With apologies to John Denver for borrowing that line from his song, "Rocky Mountain High", this was the scene out of my office window yesterday about 5:30.
ITs one of the benefits of this line of work that I get a constantly changing view through those windows in the cab of my big red tractor. Yesterday's dark Western sky made a nice backdrop for the special bright green shade that the poplar leaves show for their first stage of opening. The new worked black soil beside the weathered stubble of last year's canola crop. Its one of the many reasons I never get bored with this farming business (or lifestyle).
Its been a series of starts and stops trying to get the anhydrous applied in preparation for seeding the crop. Its a week ago today that I started and I should be finished with that job by now but recurring rain and snow days have stalled me twice now. Close to an inch of rain on the weekend and now another half inch last night.
Its true, rain is so necessary to produce a crop but first we have to get that crop planted. And there is a limited "window of opportunity" to get that job done. Most crops need around 100 days of frost free weather to reach maturity so we like to get them in the ground by the end of May so they will be ready to harvest in September.
The rain will surely make the grass grow which will keep the cattle (and me) happy for the summer.
Some people wonder how folks can ride a machine around all day and not get bored, or run machinery in a plant or other such things. I've always found that I do my best thinking while doing the sort of work that might drive some folks batty. Of course it helps if you really do LIKE what you're doing in the first place.
ReplyDeleteI think boredom is self-caused anyway. I used to tease the younger guys in the plant who asked me if my particular job wasn't boring by telling them to find a job in the plant that was truly exiting, because I wanted to bump it! Most of them got my point. Of course, I AM the kind of guy who can sit on a stump for an hour and watch two piss-ants fight.
We are getting showers and sun. The ground is getting dry but the showers keep us from farming. We had hail (small stuff) all around us today.
ReplyDeleteEverything will come on at once I am sure!
Ralph, The tachometer plan was a bust. I can't find it. I was looking at the speedometer! I do have a tach drive on another engine. I am trying to find you a cable and tach from the neighbor. This may very well end in failure.
ReplyDeletePost a photo of your dash and I will try to match it.
Oh, and another thing. Gorges made a comment about driving tractor all day.
ReplyDeleteThe old slow turning Moline engines now put me to sleep. Running the cab tractor with the baler puts me right out. I went into kind of a daze planting corn and forgot to check the acres and ran out of seed. (Pretty bad in a 20 acre field)
Planting or running the stacker I tend to stay awake as there is more to think about. Working dirt puts me to sleep as well. I understand why people plow through the interstate when they have the Autosteer running!
Today I'm going to chop silage. I may very well go to sleep as the 471 Hercules in the White running wide open puts me out also. I drink lots of coffee!
Budde, don't waste too much of your time searching. My dash in the Loadstar is exactly like the one in the picture you posted a while back. I just thought if it was going to the scrapper it would be a shame to waste a good working tach. Still busy seeding crops here and too busy to publish anything although I've had a few things worth a picture.
ReplyDelete