If You Plant It, It Will Grow...We Hope!

So from the moment we came back from Easter in Missouri, we have been goin' strong in the field, either plantin' corn, workin' ground, putting anhydrous one or runnin' around like a crazy lady doin' whatever needed to be done to keep the tractors goin'....can you guess which one I'm doing?

Now that we have slowed down some and are now waiting for a rain...yes its springtime and we want it to rain. It's completely opposite of what it's been like the past couple of years, but that's how the weather is. Anyways now that we are a little slower I have a chance to show ya'll what we have been up to these past couple of weeks.

In the days before planting the anxious farmer is out checking his fields on a daily basis. There is a method to the madness; he will start checking the fields that typically dry out faster.

When it's getting close to go time the shop gets overtaken by pallets filled with bags and bags of seed corn.

(This picture wasn't susppose to be standing up, but blogger thought that it looked better this way....oh well.)

Caleb - "Why must you always have that camera in my face? Can't you see I'm working here?"

Me - "I can, and that's why I always have a camera in your face, cause I want to get pictures of my favorite man hard at work!" 

 Load 'em on up.

Caleb is the designated planter and he loves it. His nice lookin' backend is seated in the planter tractor from sunup to sundown. Since we have 50 million different varieties of corn (ok maybe not quite that many, but there's a lot just the same) Caleb keeps a record of what's planted where, this way we know what can be sprayed and on which field it can be sprayed. I have no idea how he keeps his records on this stuff, but I am sure I would be extremely confused if I tried to figure it out....this is just another reason why I don't want to do any of the planting!!!

We've got green corn and we've got pink corn.

I thought corn was yellow?

It is, but the different seed treatments are different colors, and the treatments are used to ward off diseases in the seedlings.  

Did you put powdered sugar on your corn?

No, no, no...ya'll sure do have a lot of questions to day!

That what stuff is actually talc.

Isn't that what they use in baby powder?

Why yes it is. When Caleb and I were dating I got a call from Caleb asking me to pick up a couple of bottles of baby powder cause they had ran out of talc.

Why do you use talc?

That's a good question. It helps the seeds move smoothly through planter and reduces wear on some of the planter parts.

Before we start throwin' seed in the ground we go over it one more time with a harrow (hair-row, it's also called just a hair).  It is used to smooth out the soil to give the planter a nice seed bed to plant the seed in.

 Now that we have all that taken care of, let's get down to business.

Around and around we go.

Caleb absolutely loves this time of the year. It's like tip-off of the first game of the year, when you've been practicing and working out during the entire off-season just to get ready for this moment. That’s what planting corn is like to Caleb. He lives for this moment.

Now we can't plant all the all the fields without re-filling at least once or a few hundred times.

Since we have three different farms working together here and each farm buys and plants their own corn we have empty out the planter each time we go to a different farm.

Why don't you just plant all of yours before switching over someone else’s?

Well, there are a couple of reasons why we don't do that. First we start on whichever field is ready first and that has to do with what the soil is like not who owns it. Cause if the soil is still to we to plant then we will go to where ever the driest soil is a start planting there. Second, the fields are all spread out and mixed together, so we will also go to whichever field is the closest.

So instead of un-hooking each planter box and dumping it by hand (that is a huge pain) we take along the shop-vac and one really long extension cord...haha...or a truck with a generator and just a regular extension cord and we suck all the corn out with it.

Ya just stick the hose down in there and let the shop-vac do all the work.

That is until you have to empty the tub, then you need a second set of hands to help hold the sack opened.

It's always nice to have someone else there to help load all these bags into the planter.

Why aren't you down there helping instead of taking pictures? Wouldn't three sets of hands be even better?

Ok smarty pants, now your starting to sound like Caleb! I do help a lot, but I want to get some pictures to show you guys so you know what’s goin' on around here. And right after I took this picture I got a call from Calvin to come help him change a tire on the anhydrous rig. So I had to run down the road to the truck with my camera bag on my back and go help change a tire. So I work, I promise. I just don't have anyone following me around taking pictures, like I do to Caleb.

So after they are re-loaded...

...and closed back up...

...it's time to get movin' again.

As of right now we have done all but about 60-70 acres, and as soon as it rains we will be able to knock those out in no time flat!

So what are you gonna do now that the corn is planted?

Well the guys are gonna get the other fields ready to plant soybeans and I am gonna get my house put back in order and I'm gonna plant my garden!