Planting Corn on an Iowa Family Farm | Spring Farmathon 2024 Episode 1

All right, we got all of the boxes loaded up here. You see this black powder? That is graphite that we add to the seed and it is just a lubricant for it. It's a really smooth, fine powder that helps the seed to flow smoothly through the planter and not get caught up on anything. It just helps everything to keep moving nice and smooth. A little bit crowded in here this morning. You over there, Liza? Yep. Welcome back to Todd's Family Farm. Is this technically the first episode of Farmathon? Yeah. I guess it is. So welcome to episode one of Spring Farmathon. Spring Farmathon is a little tricky because we're starting planting. So I want to start Farmathon but the problem is it's supposed to rain on Tuesday and a lot of times if it's rain we just get in and out of the field and we're not like consistently going a ton. So Farmathon probably isn't going to like keep going through the rain. So I don't know. I'm going to do my best but anyways for right now Spring Farmathon has started. Here we go. Hope you guys are excited. Planting has started for 2024. You can see we actually got a planter back there going. Now we got that filled up this morning and Dad and Lemuel are going in the planter in this 100 acre field that we finished doing the Phoenix Harrow on. We did that yesterday and the field cultivator and so now they're planting it. And then we are right now we are going to do a little bit of maintenance on the 84 which is the Phoenix Harrow. We need some fuel so we're fueling up the tank on Casper to take down there and then also one of the tires on the Phoenix Harrow is a little bit low so we're taking a can of air down there too. And we're going to get that going and then Emma will run that today. I have a little bit more to do with the field cultivator that I think Papa's going to be doing and then I'll just be standing by to help whoever needs it. Yes Eliza my sidekick. I think that's about it. Yeah it's a beautiful day. It's supposed to be like 80 today which is amazing and let me just reintroduce Farmathon a little bit for those of you that are new here. So Farmathon is something that we started doing a couple years ago and what it is is during our busy seasons which is for us is planting and harvest we upload daily. So I vlog every day and I post every day. It's a lot of work but I really enjoy it. You guys really enjoy it all of our viewers always look forward to Farmathon and I love that and it makes me excited to know that you guys enjoy it and look forward to it. So it's definitely a lot of work but I really hope that during Farmathon especially you guys can get an idea of what it's like on a family farm during the busy season because it's a lot of long days and it's plenty busy and we try to keep everybody involved and I just want you guys to kind of know what it's like and get an experience of what farm life on a family farm is like even if you've never had the opportunity to experience this yourself. I hope you can experience a little bit of that through our videos. So hope you guys enjoy it. If you have any questions or suggestions anything you want to see just let me know and I will do my best with that. So yeah it should be a good day. We're starting out the morning strong getting busy quickly and see what we can get done today. All right tank is fueled up. We're gonna go get some daily maintenance done on the 84 and Phoenix Harrow and then that should be good. Sometimes I feel like I'm the only halfway mature person here. They're just crazy, crazy, crazy. I can tell. All right here we go. Okay we got Emma started in the 84. That tire is going to need a little bit more air. It's like it's when it's running in the field it's good and there's not a ton of weight on it but when you fold the Phoenix Harrow up to take it onto the road that's when it really looks flat. So we're gonna put a little bit more air in it before they fold it up. And Papa's gonna go get started in the 91. Right now Eliza and I when we were doing the field cultivator in this field we pulled up a couple rocks so we're gonna go pick up a couple of those and make sure that's ready to go for the planter. Okay here's what we got. It never ceases to amaze me how you can absolutely clear all the rocks out of a field and by the next year there will be more. It's never ending so this would not be good for a planter to run over. That could definitely hurt a planter so it's very good that we got that out of here. We're gonna unload these and then probably go get another tank of air ready for the Phoenix Harrow. All right Eliza and I are over here. We're gonna get in the 91 and take over for Papa so he can take this truck and go help Emma with the Phoenix Harrow to move to a different field since it can be a little bit tricky to fold up and unfold and everything. So he's gonna go do that and we're gonna keep this going in this field. We are going in the 91. I think this is Eliza's first time