My husband, Joe, wears a lot of different hats and, today, he will take off a hat that he won’t don for another 11 months — that of a farmacist.
he LOVES — planting corn.
Planting corn is wrapping up today here at Ocheda Dairy in southwestern Minnesota. While a pharmacist in the medical profession counts pills, calculates dosages and considers possible medicine interactions…..Joe figures seed populations and variety with regards to soil type, topography, fertility, return on investment, and a whole bunch of other things. Before planting starts, he sits down to a desktop computer and “writes a prescription” for each piece of land. That’s the actual term for it.
Does your high schooler ever complain as they do math homework that they will NEVER use this in real life? My son does this and I can’t stand it. It’s just not true. Case in point last week: Joe was finishing planting a piece of land that lies one mile east of us and a little south. It was nearing midnight and he realized that he was going to be about 1/2 bag of seed short of what was needed. Nobody was around to help him, it’s not overly safe to load seed in the dark, and he was exhausted. So he did some MATH, refigured his seeding populations with regard to number of seeds left and acres needed. Joe was not a math whiz in high school, but a good student and he always likes to finish a job that he has started. So, there you have it, he used math. Instead of counting pills, he was counting seeds and I may be biased, but he’s a pretty cool farmer.
I hope that as Joe takes off his “corn planting hat”, he reaches for a rain coat. We have a bunch of pasture fencing to do, and we will gladly do it in the rain this year as it is just so dry and the land really would benefit from a week of slow and steady rain. Even my teenage son would agree with that.
soshemarriedafarmer 