After my initial reaction of picturing him having a sword fight with someone, I figured out it probably meant "drilling" and his phone had mixed up letters. And I was right!
So in the interest of letting you know what "drilling" is, here are some photos. Right now we are drilling oats. We "drill" them into the ground with a no-till set of drills. This way we can get the seeds as deep as possible to try to get them into more moisture. And we use no-till because it lets us drill the seeds without having to work the soil and get rid of the ground cover (grass, etc.) on the ground that helps preserve the moisture in the soil.
Above: The oats are unloaded from the truck into an auger that will transport them to the drills.
Above: My dad directs the oats into different compartments on the drills.
Above: Here are some of the compartments in the drills.
We use oats for a variety of ways, but the main use is for feed for our
cattle. Sometimes they are ground up into grain, or perhaps they are swathed and then baled. One of my younger cousins usually gets to help us load
the square bales because he has a lot of strength and makes quick work
of it. But, the oats also come with a drawback...they, and the dust from
them, are very itchy. So after throwing bales around all day, you are
bound to get some in places you don't want them. As my cousin says, "I
have oats in my britches and it really, really, itches."
So...even though I know that planting these oats might result in me lifting hundreds of them by hand in 100 degree weather, it is still something I know is vitally important to the farm. And we still manage to have fun along the way ;-)
No comments:
Post a Comment