Monday my accountant requested the rest of my bookwork so he can complete 2016 tax returns. This is never my favorite time of year. I am also behind and need to get the annual balance sheet made up.

The farm books are ready. We’ve been on QuickBooks for a while now. About five years ago, Rachael and I made the decision to hire someone to come in once a week to record transactions, write checks, and file paperwork. That was a great decision. I have never liked doing bookwork. Neither one of us had time to do it. Now, we no longer end up pointing fingers at each other when something goes wrong. Over the years, we’ve had a couple of women who are capable and willing to do this.

More on the planter
Though the decision is made on what we’re doing with the planter (I wrote about a few weeks back), we have delayed orders. The first manufacturer I chose for the tracks was not willing to commit to a hard completion date. It has taken a couple weeks to get final pricing from another company. Hopefully I will be able to get that ordered today.

This alternate vendor will require us to do some modifications to get it to fit on our planter. (I’m not sure that’s a good idea, but the engineer in me says ‘why not?’) We have also put off the green light for the row unit down force. We have two quotes that ended up fairly close to each other. Now we just have to decide which way we are going. We took advantage of a nice weather and did get the planter hooked up and ready to come out of shed.

We are also procrastinating on more grain sales. We would like to see the price bump up a bit. After two solid months, the daily grind to the mill is getting old. One more week will get our contracts filled. Also, weighing in is the amount of work we have to do in the shop. We expect the driver who worked for us last year to return the first of March. We may push additional contracts until that timeframe.

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