5/18/21: The End Is In Sight!!! Cotton Planting #4

time to plant some cotton can't begin to tell you all the things we got going wrong out here apparently we're having some kind of a bad reaction with the chemicals we're spraying now i've take all strainers off and clean them tonight we didn't get as much as we wanted to get done but it is what it is got the bed at about 1 30 back up at 5 35 second cup of coffee this morning i tried recalibrating it multiple times and something is wrong with the synchronizers i just don't have a lot of options right now hopefully tomorrow will go a little bit smoother than today really wishing i had a five-hour energy shot in my lunchbox [Music] [Music] [Music] all right guys not a whole lot to talk talk about not much going on we're just still putting seed in the ground so take this time just to give you a little bit of a speech on the environment and kind of what we're doing out here with all these cover crops i ran these numbers a few years back and you can tell we're playing into some really thick cover crops they've been growing since last september what i figured out based on the amount of biomass that we've measured this 48 acre field that we're in has sequestered about 375 metric tons of carbon it's pulled that out of the air and that carbon is now stored in those plants 375 metric tons of card and say well i guess that sounds like a lot but it really doesn't mean much to me and it really doesn't mean much to me either but pulling this much carbon out of the air is equivalent to taking roughly 80 cars off the road for an entire year all this cover crop that's grown for the last seven eight months you know there's 80 cars worth less of carbon emissions in the air now than there was before this cover crop was planted just think of every acre in america had a cover crop grown on it in the winter now granted not everybody would be able to grow this amount of biomass you know up north got a shorter growing season it's not going to accumulate as much biomass down south might accumulate more now the ground we plant corn on since we terminated earlier it hasn't accumulated too much biomass but just think you know the potential of if if every acre the cropland had a cover crop planted on the winter how much carbons could we sequester out of atmosphere i mean usually there's somewhere around i think 90 to 90 to 93 million acres of corn planted in the u.s i want to say there's usually somewhere around 75 million acres of soybeans planted in the us and that's not counting corn wheat and all the other crops that are grown so just imagine if every acre i don't know how many total cropland acres are in the us but just imagine if every acre had a cover crop growing on it producing some amount of biomass how much cleaner we can make the air now i'm not going to get into all of the global warming and all that you know i'm not uh you know i'm not an extremist or anything i don't i don't i don't actually know if the if the world's getting warmer heck this spring i'd say this i'd say the world's getting colder as much cool wet weather as we've dealt with and it seems like that's been a trend for the last 10 years you know i remember when i was a kid we were planting cotton in the hot dry conditions you know the first middle part of may was no problem because usually it took us about two weeks total to plant all of our cotton i mean we were planting all that time we weren't dealing with all this cold wet weather that we've been dealing with and made for the last 10 years so i don't know if the world's getting warmer or not whatever i do know that we are putting a lot more carbon in the atmosphere than was there before i do know that i mean we're burning fossil fuels which is made of carbon you know the the less carbon that's been stored in the ground for millions of years i mean we are burning that carbon and put it into the atmosphere our operation really isn't making a dent in the grand scheme of things but we're trying to showcase to everybody in the country even across the world what we're doing on this farm to bed to better the environment you know in addition to educating the general public about what it takes to actually run a farm what's involved actually producing a crop we want to also educate other farmers and the general pub public on agricultural's potential for improving the environment it's something that we're very passionate about so i just thought i'd throw those few facts out there for you and let you think about them a bit and if you're an actual landowner you have someone farming your ground i'd like to encourage you to talk to your farmer about looking into planting a cover crop you know starting small don't have to do like the way i'm doing it in fact the way i do it's not necessarily going to work for everybody but i encourage you to talk and talk to your farmer about you know at least looking into the possibility of planting something during the winter to save the soil rebuild the soil and sequester carbon out of that alrighty i'm finished with this field i'm now headed back to the shop no wait i'm going to my parents house now and i'm going to spray the rest of this load out i'm going to park then i'm going to go back to the shop okay take two or three i don't know uh okay so i'm gonna take this over to my parents house i'm gonna spray the last of this load out and then there's 44 acres there then i'm going back to the shop probably gonna get my dad to come bring me over here to get the water truck put that behind their house then go back to the shop and