Mud-Slinging Confessions
When Hope Meets High-Speed Hardware
Heavens to Betsy, it’s been a while.
Not to worry, your humble pamphlet-pusher hasn’t gone off the reservation. Between graduation celebrations, slinging seeds, and killing weeds, the schedule hasn’t granted many slots for writing time.
It’s nearly June. The past few weeks have flown by faster than I can slam a sleeve of lemon-flavored Oreo Thins. Have you tried these things? Holy cannoli. Don’t eat them while driving because there’s a possibility your eyes will roll back in your head, and you may black out.
You’re welcome.
Multiple rain events recharged the soil profile in May. Fortunately, we had a dry window to wrap up planting this week, just in time for a forecasted two-incher this weekend.
It’s funny how one year can look so different from the last. A year ago, I cried like a tired toddler for a dab of moisture to sprout the seeds. This year, a lack of moisture is the least of our concerns.
Most have completed planting in our neck of the thicket, but in a few pockets east of us, there is still quite a bit to be done.
And by the looks of the Snodgrass weather reports, one doesn’t have to drive too far to find excess moisture.
Since planting began, the landscape has changed. There’s a glimmer of hope that commodity prices have bottomed out. Some are hoping for timely rains, while others are hoping for the spigot to shut off. That’s the thing about farming; you spend most of your time hoping. Hope for this. Hope for that. So much is out of your control.
What’s left to do but hope?
Whatever you’re hoping for—more rain, hair on your head, or for a Minnesota sports team to make the finals—here’s to it finding you.
One More Round
Last year’s Every Rain Goes Around Us project made me wonder if we’d ever get a good soaker again. This year, we’ve already had three. Well, call it two and a half because the last one was more of a gully-washer than a soaker.
I got caught up in that sum bitch, too. You always think you can make one more round before the storm hits you. Haulin ass, watching the radar, doing the maths in your head. Sure as shit, you always figure can make one more round.
Go for it, kid. You got this.
Before you’re halfway to the other end, the rain starts coming down pretty hard, but you can’t tell because the John Deere high-speed planter has you going the same speed as the rain, so it hardly touches the windows, but it’s there.
You know it’s there from the mud-slinging from your tires.
In too deep now, too late to turn back.
Committed. Crap. I’m afraid of commitment.
Half-mile to go.
I click the dial a few notches forward to tell the tractor I need speed, and I need it now, as I lift the machine and make my turn. Typically, I drive like a sober person and slow down for the end rows, but not tonight.
Tonight, I’m on a mission. A mission to get one more round in, even though this one more round won’t make a lick of a difference, not one damn shot glass of it, because, after this round, there’s still forty-five more acres to go.
With the rooster tails flying and planter fish-tailing, I made er back to the west end carrying enough mud to build six gardens and a three-bed, two-bath mud hut.
Was the extra round worth it?
Doubtful, but what farmer hasn’t done the same thing at least once?
We all gotta make one more round.
Getting to know one another
After last year’s poor seed emergence, we updated the farm’s planter to a 2020 John Deere ExactEmerge. It’s an impressive planter but doesn’t come without frustrations.
Aside from a small plastic gearbox failure on one of the brush belts, the ExactEmerge was incredibly reliable.
Before going further, I should explain what a brush belt is. Without boring you to douse yourself in gasoline and walk through a steel mill, the brush belt is the key cog in what makes a high-speed planter able to plant at a rooster-ripping pace.
In a traditional planter, seed is dropped through a narrow tube from a foot or so above the ground, which exposes the seed to things like bouncing out of the furrow and ending up everywhere except in the bottom of that trench, where you want it.
The brush belt in a modern planter is oval-shaped. It carries the seed from the meter and hands it off directly to the furrow below. The module controlling this brush belt adjusts (nearly instantaneously) the belt speed to the planter’s ground speed, creating a dead drop with little risk of seed bounce.
The idea is that you’ll get more seeds right where you want them.
And I can confirm that it works.
And it works well...with a few caveats.
Most soybeans planted today are treated with fungicide and insecticide to keep them healthy and wealthy while taking the initial dirt nap, making them too sticky to flow properly through the planter’s channels.
Treated soybeans are a brush belt’s worst nightmare. The more fufu juice snake oil (or whatever folks call seed treatments these days), the more problems they cause.
Without a proper amount of seed lubricants such as talc or graphite, the soybeans bunch up in the brush belt, overloading the electric motor driving the belt and leaving you dead in the water until you disassemble the belt cartridge and remove the bunched-up beans.
Like most things in life, I learned about the perils of skimping on seed lubes the hard way and found myself still disassembling and reassembling brush belt cartridges until four a.m.
It took seven hours to plant a hundred acres when it should’ve taken three.
Whether it’s a new planter, person, or pet, getting to know somebody takes time and can be frustrating.
That said, I won’t hold the planter accountable for the delays and instead chalk them up to operator ignorance.
Deere built one heck of a planter, and I can’t speak highly enough about it. After one season under our belt, I will say the ExactEmerge planter is officially FFT-approved.