Reboots & Root Systems

Finding Chi Between Vegas and the Furrow

Apr 27, 2024

“Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes, even you.” - Anne Lamott

Occasionally, I’m forced to restart my electronics. From my phone to computers to tractors, something occasionally freezes, and the only thing that’ll get it going again is a hard refresh.

The same thing happens to me from time to time.

Over the past couple of months, your humble pamphlet writer glitched out. Froze. I needed a reboot.

So that’s what I did.

Conveniently, my youngest sister joined her boy toy in holy matrimony last week in Vegas. So, I did the old unplug-replug in desert air surrounded by margarita-toting Cousin Eddie and hustlers separating tourists from their cash.

At the risk of sounding like an aging curmudgeon who can no longer hang, I must say that Vegas has changed. When the mob ran the show, they gave away free lodgings and booze to get people into town to blow the family nest egg on slots and craps.

Back then, you could get a seventy-two-ounce prime rib and a drum of Miller Lite for less than a gallon of gas.

Now that the yuppies have taken over, it costs thirty-five bucks to soak in your hotel’s hot tub or get a decent margarita. Like groceries and John Deere parts, not even Vegas is cheap anymore.

They even razed Bill’s Gambling Hall and replaced it with a hipster hangout.

Pity.

Nonetheless, the reboot worked, and I’m back to full strength, just in time to spit some seeds in the dirt.

Congrats to the young newlyweds, and thanks to them for allowing me to find my chi and recenter.

Rally On, Garth

TradingView chart — Created with TradingView

Some buying interest found the spring wheat market last week. Seeing a rally after nearly two years of declining prices is nice.

There still isn’t much room to profit at these prices, but perhaps the floor is finally set.

Let’s see how it holds up.

Monkey See, Monkey Do

Spring planting has been underway in our area for a fortnight, though we didn’t partake in seed sewing until this week.

The ground was fit and ready, but cold soils and forecasts kept us from turning a wheel.

Watching the spring startup process play out is comical.

You’ll talk to a neighbor or two at the coffee shop, and they’ll tell you they will hold off on planting for another week while they prepare and service machinery.

Later that afternoon, the guy who claimed that he wasn't planning to do anything starts rolling and kicking up dust or mudballs. This ignites a chain reaction among his neighbors, who follow suit, hoping to be the first one done.

Happens every year.

I could go on explaining, but I can’t do half the job of the guy in this half-decade-old YouTube video, so I’ll leave it up to him to elaborate:

I think about that guy every time I load a sprayer.

In my younger days, I was always chomping to roll first. I grew up in the damp years of the 90s and learned that when you have a window to plant, you take advantage because it can start raining and not dry out all summer.

Pretty soon, it’s July, and you’re still struggling to get a crop in the ground.

It sucks, but it does happen.

Now that I’m older and a little more patient, and with today’s equipment that can quickly seed a crop, I try not to push like I once did.

If I were a seed, I wouldn’t get very excited about sitting in sub-35-degree soil.

Lucky or not, we planted in mid-to-late May in 2022 and 2023 and had close to record crops both years, so as challenging as it is to wait with the neighbors rolling around you, we decided to hold off on the early planting party.

I’m not knocking anybody who turned the machines loose early.

I don’t know what the right thing to do is any more than the next guy, but I think it’s wise to manage your farm the way that’s best for your farm and your dirt, not based on what the neighbors are doing.

Holy Technology, Batman

A map of sugarbeet seeding singulation — Accuracy.

After last year’s poor stands due to dry soils and a planter old enough to belly up to the bar for a drink, we decided to upgrade this year to a planter with more technology than a Pink Floyd concert.

When I was a kid, the most technologically advanced thing we had on the farm was a digital tachometer in a John Deere 50 series.

Then, sometime in the early nineties, Deere introduced the slip gauge, which showed how much traction a tractor lost when the wheels began spinning.

Holy rollers, I thought that slip meter was something back in the day.

Thirty years later, Deere says I see your slip meter, and I’ll raise the table limit with this DB44 ExactEmerge planter equipped with row units capable of planting seeds at speeds of up to ten miles per hour with 99% accuracy.

Exsqueeze me? A baking powder?1

That’s right. Ten miles per hour with pristine accuracy. It’s one of the most unbelievable things my fragile, eggshell mind has ever seen.

Until this week, I’d never planted sugar beets faster than 4.6 miles per hour. Planting them at 8 almost feels like committing a crime.

It took me eight hours to sock in this year’s beet crop. It used to take me three days.

This efficiency gives us more reason not to rush to place seeds in cold soil.

With technology doubling every eighteen months, I can’t wait to see what they come up with next.

What a time to be alive.

Thank you so much for reading!

For the next few weeks, until the rest of the seeds are sewn, Farming Full-Time issues will be spotty and weather-dependent, but rest assured, there is much coming in the pipeline.

Take care of yourselves. ✌️

Comments

What’s your reboot strategy?
How high does the price have to go before you stop calling it worthless wheat?
New Vegas or Old Vegas?
If you were a seed, how warm would you want your soil to be?
Wayne’s World 1 or Wayne’s World 2?
What will they come up with next?

That’s from Wayne’s World for those who don’t communicate in movie lines and music quotes like some of us.