I recently told a friend that I feel like we’re stuck in the movie Groundhog Day. I don’t remember much about the movie, but the premise was a weatherman (played by Bill Murray) keeps waking up only to repeat the same day, Groundhog Day.

The combination of the stay-at-home order, the non-stop COVID-19 media coverage, and the relatively few nice spring days we have seen is the cause of these feelings. With a restless crew at home, we took the kids to Potato Creek State park Sunday. (State parks are still open in Indiana for hiking and biking.) Somehow a planned 2.5 mile hike turned into a 6.5 mile trek for the parents! The enthusiasm of the kids led them far ahead of the parents, leaving us a guessing game for which trail they took. Fortunately, there was plenty of green space for them to play in back near the van.

We have not yet put a seed in the ground. It’s just too cold. Even though some days a layer of dust can be seen when turning ground, it’s pretty wet underneath. I verified this Tuesday when we were repairing an underground fault on an irrigation wire. In reality, we aren’t even past the normal starting calendar window for us, which ranges between the 15^th and 25^th of the month.

It is just that everyone is a bit on edge with spring 2019 in the back of our minds.

Smoothing last year’s rough ground

We leveled up a couple hundred acres of chiseled land yesterday. The fields were pretty rough from last fall. It hasn’t really be warm enough that I want to spray. Smoothing up the ground will buy me a couple weeks before weeds establish and turn the field green.

Dad has poked around and been able to strip a few more acres this week. We have been having all kind of fits getting the fertilizer rate to come up to the set point. Something is going on with the Montag fertilizer unit we just can’t figure out. The problem is only at higher target rates. The sensors show meter speed increasing and decreasing as they should. We just aren’t getting enough product flow.

Likely, this will be something to figure out this summer as we don’t have much left to strip. We will have to be aware of the mixes and rate to get through what is left this spring.

The opinions of the author are not necessarily those of Farm Futures or Farm Progress.