Monday, May 18, 2009

Planting the Big Fields




Brian planted 40 acres of corn at the end of last week. Sunday we planted 25 or 30 acres of soybeans. Brian helps our neighbor farm in exchange for use of some his equipment.

The planter he's using in these pictures is a "no-till drill". It actually cuts a path and sticks the seeds in the ground without the field being plowed up every year. Last year we had corn in this field, this year we drilled the soybeans right in. The conservation district in our county even owns a drill that can be rented out. No-till farming is easier on the environment. The fields are not as susceptible to erosion. Plus, the practice saves quite a bit of fuel and time, thus reducing our expenses.


Planting can be a one man job most of the time. The picture above shows the bins that hold the seed. Ideally we would have just enough seed to plant the field without too much extra to clean out at the ends. As we near the end of planting I stay on the planter and watch the seed level. One person, or even two, can stay pretty busy shuffling seed from one bin to another.


I didn't have to work too hard. We had quite a bit of seed left. There wasn't much planting to do this year since our other fields are already growing wheat and hay. It'll be nice to see these fields turning green again as well.

2 comments:

Farmer's Daughter said...

Great pictures! Ed's so jealous of those tractors :)

I've given you an award, so come on over to my blog and check it out!

Jena said...

Thanks! Tell Ed not to be too jealous, Brian's jealous too since most of the nicer tractors belong to our neighbors. With the small amount of acreage we farm it would be too hard to justify spending $30,000 and up for a tractor - but that doesn't stop him from dreaming! :)

Thank you so much for the award. How cool! I'll post about it this weekend. It is nice to see the eggmobile posts getting so much attention. They are some of the most visited posts according to my Google Analytics so I'm glad I took the time to blog about it. Thanks again!