Springtime in the mid-west.

It's often been said: "if you don't like the current weather, just wait 15 minutes 'cause it'll change".  That's right for the past several weeks on the farm.  One day it's 80 degrees and the next it's blowing sleet/snow and end up with 8 inches of snow on the ground. It's hard to believe that it's officially Spring time and we have 6 inches of snow on the ground currently with a layer of ice under the snow.  We did need the moisture though as most ponds were dry and the fields was nothing but dust.


We have been asked by a school in Olathe, Ks to do a presentation to the school kids about Agriculture and our farm during the summer.  More details will be available later! 

We were able to spend some time and got the liquid applicator basically ready for the field.  We replaced all the jets and sight gauges along with some hose.  We will also do some work to modify it to better fit our farm. The planter has just a few hours of work left before it's ready to plant corn but shouldn't take long to make ready. Our JD 4840 had GPS/auto-steer installed last year and we loved it so much we decided to put another system on our JD 4440 as well and that was completed last week thanks to Record Harvest in Nevada, Mo.

The new pieces before installing them

Ready to go!

During a recent rain/snow storm we noticed that the runoff from our cover crop fields were less than that of our other fields and the snow melted sooner on the cover crop fields as well.  One wheat field is across the road from a cover crop field and you can see the water standing and how muddy it is while the cover crop field has no water standing and is drier overall:

  While we were waiting for new add-ons and parts to be shipped, we took advantage of the warm weather to burn some brush piles in the pecan groves that were cleared last fall. 

Another project for our liquid applicator was to build a nurse tank to shuttle liquid NH3 from a base tank to the field.  A local grain elevator had two frames off dry fertilizer spreaders so we purchased both of them and took one to a local machine shop to have the frame extended and to set the tank. The other frame will be modified later to hold a service body, fuel tanks, or whatever is needed at that time. 

The tank next to both cart frames

The frame after having the hitch and old frame removed. The frame will be extended this week.

That's about it for this time.  We hope you enjoyed reading and don't forget about our Facebook page where you can ask questions or comment on our farming operation: www.facebook.com/morrisfarms!