It's All About the Peas

 One commentor last week asked if Chris and/or Farmer Bob were friends or family. It reminded me of something I heard while in the restaurant the other day. There were two people sitting at a large table and the waitress asked, "Are you waiting on friends?", without missing a beat one of the woman said; "No, relatives". Made me chuckle. At any rate, as some of you know, it is kind of a long story how I got to know Bob and DeAnne. Back in 2012 I believe, my best friend from high school and I were duck hunting at his brother's ranch about an hour east of here near McClusky, North Dakota. He mentioned that his son was dating a girl whose family owned a farm outside of Douglas. The next year, we came over this way to check out the hunting on the farm. It was also the same year that I retired. While we were visiting at the farm, I asked a question I wish I could take back now; "Do you ever need any help around here?" 

What started out as a couple weeks in the fall, went to as many as 6 weeks in the spring and 6 weeks in the fall. I have learned a lot, learned to love the land and appreciate the farm lifestyle. I sometimes think I missed my calling or was born a generation or two later than I was meant to. But I think if I lived in the late 1800's/early 1900's, I would have been a rancher and not a farmer. Call me crazy, but there is something about owning cattle that I love. Farming is just too much darn hard work!

I know many of you have been waiting with anticipation for the answer of how many wheat seeds there are on average per acre of land. The closest guess comes from Ed, but he had an advantage as he is a farmer from Iowa. He even said 30 seeds per square foot and calculated it out! Nancy was also correct in her answer saying there are a lot of things that go into this number; seed variety, soil type... the list goes on. But, for their purposes here they put it down at a rate of about 1.45 million seed per acre. Think about that, with over 1,000 acres of wheat alone that is a lot of seeds! 

We have moved on to peas for a bit. There is still some wheat to do, but that ground is not quite ready yet. How many peas per acre you ask? A lot less than the wheat coming in at approximately 330,000 peas planted per acre. The first field we did was a monster 745 acres of peas taking us parts of 3 days to plant. 

With peas, we do not use urea or S10 fertilizer, we do add inoculant, however. a living organism that helps that plant grow. That is what we are doing below, using the bobcat to load a tote of inoculant into the seeder.

Once the peas are in the ground, we go over the ground with the rock picker picking up the larger rocks that the seeder might have pulled up. That has mainly been Bob and Ty's job this spring, but I did get out there for a few hours picking. 

After that comes the rolling to push down any rocks that might be in the way come this falls harvest. Wednesday was a long day. I got in the tractor at 8am and got out at 7pm. I did get out twice I guess for less than 10 minutes, but other than that it was a full 11 hours in the tractor! I am listening to a book on tape (really it is on YouTube), a Nora Roberts book called "Come Sundown", it helps pass the time. I think I have over 30 hours in the tractor this week. 

Of course, there are the daily fuel and DEF fills, plus repair, as Farmer Bob and Ty do a little work on the rock pickers.  

Every time I am in this field and see this old homestead, I cannot help but wonder what life must have been like for the first inhabitants. What a different world we live in now compared to how life was when they first move in. 

I also spent time clearing more trees off the fields. One was a monster tree that I was able to pick up whole, the tractor was a little tippy, but I managed to get it into a ravine without incident.

 Plus, I saw several moose that day! Three to be exact. I still find it hard to believe that there are moose in the mostly treeless landscape. These two were just laying in a depression in the middle of the field. They did not move, just watched me roll by, probably wondering where I was taking that tree! If you look very closely, you can see a coyote in the background. It was just sitting there staring at the moose, probably wondering how to get its teeth into one. I will see if I can circle the 'yote in the picture. 

But that was not the coolest thing I saw that day. As I was going down a tree row, I noticed an owl fly out, not all that unusual, but what was unusual was when I looked up and saw a nest with two little fledglings looking back at me!

Oh, and I almost forgot, you know how Dakota is afraid to walk on our floors always slipping around? Barb got her a set of grippy socks, check out this video, now she walks across the floor without a problem at all!

I received pictures from Barb and both the kids during Easter. First up is Lily and her basket. The second picture below highlights some flowers that Somer bought Barb this week!

The dogs had to get in on the action. What is going through Zoey's mind on the second picture? It looks like she is disgusted and humiliated. 

Meanwhile in Pennsylvania, grandchildren Dylan and Kendall had their own Easter Egg hunt. 

I do my best to keep up with the "boys". I say "boys" as the youngest is like 28 and the oldest 37. What they do not seem to realize is that 62 is not the new 28, or 37 for that matter, and I am absolutely dragging at the end of the day. I cannot wait until they are 62 and I can look down (or will it be up?) on them and laugh. But then again, by the time they are that age, everything will probably be automated and there will be robots doing the work we are doing!

As of today, we have just over 2,500 acres in the ground. About 50% complete with just 11 days left of my stay here. This coming week I am going to work on doing my annual critter photography collection seeing how many of the local critters I can get pictures of. There are so many pheasants this year, but they are camera shy. We shall see if I can get some decent shots!