clean out the main strainers we're still having problems so ah love all right we're rocking and rolling on this sunday first farm took way longer than i wanted it to just because it was so tight and so rough just didn't feel like beating myself up we've got 115 acres knocked out so far got another uh another 58 acre farm we're moving to now matt's about 30 acres behind me which is right about the sweet spot where we like it to be not too far behind but far enough to where i don't feel like i've got to beat the crap out of the tractor and crimper to stay ahead of it we should 9 30 10 o'clock tonight should have about 160 570 acres knocked out today which is a good chunk we'll get moved down here to the last farm of the day and see if we can get it laid out laid down and uh try to get home before midnight tonight got ernie out here today staying ahead of us on spreading the litter after his little incident last night or two nights ago he's got a spreader up and going he's been rocking and rolling since about lunch today [Music] i don't even know where i left off the day like turned weird um there was a problem at the house i had to go help carter with and then there was some drama then i had to come back and sit at the shop because we didn't know ernie was gonna be able to spread um more chicken litter on this one farm but turns out he came back and everything was fine said it was purring like a kitten so he is now spreading the farm we were going to go to next but matt doesn't want to go planet because he said it's gonna be right i don't care let's get this done so now we're going to another farm that's 56 acres and i'm gonna go spray that and then be done for the night it's 5 30 i should hopefully be done in two hours i've already pre-mixed my chemicals so that way when i am ready to go i just can fill up and go and then um hopefully get back and attempt to eat something other than pretzel chips for dinner we're probably just gonna have whatever we can find and put in a microwave so uh it's a very long day i honestly thought it was like eight o'clock at night and i looked and it was only 5 30 but we're getting there the acres are slowly getting checked off the list so [Music] i just got done with the center place another 48 acres in the book man i wish i'd get my drone up this evening it's gonna be a pretty sunset fortunately we're in between fields we're heading over it's miss farm got 56 acres to do there and i think that's gonna be what i'm gonna try and get done tonight we had one more 29 acre farm i was wanting to get done to get us to that 200 acre mark but it would require another extremely late night we're tired and woke and if i got that done i'd be called up to the chicken litter guy and we wouldn't be able to get an early start tomorrow morning so we're going to save it for tomorrow morning they got his uh his truck fired up and he got they got all the litter spreads they got hauled out out here so far so he's uh right now he's about [Music] 85 acres in front of me so we get this 56 acres done and leave us with about 30 29 30 acres before we're caught up with them and it's a several hour trip down from union city to get more liquor halls they probably won't have any more out here until about 10 o'clock tomorrow morning at the earliest so really nobody does working late tonight anyway good thing i came prepared tonight i packed a bunch of goodies in my lunch box so i think i got enough fuel to get this last 56 acres done today i'll tell you one thing it sure is a lot nicer moving equipment on a sunday though traffic just ain't as bad we can make a little bit quicker time oh golly bill i'm gonna start i need to start a petition to madison county to repair some of these county roads as soon as we cross the county line you can tell because the road quality goes to crap country country roads matter too maybe i'll make that into a hashtag oh sometimes you gotta get out and stretch your legs anybody got any solutions for sciatic nerve pain been having problems with mine for the last four years or so ever since it flared up never really has gone away completely tried to get a steroid shot and pack i don't know about twice a year ease it up a little bit i tried stretching nothing really seems to help but sitting in tracts for long days it ain't good for it that's for sure anyway got about uh 18 acres down on this farm about 38 more to go i think it's time to raid my lunch box for any goodies i got left over well guys that is it for today we just got done this farm it is 12 13 a.m i am whooped we didn't get the 200 acres done today because one two we still had a heck of a day we got a 171 acres covered so that leaves us tomorrow with 188 acres to get all of our cotton planted if we if we pull it off tomorrow it's definitely going to be a long day i don't know if it'll be possible not a lot it depends on the chicken litter whether they can uh get it all spread tomorrow i'm so tired right now i can't even think of what i need to say so anyway guys i'm gonna let y'all go i'm gonna get this thing into the shop and get my rear end of the house i'm ready for bed hey good morning we're back at it again uh got the kelly and zach's service filled up and ready to go got water truck and seed moved over to the field where we're going needed dads i finally got everything every time i want to talk somebody comes on the radio i finally got everything uh service filled up ready to go uh kelly zach got a little bit of a head start on me i'm gonna head over and plant my cover crop termination plots we got 36 rows uh in the