Start of spring brings snow, lots of snow

While it may officially be spring we were greeted today with a heavy blanket of snow here in Central Illinois. Just doesn't seem right to have snow today when last year there was corn planted at this time. On the positive note, we at least go enough snow to add to our ground moister.

In the shop: We are still working on getting the sprayer plumbing finished up. It shouldn't take too much time to have that done, then go over the planter. We will be taking delivery of a small portion of our seed on Friday. As of now the weatherman is predicting it to be 54 degrees that day, so at least we wont be dealing with snow getting the seed unloaded.

In the office: We are looking at plans to concrete and finish off a shop in our machine shed this summer. Looking at our options and our long term goals when preparing for this. I'm really looking forward to this, as it is not much fun working on equipment on cold gravel. We are also looking at plans to build a office for the farm inside the shop, or possible putting up a separate building.

Here are is a picture of today's snow



Thanks for reading!

Getting ready for spring

It has been pretty busy around the farm for a while, sorry I haven't posted in a while. Last Friday we got to enjoy some warmer weather, which prompted us to get moving on getting stuff ready for spring. Its too bad that the warm weather only lasted a day, and now we have 10 days of cool weather in the forecast. Its funny to remember that there was corn planted at this time last year. Its hard to say when planters will start rolling in the area, but I'm sure it won't be till April. I would say that we are moving along on scheduled with getting the new sprayer set up, but we still have to go over the planter. I'm hoping we have the sprayer finished by next week, then we can go through the planter and we should be caught up well before we plant. Here are some pics of the sprayer project, we added the saddle tanks to the planter to add more capacity. Now we just need to plump it all up. I will have a total capacity of 800 gal, or 50 acres per fill. In the last couple weeks we have gotten some much needed rain. It comforting to know there is some moisture in the ground going in to this growing year. Thanks for reading

New Sprayer Arrived!

I was a pretty eventful week here at the farm. I ended up deciding to get a sprayer bought on Tuesday. I drove about a hour south to look at it, I was pretty happy with how it looked. I priced a few more on the drive home and as I pulled in to the shop drive way I called the guy and ended up getting it bought. I think it will work pretty well for our operation. I look forward to getting to try it out once it gets warmer. We ended up getting the sellers to deliver it for us, so the sprayer showed up Thursday afternoon. I will probably go through it and put all new tips on it, and probably some new hoses. All said and done, I'm really happy with this purchase. Here are some pics of it on the 4630 tractor as we unloaded it. Here is another picture. The sprayer is a Great Plains 3P300. It has a 60' spray boom, and a 300 gallon tank. This alone will let me spray roughly 30 acres a fill. I also have 2-250 tanks that I can put on the tractor making a combined capacity of 800 gallons. This would allow me to spray roughly 80 acres a fill. Thanks for reading. Peter Jarzen

Farm plans for 2013

It seems the last 10 post I've made have started off by apologizing for not posting more often. Again I'm sorry, I'll try my best to keep this updated. As mentioned in the topic, I want to share some of the plans I have for the farm for 2013 in this post. I'm happy to share that we have expanded our acres for 2013 by 30%. With the help of a few friends, I am now working with a few more great landlords. I look forward to working with them, and I appreciate the opportunity they have brought us. I may have brought this up before in a previous post, but as of now we plan to buy a sprayer and do our own herbicide spraying this year. We have had good luck with our CO-OP spraying for us, but the return on investment on a sprayer is just too good to pass up. Being able to spray our fields right when they need it, and the savings of doing it ourselves make this decision an easy one. I have been looking for one for a while, and I plan to have one bought here before too long. I will post a picture on here when I get one bought. In The Shop Winter is defiantly been a slow time for us. We have been working on a few small projects this winter, but nothing too exciting. In late February or early March I will start going over the planter and getting them ready for planting in April. In The Field Since fall we have been working on cutting brush back along field edges. Its a never ending chore, but it needs to be done. In The Office I finished up getting out seed order ready for this year back in December. I had some last minute changes and I decided to dedicate some acres to soybeans. We grew 100% corn in 2012, but on a couple of our rougher fields we are going to plant beans. We will be roughly 80% and 20% soybeans this year. Thanks for reading! Peter Jarzen