Friday, October 7, 2011

Fall Seeding

Just as the weather has seasons, so does farming.  Well besides the inside farm joke that "the only seasons we  know are before harvest, harvest and after harvest",  we actually do have 3 distinct farm seasons and we call them "spring work, harvest, and fall work".   And our life, both personal and business, revolves around those farm seasons.  In fact I can still remember (27 years ago) being  newly engaged to the farmer and finding out the that the only months that would not interfere with farming were November - February..... so we had a beautiful  winter wedding.   So when I say our personal lives revolve around farming, I am serious. =)

As I look out my kitchen window, all of the fields have now been harvested, the weather has turned from summer into fall and our new focus  is on getting 1/3 of our farm planted into winter wheat.   What does a typical day in the life of a farmer look like in Fall Work?  Well come along and I'll show you.

But first, here is a picture of Cody washing up Farmer Joe's combine before it gets put away for the year.


The combine is put away without it's header
Farmer Jay doing maintenance  on the seeding drill which puts down fertilizer & seed


Anhydrous ammonia truck filling the tanks on the tractor
And Farmer Joe explains......












A still shot of the "nurse truck" being filled



Each year, to aid the University of Idaho, we set aside some acreage for the wheat lab to do test plots in actual  field conditions.  Here are two staff members plotting out the areas for different wheat varieties they want to grow down at the Tammany farm.
Test plots being staked out

And finally (yea) it rained. The ground has been rock hard, so the rain was very welcome and it will make the process of seeding go much easier.

As always, thanks for stopping in, and now you get to see what a fall seeding day looks like. If you want to see what the farmwife does while the farmer is working, check out At Home on the Farm page.

Feel free to email me at idahofarmwife@gmail.com or leave a comment.  All my best, Gayle