Planting season starts

The Farmer started planting corn Friday, April 16. This may be a record early start date for us. Usually it is the end of April before he starts planting but when you have a couple of weeks of temps in the upper 70s, soil temps warm quickly. This is his brand new corn planter. He planted the sweetcorn first. Okay, it's probably overkill to use the field corn planter for sweetcorn but hey, we plant a lot of sweetcorn. Lots for us, the neighbors, the raccoons, the deer . . .

This year, the Farmer installed EZ-Steer on one of his tractors. I took lunch out to him in the field Sunday and rode a few rounds. (I think the jump seat shrunk over the winter. Cuz my butt couldn't possibly have gotten any bigger.) Basically, thanks to GPS, he doesn't have to steer the tractor, just make the turn at the end of the row and then it automatically takes over again. If you had really long rows, you could take a nap or something.

The EZ-Steer Web site says:

"The AgGPS® EZ-Steer® assisted steering system turns the steering wheel for you by combining a friction wheel and a motor with GPS guidance from the FmX integrated display, the EZ-Guide® 500, the EZ-Guide 250 or the EZ-Guide Plus lightbars. While the EZ-Steer keeps you on line, you can focus on many different tasks, such as spray or planter performance, improving job quality and crop yields while reducing fatigue."

Or in this case, eat ham sandwiches and drink a Pepsi and listen to his lovely and charming wife explain how many nights next week she's going to be gone, doing dog stuff. I'm sure he heard and remembered every word of it.

Ag technology is incredible. You ought to see the computer screen and monitors for this stuff. And the Farmer says he can't run my iMac in the house.