The ground became fit for planting on Wednesday, and we went to the fields.

The soybean planter was working pretty well, just a few hiccups with a fertilizer drive chain and the air compressor fuse. Once we got those straightened out, planting has been going well as long as I can stay in the seat.

We were able to get a good chunk of our early maturity beans in the ground. Generally, we plant those first to give them as much time to grow as possible. Regardless, the early maturities continue to be our best yielders most years. Plus, we get an early start and decompress harvest a little bit.

The corn planter on the other hand has not been as cooperative. The technology tech did come last Saturday and fixed the communication issue with the planter. Now we’ve got a diagnosed-but-not-yet-resolved short in the tractor autosteer system resulting in intermittent faults. We are hopeful the part that comes in today is the correct one to fix the problem.

Meanwhile, this planter still has markers, so we keep driving. Some other issues have been getting a tear strip from a seed bag (my kids) and a chunk of seed treatment (seed company) in the bulk fill system. Both of those gave issues blowing the seed from the bulk fill to individual rows.

We also burned through a couple of electric valves on the new dribble fertilizer system. Apparently, they were not big enough for the use. We did get three fields planted. Hopefully, this is the end of issues and everything will run smoothly going forward.

With all the issues and stress, the end of the day Thursday had us wondering if we just were not supposed to get much done. The picture shows my view from the storage building at dad’s after scurrying in there seeking shelter.

We had a pounding rain pop up. It took about 10 minutes to deliver anywhere from half an inch to an inch of rainfall with pea-sized hail.

It’s never good to get a pounding rain right within 24 hours after planting. It’s usually bad for crop establishment. The good news is that it has been very warm and this was a warm rain, so hopefully the seeds get growing and come up quickly.

There’s some light more general rain moving through today. After it passes, we will survey fields south of the home farm and figure out where we can work later in the day or Saturday.