Thursday, April 1, 2010

Rolling On...

Oh man, the new tractor is here.  It is a beauty.  John Deere (runs like a deer) 5325 Narrow.  This is about 48" overall width, fits down our 6 foot rows like a dream.  It is 55 HP so it is big enough to run a full sized flail mower, etc.  What a cool tool.  Of course, it showed up yesterday, let me tell you, we've had about 4 weeks of absolutely perfect weather, weeks of daytime temps hovering in the mid 60's to mid 70's, sun shining, glorious top down (or in my case, open cab) driving weather.  So, in the mean-time this tractor has just been poking along on its way down from Oregon and then they had to change to the narrow wheels at the shop, and schedule delivery, well yesterday about 5 minutes before he pulled in, it started dumping.  I mean, really raining hard.  You know, my weather station console was scrolling across the bottom "It's raining cats and dogs..." (it thinks it really has a great sense of humor).  We got about .8 inches of rain between tractor arrive o'clock till about 6 PM, right about the time I finished installing our weather station in the middle of this downpour.

  I mean it, right in the middle, how do I know?  I recorded .4 inches of rain after I got it out there.  So here is that link.  Lynmar - Quail Hill Weather  I'll be adding our soil moisture sensors within the next week so those will get added to the Summary page.  They are showing now, but they are sitting in my office transmitting to the base station, so they are not at all accurate.  Well, take that back, they are accurate, because they are sitting in a beaker of water, pre-soaking, but they are not an accurate reflection of our soils.  Well, actually, they may be, considering that we took on another near inch of rain over the last 48 hours.  But, after all this, I was able to get out and get some mowing done on our better draining sandier soil blocks this afternoon.  Another day at the office.