middle of a build a corn field one of the corn fields that uh we planted extra i was planning on planting the cotton and we'd already gotten the termination trials started whenever i decided to plant corn so i left 36 acres out in the middle of the corn field we're gonna go plant it and head back up to where they're at and see if we can't catch up with them we got about 180 acres left to do today but the good thing is uh the forecast is not looking as dire as what it was yesterday they've taken a lot of the rain chance out we're still probably going to get rain tonight and tomorrow but they only call them for a quarter and a half an inch and then it's supposed to be sunny and hot after that whereas before they were calling for like four to five days straight of rain so if i don't get done today definitely not going to be the end of the world and as tired as we are but we've had two really late nights i mean we're whooped we're just gonna plant until a normal time today and then whatever we got done we got done and whatever's left to do we'll get it done whenever it dries up you gotta love cruise control no hands we have very few farms that have this but so pretty oh yeah now my window needs to be washed oh hold on oh matt fixed this but way better than last year well looks like we might not get as much of today in as what i thought we would already rain showers and areas not heavy rain probably not enough to knock us out unless we get one of those bigger green patches i just told kelly to spray out what's in her tank and get it empty and then hold up until i get a lot closer to caught up because the last thing we want is be rained out for a day or two and have all that stuff sitting up in the tank right now she's about 23 acres in front of me that's going to be a solid hour planting for me we'll keep tabs on keep our fingers crossed that he goes around us [Music] that will be fun all day we breathing this in it's all sudden gotten crowded over here we got moved over here to ferguson and because of uh incoming rain kelly and zach are right there together and i'm not far behind them and we got the chicken litter guy over here trying to get the rest of my cotton ground spread you think on 86 acres everybody keep out of everybody else's way but sometimes it's not quite that easy i think we'll get it figured out though now how can i tell you that it's getting close to summer without actually telling you it's getting close to summer how about i show you all the bug spots on my drone apparently bugs are either attracted to this thing or it just likes to need them i don't know what got a little cleanup job to do though well it only took us most of the way through planning to finally get this stuff figured out but for once believe it or not we are running smoothly with not really any problems going on it's kind of nice every once in a blue moon you get a good day on the farm it seems like i've learned to appreciate them when they come as rare as they may be so far so far the weather's held off we got a few sprinkles on the windshield uh no big deal though i know there's probably more on the way late this evening or tonight and tomorrow so far we've gotten uh about 60 acres done today we only got about another uh 120 to go to get done like i said earlier this morning it ain't gonna happen today there's really just not not any need for it i gotta say i'm pretty proud of my cover crop this year last couple three years uh you know cover crop kind of gone in the same direction that our wheat crop has it just hadn't been that good because of how wet it's been during the winter but uh hadn't been as wet this winter heck it's been been wetter the late this spring than it was all winter long cover crop you know didn't didn't suffer didn't get drowned out and we got a for the most part all over we got a real good thick stand i'll be really excited to see uh how good the weed suppression is going to be from it this year maybe it won't be like the last three years where we've had almost had to almost constantly scout every evening for pigweeds and stuff and get rid of them kelly just holler at me on the radio she got out and wanted to know if i want her to mix up another load radar uh rain is still holding off for now everything's looking good but another load is going to be 50 acres worth of chemicals so that means another 50 acres i've got to get there planted today i told him i as well been two late nights why don't we make it for three in a row anyway we uh we're about half done with this farm got about another 42 acres ago then it'll be on to the last form [Music] y'all see it y'all see it i see it right up there it's that light at the end of the tunnel getting closer little by little [Music] starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel dwindling down on the acres got about 170 acres knocked out yesterday it's gonna try to stay about 15-20 acres ahead of matt hopefully uh they've got a pretty significant chance of rain supposed to come in late tonight early tomorrow i've had my cup of coffee already this morning listening to my off the hust podcast to keep me awake and uh i'm gonna try to knock this last little bit out today so i'll let y'all later but you can't raise you can't vote so you can't fold it up and you can't raise the main frame up and down she's got a boom control system fault bh1.001 terry i can't believe you believe he broke the news prayer no i'm not messing with you on that let's just who do we need to call to find out how to fix this i don't know uh just uh just just text me what the