Sort of ...

Well, I posted that we were done, we did finish the harvest a week or so ago, but this year we have some additional field work.

TGF is "Strip Tilling" his Anhydrous on this year. Normally we hire a company to apply our anhydrous amonia (fertilizer) on in the fall, they come in with this big machinery any time of the day and night and we sit snuggly in the living room on the couch and watch them thinking, "Darn, I'm glad we're done". This year, however, TGF is doing it himself because this strip till business needs to be applied in a very precise manner and some things are best done ones self. The theory is.... Fertilizer applied in the fall, in the spring, TGF will plant as close to on top of the fertilizer application as humanly possible. There is a thing called auto-steer that is run by the satellites which makes this a little more accurate, but more about that later. The idea is that the sooner the little corn plant can get it's snout full of yummy fertilizer, the sooner it will get it's act together and start growing well and getting ready to produce us lots of little kernels of corn on it's little cob later in the year. In the past, the theory was that the corn would get burned by too much fertilizer too quickly, but evidently that wasn't exactly true. Anyway, the University of Illinois says it's ok, so we're a doin it. According to the U of I, this will increase our yields and we're all about increasing our yields.

Some day when I have more time, I will put together a post on "Farming isn't the same today as it used to be". I have seen so many advances in technology and farming practices just for the 17 years I have been involved as Mrs. TGF. Farmers are not hayseed, un-intelligent, backward looking, bib overall wearing folk (Well at least not ALL of them). Farming is every bit similar to running one's own company, except that you must rely on the kindness of mother nature to give you rain and warmth and gentle breezes. We watch our inputs carefully, there is no benefit to applying more fertilizer than we absolutely need to, fertilizer is expensive. We need return on our investment, just like the big CEO's. Anyway, this is getting out of hand. I'll compose myself and begin again some day soon.