Farmers Could Write a Book on Strange Experiences

Saturday about 4PM I had just filled the planter with seed corn and liquid fertilizer. I had about 25 acres of corn left to plant. Of course I was aware of the forecast of rain for about the next week. I sure wanted to finish planting corn that evening. All at once I was startled by the alarm on my planter monitor screeching at me. Glancing at the screen, I saw that row No. 5 had failed. You sure do not see missing rows of corn like you did years ago as all farmers have planter monitors these days.

I went to check row No. 5 and found a small pin had sheered off. Investigating further, the seed meter was jammed. I called the nearest John Deere dealer (on speed dial of course) and warned them I was coming with a seed meter. I did not even take time to take it apart as I knew they likely wanted to go home soon. The service manager took the meter apart and found this piece of metal jammed in the finger assembly.

The service manager looked at me and said that piece of metal had to be in the bag of seed corn. He thought it looked like a piece of machinery they use to separate and grade the seed corn. Over the decades I have put a lot of bags of corn into a planter and I have never seen this before! I am sure going to let the seed dealer know what happened. Maybe a couple bags of free seed corn for next year? By the way, I did finally finish planting corn Saturday evening.