Our First Field

This story begins in 2016 with our first field. We began with 45 acres of rented land and we had made the decision to plant soybeans and dry yellow peas. We were a couple of weeks away from our wedding and we made the decision to start with planting our yellow peas on 10 acres. We got up bright and early on a Saturday and figured we could be rolling by 9:30a.m.. My future-in-laws agreed to let us borrow their box drill, and with very little experience we thought that we could plant the field without having to run a cultivator in front of the drill. Unfortunately, as soon as we entered the field, we found that the shanks of the drill were not penetrating the soil. So we decided that we did need the cultivator in front of the drill. We made the trek from the field to my in-law's farm, which ended up being an 8-mile trek. While in my in-law's yard we had to figure out how to safely transport the piece of equipment without having any issues. This ate up a couple of hours. We hooked the cultivator up to the truck and headed back to the field. It took us an hour to travel back to the field. Once we made it to the field we unhooked from the pickup and backed the tractor up. I crawled under the cultivator to do some quick maintenance on something. It was at this time that I realized that one of the tires had a strange bulge in the sidewall and my head was right next to it. I knew that this could not be good, so I proceeded to barrel roll as fast as I could out from under the cultivator. It was at this instance that the tire decided to blow up! We now needed a new tire. This began a two-hour journey of trying to find a tire that would fit the machine. We borrowed a tire off of another piece of equipment and mounted it on the cultivator. Unfortunately, we realized that the tire we had just changed, was a flat tire. Now, we had to try and find a way to fill the tire. After several dead-ends we found an old bike-tire pump, which took a long time to pump up the tire. Remember that we started the day at 9:30 and were hoping to be planting at that time. However, it was now 3:30 and we were officially rolling. It took us a short bit to make sure that the drill was working correctly, but once we had it set we began to roll. We were finished with the field by 9:00 that evening. We often look back and laugh about that first field and how a 10-acre piece of ground took us nearly 12 hours to plant, while many farmers would have had it finished in 2 hours. Now, we do get this field taken care of a lot faster than before.

This adventure will always remain at a forefront in our memory. We learned the importance of having the right equipment for the job, and that anything that can go wrong, will go wrong. Farming is a rough occupation, and it will chew you up and spit you out unless you learn how to roll with the punches. We have learned that you need to be constantly adjusting and changing. Flexibility is key in the world of agriculture.