First testing trip, northwestern Florida

I got out of an entire week in the office for a testing trip this last week. I had better err on the side of caution when it comes to discussing project details, so forgive me for being a little vague about some things. The 1100 mile drive down south went smoothly; I'm just glad I don't have to foot the bill to drive a loaded one-ton V-10 on regular 1000+ mile trips. Ouch.

The main forage crops in that part of the world are rye grass and corn, and this is the time of year for rye. It's all chopped and bagged for silage, because there's no hope of ever drying it down enough for hay. Right after it's cut, the grass is tedded, or fluffed with a tedder rake. This beats up the stems and helps it dry more evenly. Rotary rakes put it into windrows when it's ready. The fields are worked in straight lines despite the pivots; they just bounce over the tracks every single pass. Forage choppers process the windrows into fine feed which is loaded into trucks. The trucks unload into stuffers, which put the chopped rye into tube bags.

I got to ride in a forage chopper for about an hour while it was running, and it was one of the most impressive pieces of machinery I had ever been around. This particular dairy ran two, a Claas 970 and a Claas 980. They chop both rye and corn, so they are running most of the year. They're powered by two Mercedes inline-6 diesels which supply 860 horsepower. The operator monitors the machine with one screen; he can detect foreign material in the pickup and chopper, check the engines, and resharpen the blades among other things. I was very impressed.

That dairy cuts and silages about 3000 acres twice a year, and milks just under 5000 cows. They had many five- and six-span pivots, all high-pressure with half-inch nozzle sprinkler heads on top instead of the drop-type seen in Montana. I pointed out to Eric, the other mower man, that the water coming out looked really rank. He laughed and told me that it's because they pump manure through the pivots before they farm the ground again. Your only hope is to stay upwind.

We wouldn't have been able to get anything done at the dairy Friday before having to leave for the airport, so we headed for Sanford Thursday night, which is where we flew out of. We had a few spare hours Friday morning, so we saw the beach. This also meant I'd driven from the northwest corner of the country to the southeast corner of the country, coast to coast, in the last eight months, most of it in the last six weeks.

Luckily, we got to fly back to Iowa. Pella's spring-like 50s and 60s were sadly a bit of a letdown after Florida's tropical 80s. I'm proud to say my farmer's tan is well underway already.

Settling in

The last couple weeks I've been at the office in Pella, so I haven't really had any adventures. I've done little things here and there for the current mower project, but I'm still largely in the dark about it. Perhaps my favorite part of this job is the fact that Vermeer's engineers, especially the ag engineers, spend so much time in and around the equipment, not just in front of a computer. I haven't had much to do up front in the office, so I've been back in the shop, puttering, visiting with techs and other engineers, learning where things are, working on equipment, and generally keeping my hands dirty, which is how I prefer them.

It looks like tornado season has started in the midwest, after Kansas and Indiana got nailed this week. Nothing has happened in Iowa yet (knock on wood).

The other mower engineer and I are leaving for a testing trip in northwestern Florida tomorrow and we'll split the driving over two days. We'll be down there until the end of the week, then fly back. Hopefully it's nice and warm, and dry enough to cut. Stories forthcoming.