So the end of the week saw a flury of activity. Many days of planting turned into nights of planting, as seen in the picture below of Tim planting soybeans on Farm 5 on Thursday. Stephanie took this artsy pic to let me know that I'm not the only one that can take a cool pic around the farm. I'll give her due credit for this.
Friday we had visitors from the office. New corporate accountant Craig, who incidently started the same day as Tim, came out to see what goes on at the farm. I'm sure he left thinking how easy he has it in town.
Lynette, who brought Craig out, had not paid us a visit in some time. Stephanie gives her the low down on treatment mixing. Hopefully she can see that we really do need and use all of the expensive things we have out at the NCRS. Craig is in the tractor with Tim in the background.
Here Tim shows Craig all of the things he has to watch while planting a plot: display monitor, pressure gauges, red balls, speed, auto track, etc. Lynette had a turn too.
Meanwhile back on the Farm 8 orchard, John Nye of Trickl-Eez irrigation was here to start the drip tape installations. John lists his job as President and Chief Installer. He did give Liquid a nice compliment as he has business all over the country and said that he has never seen a company so dedicated to research as Agro-Culture Liquid Fertilizers. He said we are way ahead of most universities as well. John is discussing the layout with Brian and Doug. Ron A and Randy are in the background putting in fittings and electricals for the main water supply pipe. I hope you can all stop by and see this in the future as it will likely be the premier orchard research operation in the country.
Tim B looks like he just cut off his thumb, but he is telling me to take my camera and get out of the way, as he has work to do. But I know he feels hurt if he isn't in the pictures.
Tim and Dan install the drip tape fittings. That's a long push for the water to feed all of those trees. It will be so cool to see the other lines running through the trees themselves. This will be quite a place.
Meanwhile, summer student Jake ran the drill most of the day, as we see here on Farm 9.
Late Friday there were still some broadcast pre-emergence applications of fertilizer on corn up on Farm 10. Tim and Stephanie see to it.
And the last planter operation of the week was Doug planting soybeans on new Farm 11. We are testing some new experimental nutrient formulations on large plots with eight replications. The sun was just going down when I took this.
