10 Reasons Jerry Questions Being a Farmer

It is a Saturday afternoon about 4:30 with rain on the way and I am trying to finish planting corn. All at once my monitor says row 5 failed. The seed meter is jammed so I run it into a John Deere dealer. He takes it apart and finds a piece of metal that was in the seed bag jammed in the finger assembly.

It is Saturday afternoon and I am trying to get my beans planted so I can visit my mom in Sioux Falls for Mothers Day. This time my monitor says row 12 failed. The bean meter is jammed. I head to the nearest John Deere dealer in Minnesota Lake. The bearing went out and it is best just to buy a new meter for $240. Minnesota Lake does not have one but Mankato does. I head to Mankato and find out they have one for a 7000 series planter not a 7200, which I have. Ag Power in Owatonna has the one I need. So I make a big circle from the farm to Minnesota Lake to Mankato to Owatonna and back to the farm.

I have a beautiful crop of corn at the two-leaf stage and a frost burns off all the leaves. With the growing point below ground it grows back but it is still hard to look at it for a couple of weeks.

Last Friday my field man wants me to get my sweet corn planted. I leave the studio at 9:30AM trying to beat the rain that is forecast for 4 that afternoon. I turn the garden hose on slow to fill the water tank just in case I get the sweet corn planted and I can spray on the herbicide. When I get back to the yard I see water on the driveway so the water tank must be full. Not really! I was in such a hurry to get started planting sweet corn I did not notice I didn't put the hose back in the water tank after rinsing the sprayer tank!

Last March bean prices were very low and we saw November bean futures rally over $9 a bushel. I have an order in to sell some at $9.20 and $9.40 a bushel following the advice of "market experts." Today November bean futures are over $11 a bushel.

When I was a dairy farmer I had a cow come into the milking parlor in the evening acting strange. She could not remember how to push the swinging doors open to leave the parlor. I thought she had primary ketosis, which is a metabolic disease cows can get in peak production. Treating her in the sick stall I had my hands in her mouth and her blood on my hands. She tested positive for rabies so I get to take the rabies shots.

Two weeks after I get to take the rabies shots I have a cow with a sore on her leg that will not heal after treating with penicillin. This time the Vet diagnosis is tetanus. At least all I needed this time was a tetanus booster as it had been 8 years since I had a tetanus shot.

Seeing a foot of snow early in May like in 2013.

After a foot of snow in 2013, it rained about every other day the entire month of May and June. Land that can produce 200 bushels of corn is planted to a cover crop in July and August.

You get up at 3:30 in the morning when it is 30 below zero and head out to the barn hoping that no stock waters are frozen up, the skid steer starts, the milking parlor is warm and all the livestock are OK.