May 2010, Part I.

May started out pretty nice.
I got to size up the new trailer.

But not for long-- time to apply some pre-emerge herbicide.
It took a while to get going, however, due to a air leak in the Lumax shuttle which lead, through a series of unfortunate events, to a call to poison control and flushing my eyes with water for thirty minutes straight.

It was real pretty spraying weather,though.


I kept at it pretty late.
So did the guy from CPS:

No-till anhydrous applicators were the new cool thing this spring.

It felt pretty good to get the sprinkler going on the corn. A nice quick round to activate the herbicide and ensure everything sprouts alright; a good start to the year.

Linda showed off her new found skill. A Pilates miracle!
And I had some time to scout the wheat.
It looked pretty darn good. A nice spotless flag leaf.
And a nice big head.
Just traces here and there of some (maybe) early stripe rust infection. Nothing that couldn't (and shouldn't) wait to be treated. It is good to hold of application of fungicides a little bit if you can in order to assure that the plant is protected through grain fill.
There was also some sprayer blight on the south edge of this field :/
Much more concerning to me was the nice crop of joint grass this ditch had north of the house.


The Gray Havens continued to look overgrown. Check out my strip of spilled grain now:
Its the yellow strip up the center of the photo. Just a preview of what may be coming for the rest of the field. Too many plants using too much water means drought stress where there is no drought.

Finally the irrigated, which continued to look pitiful.
Just pitiful.

Then it was time to fix drops...
...and fix the kinks in the coulter rig...
...and put my fertilizer down for the soybeans. I was pretty eager to see what I could do in corn stalks.



And it really worked pretty good. I should point out, of course that the original plan had been to have wheat on this circle as well, but since we didn't get this corn off until the 13th of November...