Week Ending May 12th
We were able to get started planting corn around home on Monday, May 7th. We were able to make good progress all week before getting rained out on Friday.  We are down to about two fields of corn left.  

We are starting to feel the effects of running hard for a couple of weeks now.  We ran until 2 am on Wednesday morning to beat some rain coming in.  We were able to finish the field but were feeling the effects of lack of sleep when the fields dried off quickly the next day and we were running again in the afternoon.

Week Ending May 5th
We started planting corn early in the week in Farmer City and finished by the end of the week.  Field condtions were very good.  Warm weather finally dried out the soil.  We were able to start moving machines north to home by the end of the week.  

We are agin running the Ag Leader Display cast in our planters and sprayer so that we can instantly share coverarge maps.  This makes running the two planters in one field much more efficient.

Both the corn and soybeans are agin being seeded with variabable rate prescriptions that are based on soil types and yield history of the different regions of the field.

Week Ending April 28th
We were finally able to get in the fields in central Illinois this week.  We started planting soybeans on April 25th.  Due to the cool temperatures, we decided to start on soybeans first before corn.  We have had good luck planting soybeans into cool soil in the past. 

Most years we are able to start planting in central Illinois about two weeks ahead of northern Illinois.  This allows us to get done planting around Farmer City and get moved home when planting starts there.  The cool weather delay this year made it so planting started in both locations about the same day, causing us to mis out on our normal two week head start on planting.  

We are running two Horsch 24row/30inch planters again this year.  To keep operations more efficient, we are trying to run them together in the same fields and crop instead of splitting them up as we have in the past.  We are running two 60 foot field cultivators ahead of them.  The beans are again being rolled with a 60 foot land roller after thet are planted. All of the field operations are done on a controllled traffic pattern with RTK GPS on a 60 foot pattern and 120 inch wheel spacing.

We were able to get nearly all of the soybeans planted by Monday, April 30th. 

Week Ending April 21

The cool/wet spring weather continues here in Illinois.  We have had the machinery ready to go now for a couple of weeks but the weather has held us out of the field so far.  Below are some of the machines ready for spring work when the weather breaks.

We added a Challenger 1050 wheel tractor to the fleet this year.  We are going to primarily use it on the roller in the spring and fertilzer spreader in the fall.