It Is Official

Linda's dahlia bulbs showed up last week, I had my first jacket-less trail run Sunday, and three Harleys with matching ape hangers were spotted joy riding north on Highway 52, mullets billowing.

Evidence of the change in seasons first appeared several weeks ago and has become more apparent. Now that the calendar has passed March 20th, it is officially spring.  

Migratory birds returning to their nesting grounds are another seasonal indicator, one that has special significance to our family. I had the opportunity to drive Snowbirds, Joan and Deo (mom and dad), home from Phoenix this week. They sold the home in Queen Creek and shipped or packed the few items they wanted to keep. The three of us spent two days on the road savoring their final migration back to Saint Ansgar. The last chapters are yet to be written as their health is exceptional for a couple folks in their late 80's. However, they both want to be certain the story ends at home. It was a memorable trip.

Activities at Pinicon Farm also hint at the upcoming growing season. The planters are parked on Iron Avenue, in the rock lot, east of the grain bins. The next step will be the final preflight inspection mid-April.

Tillage tools are lined up on Dumpster Drive, ready to be coupled with their chosen spring power unit. This is not a random pairing as certain tools requiring more power or priority will get a tractor that has more horsepower or fewer hours. Most of the field cultivators have been replaced with high-speed discs, a recent entrant in the suite of tillage machines. This decision is a gamble as we have never used these tools for secondary tillage. Our hope is they will size residue and more uniformly mulch the seedbed at a faster rate and at lower operating cost.

The first draft of Bert's "Spring Plan" is mostly complete. Known details include field crop plan, fertilizer application, planting sequence, Team assignments, etc. On the other hand, thanks to "Supply Chain Issues" final herbicide and hybrid varieties are TBD. It has occurred to me that the Golden Age of stable prices and ready availability may be over for the foreseeable future.

Back in the shop, Chris is wrapping up semi-truck annuals while Ben and crew work on fertilizer application maps, field boundaries and miscellaneous spring machinery inspections. A new technology we are excited about this year is "Autopath," guidance that keeps guess rows between planter passes within tolerance, so corn head size does not have to be divisible into planter width. This will allow us to plant 64 row headlands with our 36 row planters. As we use sixteen row heads in corn, this will save an hour per field by eliminating a trip around the perimeter harvesting four rows.

In the front office, Calvin has the shelves at max inventory levels, Danni is managing the arrival of a new crop of H2A workers, Elisha makes sure there's enough cash in the handful of checking accounts our various entities utilize, and Morgen is preparing for her June maternity leave, delegating her workload, creating daily and weekly responsibility lists, and channeling her pre partum energy productively.

I will leave you with a quote by Anne Bradstreet. It explains why Winter is central to the joy Spring brings.     

"If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant: if we did not sometimes taste of adversity, prosperity would not be so welcome."    

Jim

Saying “goodbye” to 29876 North Gecko Trail, San Tan Valley AZ.

Right-Left: Joan, Deo, Jim