got some serious problems. She was terribly embarrassed to wear the thing, but we erred on the side of caution.

So off she went with her pink Dora the Explorer bag of coloring supplies, and they had a grand afternoon.



C.W. came back at supper time and reported that she had "driven" Papa's pick-up. Uh-huh. So much for Mr. Safety :) I guess there are just certain things farmer's daughters have to experience when they're growing up. I remember driving my Dad's pickup (solo) around the farm when I was just seven.

I couldn't post about C.W.'s afternoon with her Papa without throwing in a pic of our dear wee red head. So here Davey...er Jeremy... trying on the "coon skin caps" with her at a sporting goods store in Fargo.



Oh what a joy it is to be raising two little farmer's daughters.