A Day in the Life of Brett: Seeding Edition

I thought it would be fun to show you just what Brett does during seeding time.  It hit me recently that a lot of my readers may not be farmers/farmer's wives, so it only made sense for me to share this integral part of our lives with you.  My lovely husband agreed to send me a text every hour on the hour of what he was doing at that moment - so lets get started!  Any time I quote ("") anything, that was what Brett texted me.

6:30 AM - "Alarm woke me up.  I was in the field until midnight last night"

7:30 - Brett got to the farm on time for a quick coffee with his dad, mom and brother before it was time for the boys to head out to the field.

8:30 - In the field now.  The boys need to service the tractor to get the day started (time to fuel up and check oil).  Also, they finished this field last night so after servicing they've got to transport to a new field.

Fun fact: our new Case iH diesel tractor burns its fuel so clean, that if you were to run it in L.A., the emissions coming off our tractor would be cleaner than the air it was taking in from the Los Angeles environment.

Folding up the seeder.

9:30 - After about half an hour of transporting, they are ready to start seeding.

The whole seeding outfit is made up of the tractor in the front, then the air drill (middle part in the right picture) which actually seeds the seed, and the tank at the very back which holds the seed and fertilizer.

10:30 - "Just finished loading with seed and fertilizer".  Canola seed comes in 50lb bags which are emptied into the seeder.  Most other seed is bought in bulk - not bags. 

11:30 - "Still seeding.  Hoping my lunch comes soon."

12:30 PM - "Still seeding, nothing too exciting happening other than  Mom sent chicken strip sandwiches for lunch".  So far they've seeded 92 acres today and 2000 total acres since we started last week.

1:30 - Brett says he is getting close to the end of the field.  Now comes a time of trying to guess how much seed to add to the tank because they will be done seeding this variety of canola (he's not a big fan of the guesstimating process... but apparently Tim is a whiz at it).

These are the new monitors that came with our new tractor.  Brett took a whole day's course just on how to run them.

2:30 - And the seeding continues...

3:30 - Switching to the next variety of canola.

Brett's view from the top of the seeder tank.

4:30-7:30 - Another 3 solid hours of seeding before supper.  The power went out so supper was late (for a 1st world country, our power goes out shockingly often).

8:30 - They want to finish this field, so it will be a late night for the boys.  And tomorrow they will get up and do it all over again.

The sun is setting on another day at the farm, but the work day isn't over yet.

Finally time for bed.

They covered 365 acres today.

I hope you are having a lovely weekend - and if you happen to be seeding too, I hope that it is going well!