fault code number is and i'll call tennessee tractor and see if they can tell me what it refers to zach you know if there's a battery shutoff switch on that sprayer anywhere yeah that's what i was gonna do next put off pull the power give it 30 seconds to start it back oh all right hey you see it up there you see that light in the tunnel it's slowly fading away yes i need to speak to your service manager please it's matt griggs of greece farms how are you doing pretty good uh i've got a fall cold on the booms of my uh 40 38 sprayer here boom control system fault see if you tell me what it was all right left hand outer boom fold sensor voltage below normal or shorted to low source first thing it says check your wiring harnesses and connectors for uh damage each connector out there on that end and see if you've got any corrosion on any of the connectors try to work the booms it also says something like you must unfold the booms before you know you can rate raise it up and down so that that kind of makes sense with that if it if it if the sensor thinks that the wing is folded in then it would disable everything else so it could be unplugged it's probably going to be some kind of damage right there let's lift the less boom fold sensor yeah that's been doing it for the last hour and a half but anyway we got a two potentiometer because if it thinks that the boom is folded up because the potentiometer is not working it disables it inspect this wiring harness all the way inspect this wiring harness all the way down make sure it's not being pinched anywhere yes and after resetting it seems to be fine didn't find anything wrong with the booms the harness sensor oh and the wind is blowing right over here towards us was there a decent amount of grease on that electrical connector the technician said the first thing we need to do is clean the electrical connections with contact cleaner because john deere put way too much grease up in the up in the connectors and it causes it not to make good connection so that's not i don't have any cleaner it's working let's just try and get through the rest of the day today and we'll leave that for the shop if it gets to where the booze completely won't work and shut the power off and let it reset itself so let's let's just do that try to get through this afternoon and then we'll deal with it when we get a chance just when i think oh i'm almost done no i ran out of freaking solution now i gotta go all the way back and go fill up for literally like four acres but look at that sunset oh it's beautiful and apparently the gps over here is making my little tractor when i turn it around well the sprayer you can't see it but when i turn around and i hit the auto track it makes my tractor go backwards so i've had to stop and then at one point i uh tried to line up with that line and my detractor decided to circle i really truly think there's a dude somewhere with a computer that is controlling this sprayer and just for craps and giggles so that he can just know that i'm frustrated and i'm screaming obscenities in this thing and uh is it is it is it beer me 30 yet i'm just asking for a friend we have sprinkles sprinkles are here not looking too promising down to the southwest that's where it's all coming from and kelly is about 35 acres ahead of me that's what i really need to get done today because once this cover crop stock stops once this cover crop starts done the planter does not slice through it very well we get a bunch of hair painting in the sea trench and seed not actually getting into the seed trench so let's hope this holds off another few hours because that's what i'm gonna need that looks like zach just got done i'm about an hour behind him on getting done it's right at nine o'clock so hopefully about ten o'clock i'll be heading on in whatever early night tonight i don't know what i'm gonna do with all my extra time i might get turned tv on for the first time in a few days not that there's anything worth watching unless i'm watching the dylan joyce's youtube channel that is i don't think he's got any video out today though yeah after that snafu was prayer kelly got done i was about dark on around 7 30 or so i guess she put in a hard few days i know it's really tough on her body putting in those real long hours but she's having to you know do all the mixing and filling up and handling chemicals by herself not to mention how bad allergic she is to the grass here and our cover crops but i know she's pretty miserable but she's been a trooper and stuck it out gotten the job done can't ask for any anything else i know there's a lot of other people both me and women that they were in her same position they would have thrown in the towel a long time ago [Music] all right guys last pass of the night we got the whole front side of this farm done it is well red orange light keeps getting in the way right at 10 30. all right we got a right at uh 155 acres done today not too shabby we got a little bit of a late start from having to get everything serviced and moved and we had problems prayer too so my bad we gotta leave us about 40 more acres to get done should be pretty easy whenever we get back here in the field yeah i'm gonna i think i'm gonna get home and i'm gonna make good use of all this extra time i've got tonight as compared to the last couple nights like maybe actually sit down and have a real supper rather than popping some waffles in the toaster or something or some hot pockets not exactly sure when we'll be back but uh i'll be sure to bring you along got a really narrow crossing