May 1st 2010 Corn planting continues though it seems it will be slowed by rains forecasted. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ May 7th 2010 Green Lea sent us a used spx4410 with 120ft boom to demo. It was delivered this morning. The sprayer needs some new tires and a bit of TLC but it would make a good fit for our needs. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ May 12th 2010 Planting has been hit or miss for the last several days. Showers have slowed everything down to a crawl. Even spraying pre-emerge has been a challenge though it is getting done. Of course set backs like a crimp letting go on a hydraulic line doesn't help things. 8200 with 16 row planter planting corn video. TS130a with 8 row planter planting corn video. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ May 13th 2010 Not exactly something you want to wake up to this late in the year but everything had ice on it in the morning. Significant percent of our corn planted is up and spike to 1.5 leafs. Shouldn't affect yield as the growing point is still well below ground but the corn will look quite narly for a while. The salesman from Green Lea came out and we did the field demo. Sprayed 1200gal of Frontier Marksman, cleaned it out and did 1200 gal of roundup burning down soybeans ground. I must say the AIM command is an impressive system. The sprayer rides excellent and spite its weight handled the mud quite well. The 120ft boom is huge and would be a great asset for covering acres fast! ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ May 14th 2010 More rain and a few photos of frost damage. The tips are starting to yellow. Likely much of what is up will turn quite brown. A shot of our wheat as well. In the afternoon I took the float and moved the bull dozer home for another job. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ May 15th 2010 First of our SO3 W4 beans seed was delievered. All is pre-innoculated and treated with apronmaxx and cruiser. Will be nice to just dump in the drill and go without needing to add liquid innoculant. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ May 16th 2010 Finally dry enough to get a start on soybeans. Putting in some longer season IP soybeans first. Everything is working well and hopefully we can make a good push this week to get the corn done and a big chunk of the beans in. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ May 19th 2010 Bean planting has been going extremely well. At least until we went to the county west and found it was rather wet. You would think either the guy that sprayed the roundup or the guy that spread the fertilizer would have mentioned the ruts made during both applications...sigh. For the first time ever I was greatful to have the 8440 on the packer instead of a smaller lighter tractor. Well obviously this field needed to be fixed before seeding. So we decided to ask for a demo of a Salford RTS machine to lightly work the field and dry it out enough to get the seed in the ground. An 18ft model was brought out a few hours later. It worked quite well in that light soil type. The field should be ready to seed in a day of sunshine. RTS demo video. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ May 22nd 2010 Seeder in the same place it got stuck after the RTS machine leveled thing off and dried up the soil. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ May 24th 2010 Switched from S03 W4's to natos, then into the roundup ready beans. Another couple days and seeding 2010 should be finished! In the mid afternoon the T7060 on the seeder hit 1000.0 hours. I caught it in a photo when by chance I looked down to see 999.9 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ May 27-31st 2010 Wrapped up soybean seeding. At the end the ground was getting almost too dry and getting proper seed disk was a challenge in the stone hard soil. All in all the machinery performed well this spring. Cleaning up of equipment has started as well as a little more land clearing in the back corner of one farm. Couldn't get it all cleared as it got too muddy. Have to dig a ditch along the back side to get some of the water away. That will be a pain as the ditch will have to cross 3 major pipelines. Oh the joy of paperwork and site inspections! ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------