Crawling around inside a combine.

Pulled all this junk out.

Finally got to drive this thing further than from one end of the field to the other. It rides a little rougher over the road but kicking it up to 20mph is pretty fun.

Moved a couple of other big ol girls this morning.

I really want to get a line up of all our big tractors, but they are never all in the same place at once.

Each one of these tractors costs more than my house and we have 3 more 9380s and a few other old tractors that aren't really in use anymore.

This is a 9380.

talk about mechanized farming

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/farmers-are-killing-themselves-in-staggering-numbers/ar-AAzbcCN?ocid=spartanntp

Keep your heads up boys.

I'm ok. I can see why this is a problem though. It probably isn't the incomes though it's addiction mostly to alcohol and gambling. Farmers tend to be risk takers and that often puts them into positions where they can lose everything in a very short amount of time. Lots of farmers who would have been just fine otherwise lose everything to gambling. I've known people who have lost tens of thousands of dollars on video lottery. I can't even go into an Indian Casino anymore. It makes me sick.

Not to mention the financing it takes to get your implements.

Yeah but all that stuff is manageable. Banks are actually surprisingly willing to work with you (at least out here) my dad works in finance and he's said that he's never seen a farmer go broke that didn't have some other issue. Honestly the problem might be that there is too much "big money" in farming. My grandfather raised 6 sons and a daughter on a barely subsistence income and he was apparently one of the happiest guys in the world.

We're delivering some feed corn to a stock yard. This will be my first highway trip in a semi.

I'll be driving this behemoth.

Loading trucks is pretty boring so I'm just talking a bunch of pictures.

🚜

Since this server is ment to be informative I thought I show you how we know how much weight we have on the truck. This gauge measures the pressure on the air bag suspension. We're shooting for 80psi

The pup doesn't have air bags so we just look through the windows and guess.

@Der Seeteufel - SD so you all don't have any animal crops out there?

We don't do livestock on the farm I work on but there are 4.32 cows for every person in South Dakota. There are cows everywhere. This corn is going to a stock yard to feed cattle before they go to market.

That's cool. Glad you're feeding my beef, haha😁

When I was 18 I worked on the kill floor at Purnell's sausage. That was a different experience. Totally different than hunting. The Purnell's were are neighbors when I was a kid.

Do you all grow just corn, wheat and sunflowers?

Mostly. Sometimes we grow millet and a little bit of the dreaded soy.

Is that based on demand?

Yeah and weather patterns and crop rotation. It's actually pretty complicated how they decide what to plant.

We even use infrared satellite images to detect crop density and draft fertilizer profiles. We planted one field half sunflower and half peas last year and planted it all spring wheat this year. We used the satellite pictures to see we needed more fertilizer on the sunflower side of the field. We would have known that anyway but accurate fertilizer application can save us a lot of money over 1600 acres.

Make sure you wear a mask around the soy. 👗

Wow, that's crazy. Farming got real high tech. I'm so used to living my life like it's 1918, I've lost track of how far we've come😁 😂

@Asatru Artist - MD

I even wear a mask around corn.

Mostly for dust though. Its really bad inside the bins.

I actually took this selfie for a girl I'm texting, but I have a doxx proof job so I'm not that worried about posting selfies.

Dr. Andrew, S.D. 😷

Hail storm came through last night. Wiped out as much as 18,000 acres. My boss is not in a good mood today. I'm going to try and get some pictures later I think we probably won't work most of the day today.