Ashley Reding's Update from Kentucky

Some weeks are full of excitement on the farm. This week was not one of them (which isn’t necessarily a bad thing!) We received several scattered showers over the weekend and early in the week, so fieldwork was limited. It seems Aaron was doing something different each day: combining wheat, planting soybeans, running the sprayer, talking on the phone, or working in the shop. This hasn’t led to many good picture opportunities, so I’m going to cheat a little this week and share my favorite picture of last year’s wheat harvest. This was taken from the cab of the tractor. I love the lights shining on the wheat and the colors of the sky.

My only story about family this week is about Andrew, our four year old. Yesterday we were driving home and he saw two deer in a field. At first he sounded very excited when he said, “Look, Mom! Two deers!” Then his voice changed as he showed grave concern. He announced, “Oh, no! If the deer eat the soybeans then there won’t be any soybeans. Then dad and the combine can’t harvest the soybeans.” I don’t know if it’s nature or nurture, but this child is a farmer through and through!

Last week I promised to talk a bit about autosteer. I thought I would let Aaron talk about how we use autosteer on our sprayer. The following was written by him:

Five years ago, as I was trying to decide how we could best benefit from GPS, it became evident that the sprayer was top priority. Both university and private data indicated that the cost of GPS technology on a sprayer can be recovered in one year!
Here is how our sprayer is equipped: On top of the cab is a yellow, globe-shaped satellite antenna. It receives and transmits signals to as many as fifteen different satellites that orbit the earth. The more satellites the antenna is “hitting,” the more accurate the reading on the monitor that is mounted in the cab.
The primary function of the monitor is to show the location of the sprayer in a field, and to map the field as the sprayer applies product. Because the sprayer “knows” where it is and where it has been, it can be programmed to do a variety of exciting tasks.
The most interesting to me is “auto-steer.” When we have the sprayer running in auto-steer, we only manually steer the sprayer when we turn at the end of the field. Otherwise, at the touch of a button, the sprayer takes over and steers itself 90 ft. over from its previous pass.

Another feature I like is called “SwathControl.” The sprayer covers 90 feet in each pass. With that in mind, you can imagine how easy it would be to overlap, especially on irregularly shaped fields. SwathControl recognizes when the sprayer is passing over something it has already sprayed and begins to shut off any of the five sections of the boom that are overlapping. As soon as each section passes the area that has already been covered, the sections turn back on automatically.
How are these features of benefit? They greatly increase our accuracy by eliminating skips and overlaps. This saves money and makes us better stewards of your farm and the environment as a whole. Lastly, they reduce a great deal of operator fatigue after a long day.

I was recently told about a farmer who thought GPS and auto-steer technology were too expensive. He alleged that if they couldn’t drive a straight row, they shouldn’t be farming. With the number of acres that we farm, GPS is a wonderful investment. As Aaron mentioned, it saves product and operator fatigue.
Next time I hope to have some great footage of wheat combining and soybean drilling. Until then, have a great week!

Ashley

Another update from guest blogger Ashley Reding

Oh, the hard life of a farmer… As you can tell from this picture of my husband, Aaron, farmers do occasionally get to kick back. What might surprise you is that this picture was taken while he was planting corn! Oh, the joys of auto-steer. Kathryn (9) just noticed last night that I could drive our van without pushing the gas pedal. I laughed because she was so amazed at cruise control, yet doesn’t bat an eye at the tractor driving itself across the field. (For those of you unfamiliar with auto-steer, I’ll talk more about it next week.)

Since last week, I am happy to report that we planted the last of our corn – including what was replanted. Kathryn is becoming quite the photographer this summer. She is already working on photographs to enter in the county fair, and took these two great shots of corn fields – one obviously much more mature than the other.We are nearing the end of the soybean planting and will soon be harvesting winter wheat.

This week I had a routine checkup with my doctor (I am diabetic.) We spent much of the time talking about farming which she knew little about. They say most Americans are at least four generations removed from the farm (which is true in my case), so it is no surprise that many people don’t understand today’s farms.

What I found interesting is that my doctor thought farmers owned all of their land. She was really shocked – and I was shocked that she was shocked! I thought I should add this to my mental inventory of things that farmers think that everyone knows, but they really don’t. Here are a couple more:

1. In town, a car with caution lights on usually meansthe person has a flat tire or is trying to carry items in their car that actually require a truck. In the country, a car with its lights flashing probably means there is a big piece of machinery close behind. Slow down and move over! Aaron gets so frustrated when people don’t slow down, but I have to defend those who have no clue what this means!

2. Another misconception is that farmers are busy in the spring and fall, but they relax in the summer and winter. Ha!! I suppose some farms do still operate this way, but we do not. Summer is when we harvest wheat and apply crop protection products to the soybeans. We are also involved with Farm Bureau and various commodity groups that have summer and winter meetings. Additionally, we attend training sessions in both summer and winter to improve our farming processes and learn about new technologies. This past winter, we were out of town four weeks in an eight-week period! And that doesn’t include the additional one and two-day trips sprinkled throughout the winter months. Of course summer and winter are also filled with planning for the upcoming season, which takes many, many hours.

Farming is never a world in which I thought I’d live and I am on the list of those who had many misconceptions about farming. I’m learning new things every day and am so happy that I can teach Aaron and our family new things about business practices that help our farm. For two total opposites, we work well together!

Flooded Fields at Planting Time - Guest Blogger Ashley Reding

Last week I mentioned the 10 inches of rain we received the first weekend in May. While this was not the highest water on record, the older locals saw water where they had never seen it before. My first pictures are of one of our “flood victim” fields – you can see how the corn is nice, green, and tall (relatively speaking) where the water did not reach. Then see where we had to replant and start again. Amazing. I am also including a picture of the trash left behind from the flood. While this picture wasn’t taken in a field, it is a good representation of the sticks, limbs and more limbs that had to be cleared before any replanting could begin.

This last week has been warm and wonderful for planting. We are drilling beans and planting (and replanting) corn. Kathryn (9) got out of school last Friday, so she has been a farm helper three days already. Andrew (4) is on his third day in a week – and that’s only because I won’t send him out every day! Andrew and I rode with Aaron a couple of nights ago and it is amazing to watch Andrew’s concentration. He asks about everything he sees and repeats to you what he’s already learned. Andrew was planting with Aaron for over eight hours last Friday, and he still didn’t want to come home. That is amazing for a boy who can’t sit still! Aaron is beaming with pride as his children’s love of farming grows.

Without the flood, we would be nearly finished planting; however, we are still about one to one-and-a-half weeks from being finished due to the rain and replanting. At that time, wheat should be ready to harvest. So there will be no break this season. Maybe next year…

Last week I mentioned that I learned quickly that “but NEXT year” is a common farmer motto. Another thing I learned early on is that when asked “Will you come lead me to the next field,” one should prepare to be gone for three hours. More than likely, the initial request is simply step one in the plan. What it really means is,
“Will you come lead me to the next field…then drive me back to the first field to get the truck….then come back to this field and wait until so-and-so gets here with the such-and-such and then take him back to the farm?” It didn’t take long to learn that I’d better stick in some snacks for the kids and get on my tennis shoes. Perhaps my next endeavor should be writing a guidebook for new not-from-the-farm farm wives!