right there pretty sure kelly really nervous about it heck it makes me nervous that's the next day we're back at it well obviously i'm not back at it yet waiting on zach and kelly to get something sprayed and crimped before i can start planting again but we got about 41 acres left to do and we will have the cotton plant wrapped up luckily we didn't hardly get any rain uh last night and this morning just might have gotten enough to get the roads a little damp but that's about it but i think i always slipped in a little while this morning trying to catch up on our sleep after the brutal last three days that we had and we're anxious to get the rest of this cotton in the ground and hopefully watch it pop up in rows zach just made first round around the field they got to make four trips around the field before he's got the inroads done and i can get started it looks like we got our cripper all fixed up right i hadn't had to lick a problem out of it over 440 acres so far so hopefully it'll be good to go for a while now all right he got far enough ahead of me time to get started here [Music] 40 acres to go should be pretty doable as long as that goes wrong of course our track record this spring that might be a pretty tough call in the first uh video of clinton cotton i made the reference that i can smell the honeysuckle so therefore it's time to go plant cotton well this is what i'm talking about don't know how prevalent honeysuckle is across the u.s or maybe it's just a southern thing i don't know but this right here with the white and yellow blossoms is honeysuckle it's actually an obnoxious fast-growing bunny bush or whatever and it will take over fence rows and everything real quickly just grow grows up but anyway it starts blooming the time of year when it's warm enough to go plant cotton that's why i made made the reference and it's got a very sweet smell a great smell so basically this time of year is the only time that i actually like honeysuckles but it's also got another benefit here i'll show you you can you can actually eat the honeysuckle and actually bees feed on the nectar the honeysuckle quite often but anyway inside whatever that's called the stem of the flower or whatever it's got it's got a bunch of nectar in there and it's really sweet and you can pinch off the end of it anyway you see grabs and you can pull it through and it pulls the nectar out and suck that nectar extremely sweet very good taste anyway it brings back good good memories to me because as a kid planting cotton of course i was too young to drive a tractor so i'd sit on the seed trailer and find me a honeysuckle patch and stand there for an hour or so just pulling blossoms and sucking the net sucking the nectar out of them that's just one of the joys that we have out here in the country that a lot of city folks will never be able to experience anyway snack time's over back to playing cotton and i don't know if we're gonna get done today or not got a pretty decent little shower here uh my windshield's getting kind of dirty anyway i'm gonna clean it off so i just got out to uh even my seed out and noticed something that ain't supposed to be like that clip must have come out of that pin and it works loose what that is that's the uh hydraulic cylinder for my downforce so that unit's not getting down for us that means it's not cutting into the ground not putting seed in the ground but look at what i found there's the pen now you want to guess i found this one little pen out of this whole field that's like worse than looking for a needle in a haystack come here let me let me show you how i found it technology but first before i show you let me put the pen back in anyway the way i found it in very short amount of time after i saw this missing i got thinking man i don't know if i got anything on the tractor that can even act as opinion let's say i only got a few acres left oh i'm gonna do i had to go back shop and make something up and i got now i got my planner measures downforce it measures force on the gauge wheels well no force is being applied to gauge wheel so why don't i look at the so why don't i look at the map and see where it lost downforce and that's what i did number one coming this way you say it's the recite it was solid red that means it was applying maximum downforce but because nothing was being read on the gauge wheels but you see the rope beside it when we're going this way reading and right here we get to the end you know all of a sudden it changed so my logic the pen came out right here when i picked the planner up and turned around so that's where i came and that's where i looked and that's where it was all right we got that out of the way about three more acres to go let's get her wrapped up all right guys here it is we are done planting cotton the first go-around notice i didn't say it was the last pass of cotton playing because i don't want to jinx myself like we did during corn planting i think i said last pass the corn planting twice and just give you a sneak peek what's going to happen tomorrow guess what we'll be doing tomorrow playing corn anyway i'll explain a little bit more tomorrow about what's going on but uh appreciate y'all riding along hope you enjoyed watching us put some content in the ground and we'll see you in the next video

Channel: Griggs Farms LLC

Views: 4,449

Rating: 4.9910111 out of 5

Keywords: cotton planting, griggs farms, cover crops, pant green, soil health, tractor, planter

Id: d9h4uY1_wBM

Length: 33min 56sec (2036 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 02 2021