Yes that's right, I've finally got the air seeder together - all assembled, and we're up and running. Actually we've been up and running for the past week now and have clocked up just under 1000acres in that time. I put a few hectares of fiesta beans in first up, then onto the canola. I'm up to 188ha of canola planted so far. I've also done about 200ha of pasture sowing that the sheep will enjoy later on in the year.  As is the case with any new equipment there is always teething problems for a start and once I got the loading and calibration figured out on the new Simplicity 9000 tow between box, the adjustment of the new K-Hart disk modules and coulters was the main problem. the disks had to run in the ground at just the perfect depth. This was a little hard to achieve, possibly because the dry ground was so hard, but possibly also that the spring tension on the press wheels was way out of wack. It's lucky canola seeds dont need to be very deep. Well with quite a few adjustments made, and a reasonable drop of rain I think we are all good. Oh except for one minor little incident where I found that a John Deere 8200 front wheel assist tractor would not pull a Simplicity 9000 tow between air cart and a John Deere 2200 cultivator with 40 K-Hart disk modules through knee deep sandy muddy clay where water has been laying. Yep I got her bogged down to the back diff. Pictures will be added later but let me just say she took some getting out. A lot of digging and help from another tractor to pull her out.

The Air Seeder is nearly assembled

I know that I said it would only take a day or so to finish off assembling the new disk modules on the John Deere 2200 cultivator bar... but... well it has taken a little longer. Closer to a week actually. And it's nearly done now. We also took delivery of a 9000litre Simplicity air cart, and that had to be all wired and plumbed into the bar too, with an air kit to go on to carry the seed and fertilizer out to each and every double disk opener. This is all but done now, just waiting on a few parts to come in that didn't quite get here with the initial delivery. Once we're all set up, and the airseeder computer's all programmed ready to go, out seeding program for the year will get started straight away, with Canola being the first crops I plan to plant.

There have been a few things going on in the background too over the past few weeks. One of them being a lot of weed spraying. My brother has spent quite a bit of time on the boom spray trying to keep on top of all the "summer" weeds that have sprung up because of the big rains we had a while back. The other thing that I haven't mentioned yet this year is that the ewes have been lambing for the past probably 5 or 6 weeks. Usually I spend alot of time grain feeding the ewe mobs at this time of year, but because of the abundance of natural feed out in the paddocks I haven't had to do any feeding this year. In fact I haven't even been out in the paddocks to check the mobs of lambing ewes. Well lambing is a natural thing ya know... I hope they know what they're doing themselves. And I have noticed that there are lambs out in the paddocks with the ewe, so cant be all bad.

It's all slowly coming together

This is a bit of an update on the last post where I mentioned that I'd had trouble delivering the last of our barley to Viterra, and how my "blended load" strategy hadn't worked. I also made mention of lakes in paddocks and water over the roads and the there was new farm eqipment on the way.  You'll be happy to know that I have been able to deliver the last of the barley, but not to Viterra. They decided to reject the whole lot of my remaining grain on the grounds that it had animal feaces in it and they have a nil tollerance policy in this area.  Thankfully I was able to take it directly to a feedlot at Meningie instead where 5000 angas beef cattle were very appreciative, and didn't seem to mind the odd hint of cow poop in there one bit.    As far as water over the roads around here goes, I told of how 5inches of rain one night left lakes in paddocks and a number of roads under water.  This would have been about 6 weeks ago.  Well the roads are all open and dry again now, but I do still have 1 paddock with a slowly shrinking lake in it, with all sorts of bird life there enjoying the water.       It is always exciting when new farm equipment arrives, and last week that happened.  My new air seeder box, a Simplicity 9000, was delivered, as was 6 pallets of air seeder parts.  These parts when assembled make up K-Hart disk modules and will replace the existing tyne arrangement on the bar.  I have started the process of changing them over and at this stage all the tynes have been removed and 2/3rds of the modules are assembled and on the bar.  In the next day or so I should have this finished so I can start seeding in the very near future