Farming marathon

[Mobuck]

Friday the 13th didn't turn out too bad. Son and I pulled a 20 hour day on the 12th (including the work related conference calls we both had that morning). Got an early start Friday and had completed the majority of soybean planting here at my place by 6PM. Soil prep, planting, first spray pass, and everything back under cover. That's possible because we do a fair amount of custom farming so have 3x bigger equipment than would normally be needed for the acres I own. Back in the 80's, it would take me a week of working afternoons and nights(I worked part time in the mornings) to accomplish the same tasks.
Downside is, Son loaned one of the utility tractors to our custom farming customer so he could rake hay and we got the call "It's leaking oil and stopped moving" about mid-day on Thursday. That's a bummer since we'd just replaced the transmission on that one a year ago. We dragged it out of the field and will retrieve it as soon as Son gets back from his next work trip.

 

[Getduck]

where are you located? I am in central Iowa and we were very wet the first part of the month we just got into the fields last Wed the 11th. we finally dried out enough that there is a cloud of dust coming up behind the tractor. and our hay ground is two weeks behind normal because of the colder temps that we had all of early May.

 

[Mobuck]

I'm in north central MO about 25 miles from the IA/MO border. It's dried here significantly in the past 5 days but they had 2-4" of rain 40 miles west overnight. This morning, we were able to get into a pasture to replace a water tank that's been waiting for replacement since October 2021. We missed the rain and hoping our custom farming ground is drying so we can start on that when Son gets home end of week.
edit: I'm on the phone right now talking to a guy in Lucas county who says he can't get into the field yet either.

 

[Selena]

I had to go to Wabash Friday & what concern me was the number of fields that haven't been planted yet and how few people were out working. For the middle of May that is more than a little troubling.

 

[Mobuck]

The major corn belt states are way behind the normal average planting wise. Catching up rapidly IF rain stays somewhere else.
We're lucky in that we do custom farming and have 3x bigger equipment than my actual acres could support. We only used one of our two planters as it was more efficient for one of us to plant while the other ran the sprayer. Sprayer covers 3x planter passes and runs 2x faster but takes longer to refill and by end of second day, the sprayer was only 10 acres(15 minutes) behind the planter so it worked well.