Rensselaer Adventures

This blog reports events and interesting tidbits from Rensselaer, Indiana and the surrounding area.

Monday, May 25, 2009

Planting

With the wet spring the area farmers have been slow to get the fields planted. I have not been out in the country much in the last month, but last week I was out at the right place at the right time to see some tractors in the fields.
Help me out, you farm experts. Is he disking?

The picture below is a bit blurry because the tractor was raising a lot of dust. It looks like he was planting.
I even saw some farm activity going on at the airport. A crop duster landed and reloaded with chemicals.

Several days earlier I noticed a truck parked by a field that had all the supplies needed for planting. I am not sure what the chemicals are in the two tanks, but when you do the no-till farming, you substitute chemicals for plowing.
Also on the truck were two varieties of seed corn, one shown below.

And more chemicals.
The point of all this is to get the field looking like the picture below, which shows that some farmers got their planting done a few weeks ago.




It takes a lot of work to get the crops planted. I struggle with a tiny garden--I cannot imagine doing hundreds of acres.

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