This morning another ewe gave birth to a hefty and handsome baby boy! When I noticed she was in labor only the little front hooves and little nose were out. I went on doing my morning feeding chores for the rest of the sheep and maybe 5 minutes later I checked up on her and she was licking the goo off him. After another 5 minutes he was standing!

Johnny and I put on the dual tires for the new tractor, an AGCO DT205B. The dual wheels on each side level the weight of the tractor as it goes through a field and gives it more stability. With the help and brains of my dad, we used the loader tractor to carry the heavy tires to the tractor. Bolted them on and wallah, duals. I never really thought I’d use anything I learned in school in real life, but my physics classes have really come in handy with all this farming stuff. Especially when we are working with big heavy machinery and tools that weigh a whole lot more than us.

We then hooked up the 205B to the field cultivator which prepares any field that corn will be planted on. We no-till our soybean fields so we don’t need to move around the soil before we plant the soybean seeds. The other day, a sales rep from AGCO came out and gave me a tutorial on this new and sophisticated piece of machinery. That was last Friday. Between then and now, I almost forgot everything he told me! Somehow there’s a way to program the tractor to do everything you want it to with the push of one button. You have to manually enter all the steps in the monitor from raising the rpm to lowering the cultivator to increasing the speed. Then when you get to the end of the row, you push that one magic button and it does everything in reverse as you turn around. It could be really amazing!

I spent 2 hours in the tractor in the field sitting in one spot trying to figure it out with the 100 page manual. By the end of the day, I didn’t. On to day 2 for that project.