Crop Circles

Actually it was a large crop rectangle that I discovered in my latest oat field this morning. I had not looked at the field since I seeded it in early June. Now out on the trike inspecting to see if it was time to spray for weeds I was shocked to find a large rectangle of almost bare ground. The air seeder had gone over the field and for some reason this patch of ground had no seed applied. Operator half asleep maybe and forgot to hit the switch for the seed auger? Can't blame it on aliens I guess.
If it was just one pass I would have ignored it but this looked to be about ten percent of the whole field and located on the high ground that was not flooded so bad by last week's four inch downpour. I couldn't leave it bare all summer. Lucky I had not emptied the oats out of the truck box yet or disconnected the air tank from the seeder and parked it in the shed. In short order I had the Magnum hitched up to the air seeder, augered a few bushels of oats into the tank and headed out to seed. This field has really suffered from too much rain. Every depression contains either water or mud and dying plants. Anyway, the crop in the rest of the field was big enough (as were the weeds) to spray. With another inch of rain possible for tomorrow I needed that job done today. And so it was done by sundown. Leaving more ruts with the sprayer and flattening more crop into the muddy ground, I wondered if I might have been better off just leaving the weeds to grow.

Planting Progress

Seeding moves along steadily on the farm. Until today. The intermittent showers of the morning turned to steady, at times heavy rain. By noon the air seeder was digging up drier soil than what was on the surface so decided to call it quits. Kind of ok to have a short break after the past couple of weeks of non stop tractor work. We have had some incredible warm, almost record breaking temps which really dried up the surface of fields and started everything growing.
I'm way ahead of the provincial average, which is about 38% complete last time I heard. I'm about 90% finished. With the rain we have had today and whats forecast for the next day or so I don't think I'll get the crops all in the ground by the 24th. Thats always been a sort of target date for finishing seeding crops here.
The John Deere anhydrous cultivator worked well and survived some of my incredible rocky ground without breakdown. A leaking exhaust manifold on the tractor caused some concern til we discovered what it was and decided I could go on working with it as is for now. For about the second time in the 14 years I've owned this Magnum tractor I got it stuck bad enough that I had to unhitch the anhydrous cultivator to get out of the mud. With the aid of a huge nylon tow rope borrowed from a neighbour I was able to extricate it from the mud with no harm done, other than time lost and frustration at the incredibly wet ground on this particular field.
This picture of the old Loadstar unloading fertilizer into the air seeder was taken one morning a week ago. Less than a half hour later the truck was stuck in the mud on a wet hillside. Sometimes trying to take a shortcut is just a waste of time and effort and I should have known better.
My "garden patch" sits un-worked growing weeds as I have had no time to do anything with it. Seeding crops takes top priority right now so the garden vegetables will just have to wait a few more days. My "lawn" remains untouched with the mower yet this spring and it is looking more like a hayfield every day. Might get a chance to cut it before the fields dry up enough to get back in the tractor. If not, no big deal. I don't think the neighbours will complain.