Greetings, we have been pretty busy the last week putting the new 108' planter together as well as discing some cotton stubble. We ended the weekend "ridin' Brazilian" back to town.
Sunday morning the 2 containers arrived at the farm with our new planter. Bauer sent down one of their employees to help assemble our planter and another planter ordered by Americans. I some how drew the short straw without actually drawing straws, and ended up working the night shift discing. So I didn't get to help as much as I wanted, but got my fix in when I couldn't sleep during the day. It's really hard to sleep when its 100 degrees!!! Anyways the planter frame is all done and we have about 12-15 more units to hang on it and plumb. This thing looks HUGE and will be a planting machine. About the title; we put this monster together with hardly any tools. No impact wrenches were used in the construction. The rachets are not Craftsman, and we only had one. The wrenches that we did have were singles, no two of anything. So people were sharing wrenches, and you can imagine how efficient that is. The second inconvenience concerning the planter was the availability of the units. The John Deere dealership here told GAI that the units were here, and we could pick them up whenever we needed to. So when we needed them, they ended up only have 5 on hand. So nice!! They ended up ripping 12-15 units off of new planters on their lot to give to us and we still need 12-15 more to finish the planter.
The third inconvenience enters while I am discing at night. The disc that I am using this time is much bigger than the previous heavy disc. 36" discs are the ones that turn the dirt on this puppy. Anyways, every night I have to hook this thing up, because the field I was working on is a 30 minute tractor drive away from the farm with the diesel. The beggining of the week I was using 5 gallon hydraulic jugs as jack stands. Brazilians are very creative here!! Well towards the end of the week these jugs were not in good shape, and I had to muscle the thing up on the tractor. Well it ended up taking me about 45 minutes because the thing was so heavy and the tractor had to be positioned perfectly. Eventually I got it up there and the way I did it I think I deserve an honorary Engineering Degree from ISU.
On the ride back into town Friday, another intern and I "rode Brazilian". Now this could be many things by definition, because all a person needs to do in order to be "ridin' Brazilian" is ride where people shouldn't be riding. "Riding Brazilian" could be any of the following for I have seen it all; a family of 4 on ONE motorcycle, in the back of a fertilizer spreader, on the back of a planter making sure seed units are working, behind a donkey on a two wheeled cart, and of course in the back of a pick-up, We were in the back of the truck sitting on suitcases for 45 minutes back to town. Again as I mentioned before, these roads are not smooth as glass to say the least. My tailbone is bruised.
Friday and Saturday night the interns went out on the town for some dancing. The dance floor was still smoking the day after we tore up that thing the night before. I'm sure the Brazilians were taking notes. We had fun considering we got home just before the sun came up both mornings.
The meteorologists keep pushing rain back later and later. Currently they are talking the 14th of November so we might start putting in corn middle of next week. Everyone here is very anxious to get in and get things done, but as I have mentioned earlier it's risky.
Back to the farm tomorrow to finish up the planter and some other mechanical work. Again I will not have internet until who knows. It's soooo convenient.
Signing off...............
- Hrubes (aka Kevin Bacon on "Footloose")
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