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