Planting 2017

Wahoo! It’s PLANTING time! Who’s excited?!

Me, that’s who. I’ve got my trusty sidekick with this time, his name is Scooter. Of course, there’s dad too. He has the ‘boring’ job of running the planter. It has its own unique and charming characteristics of the monitor beeping and chirping every three to five seconds telling you GPS blipped out, a border is approaching, air pressure/seed volume is low in ‘x’ row, etc. 

Then there’s the multitude of phone calls that I get from dad. As the in-house (family) tech expert on these matters I get to explain the beeps, blips and gremlin-like moments with the monitor and/or planter itself. What can I say? I really enjoy making the brain work and troubleshoot ‘x’ problem. 

So, I’m over here looking at the weather forecast thinking that it’s going to be great and sunny. Perfect planting weather, it’s right there in the forecast; well, if you read between the lines that is. Imagine my dismay and shock (bummer, guess I have time for a cuppa joe) when the app opens and tells me it’s going to be rainy with an excellent chance of being snow. Huh. In May?!

I guess weirder weather events have happened already this year (tornado in March by the Twin Cities anyone?) so what’s another? The plan for some discing and then planting has been modified to plant like crazy only. The co-op may be involved with some pre-fert put down or doing a burn down spray on a field or two for us. Again, that rests on the cooperative nature of weather which we know is as fickle as the wind. 

Back in Canuckland farmers are digging in to the fields and seeding like it’s spring. Oh wait it IS spring. Sadly for some friends and farmers in the surrounding areas, their soil is still too wet to seed. So the competitive bug, err, itch to seed is worse. And for the confetti on this cupcake season of planting there’s rain forecasted for early on this week. Yay. 

Ready for seeding

Cheers to all my farmers, may the sun and soil be warm, planting (or seeding) go smoothly and the rain come as needed.