We missed the rain again this weekend. So hauling water for the houses and cattle will continue. But today it drizzled enough to keep us out of the field so I can catch up on my blog posting of harvest. I am continually trying to come up with interesting things to share since driving a combine back and forth in a field is pretty mundane. The following videos pretty much sum up the last few days since my previous post.

Day 7

The boys will be extremely happy when we finally get all the bins full of corn and we move on to some fields away from home. We fill the drying bins. Then once the corn is dry enough we transfer it to the regular bins for storage til winter. Then we move the auger back to the drying bins to fill them up again ’til the corn is dry and repeat. This is the first year that they have spent so much time at this process. I try to warn them that it’s the beginning of many many years.

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Day 8

In these two videos taken today, I tried to show the fields after they were harvested. Then the GreenStar monitor shows the yield maps for each field.

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Precision Ag is not precisely for everyone. Most times I doubt it is for me. It is definitely a love/hate relationship. The clinics that the dealership hosts before planting and harvest to help with settings are nice but by the time I get home I barely remember the touch pad sequence to enter my farm name. I need a visual aid while I’m in front of the screen.

Let me just say the manual sucks. William and I were trying to set a page to show a coverage map. I read the dead weight manual while William worked the screen. We did every step in the book but it still would not show the map. I finally figured out that instead of selecting enter, the map on the screen had to be selected. THIS STEP WAS NOT IN THE BOOK. After that episode, our marriage still intact, I knew there had to be a better way. And there surely was more farmers out there with the same frustration.

What did I come up with? Video. Most farmers are guys, guys are visual. That’s what William says. Videos are the answer. Either I had to make videos using the #@$% touch screen or find somewhere it had been done. I found two sites. One for GreenStar by a John Deere dealer in Kansas. They have youtube videos that show the touch pad operations from the cab. Their youtube channel has 25 tutorial videos to help operators know which selections to make to set the monitor. The other is for Ag Leader. The made their own videos. Here is the link for those tutorials.

Take it to the cab. Hopefully most of you will have smartphones to be able to see the videos on your phone. The picture might be small but you can hear the steps to follow. Or the ag nerds can take their ipads but they might not admit they need help. Those with ipod touches can download a video converter to watch the tutorials.

Let me know how you remember all the sequences on your screen; and if these videos help you