If you’ve read this blog for very long, you know I don’t throw names out very often. It’s not my place to ‘advertise’ for different companies. There are on occasion situations where a ‘pat on the back’ is deserved. Two such situations have happened so far this spring.

The first occurred on our first full day of planting. I had loaded up the brand new J&M seed tender and taken it to the field. Everything worked fine the first load from the seed box on the driver side. Then I tried to dump corn from the box on the passenger side of the cart. Nothing came out, it wouldn’t slide down the slope to the conveyor. The quick fix was to go back home and use the forklift to move the box, so we did.

Then, dad called J&M directly (we are halfway between J&M and the dealer). Though we told them we could get by the way it was for a while, they had a crew at our place within a couple hours to remedy the issue.

In the end, it was a simple fix. Grind off some welding slag, smooth out some other welds and apply slip-plate paint. No complaints from the crew, and the problem was fixed!

Another ‘at-a-boy’

The second ‘at-a-boy’ I’m going to give out goes out to the entire crew at Milford Nutrien. I mentioned in an earlier blog that we had decided to have our cornfields custom sprayed. We were having burndown and residual chemistry as well as liquid nitrogen and sulfur applied. This had been the plan for the last 6-8 weeks.

For about a week, I had been talking to them, kicking around the idea of changing from corn chemistry to a flexible program that could accommodate corn or soybeans. After dad and I did a farm tour Monday morning last week, we identified fields that could be traversed, selected a final chemistry plan, and gave them the green light just before 10 a m. Nutrien got the manufacturer rep on board and began spraying with product they had in inventory while they sent someone to retrieve more product from the warehouse an hour and a half away.

Then the forecast changed from a clear day Tuesday to rain by 9 a.m. I didn’t know what they would get done, but I just knew if rained for a week and warmed up, weeds would quickly get out of control.

They were still at it at dusk. Even though I offered a car for them to leave the rigs and drive home, they stayed and got everything on the list done that night. I wasn’t too excited about walking a pivot at 10:30 p.m. but it was worth it when the rain came before 6 a.m.  I just wish I had given them a few more fields. I failed to find time to spray some of the fields I had targeted.

Any chance the weatherman could take a que from either of these examples?

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