in the 91. What do you think? I like it, it's fun. Yeah be in here for a few hours and I'll see what she gets for it. We are working on this field. It's about 40 acres. That's actually Papa and Granny's house right up there and we're gonna get this field done. Papa's already got a lot of it done. Then we have one more field across the road to do and then I think that will be all of the ground done. I think we still have to maybe go over the river bottom one more time with something but other than that that should be all the tillage done. With this implement we still got to go over everything with the Phoenix Harrow and then after we do that we should be finished. So we're making progress. We're getting along good. The planter's running. They're getting the Phoenix Harrow moved over to a different field and the Phoenix Harrow can cover quite a bit of ground pretty quickly so it's going good. Staying busy which is nice. All right we got this field finished. Emma's going over it with the Phoenix Harrow now. Papa's moving the 91 and cultivator over to a different field and we're gonna go eat lunch and then we'll come back over after lunch and take over for Papa. I think he has something to do with the seed tender at the farm that he's gonna be working on. So we're gonna run the 91. Emma's gonna run the 84. We have the planter going and yeah going good. Brought a snack back for Emma. We're gonna give this to her and then we're gonna go get back to the 91. All right here we are. We'll get cut into this field and see how it goes. It's facing the struggle that we all face in the tractor. You have snacks and you just want to eat them as soon as you get in here but you have to wait. Hold on, hold this. I gotta turn around. That's a bit too close to my face. Okay we're turned around now. Um Eliza has really been struggling because we brought snacks. Actually we got a box of snacks. Eliza's adjusting my seat. Um we got a box of snacks in the mail today from a subscriber and it's awesome. There's chips and popcorn and granola bars. It was really amazing. Um and we are putting them to very good use immediately. So thank you so so much to whoever sent that. Um it really means a lot. We really do appreciate it and we are putting it to very good use. So uh we brought snacks with us and Eliza like the minute we got into the tractor she was can I eat my granola bar and I said no you gotta wait. So she's been asking and finally I told her that at two o'clock she could have her snack. So she's got three more minutes to go and then she's gonna have free range to go into her snacks. So trying to be patient. Okay we went out and she's picking up branches so motivated to get caught on it and I'm in here waiting for her. And here she comes. Just got a few more runs and then we'll be done. Field is finished. We got the 91 is completely finished with the field cultivator. We'll have to do some more on the river bottom I think but for now we're done and we need to do the Phoenix Harrow over that one last field but we're probably not gonna do that until Monday maybe uh because the Phoenix Harrow is a little bit of a rougher piece of equipment to run in an older tractor so Emma is calling it a day and we'll get that finished on Monday probably. Dad got the 100 acre field finished with the planter so he brought that up here. Right now we're getting the box of seed. We're gonna get that put into the seed tender so we're gonna get the 27 hooked up to the seed tender here and get that seed put in there. So it's very windy again today which as I said makes it kind of difficult to record but doing my best to still get some good footage for you guys. We got all the equipment put away. I think that's going to be about it for today. So planting 2024 has started. Tillage for the year is almost done. This week has been crazy. It does not feel like a Saturday. It has been a very long week. The beginning of this week we just got started. On Monday we started disking with the sunflower. That was the first spring tillage we had done this year and now we are pretty much done with spring tillage. We have a little bit more to with the phoenix harrow and then probably a little bit more on the river bottom but the majority of it is done and we have started planting this week. It's just a lot has happened this week. It's been very very busy and all of us we're all very very tired but it's been a good week and a very productive week. We got a lot done and yeah a lot to be thankful for with that. So we are gonna head inside, get cleaned up, get ready to go to church tomorrow and this is going to wrap up spring farmathon 2024 episode one. So I'm not sure exactly how spring farmathon is going to go. If we're going to keep planting full speed ahead or if the weather is going to turn off rainy and we won't be able to plant consistently. I don't know. I'm going to do my best to keep you guys updated and keep farmathon going as much as I can but if the weather does not allow us then I can't do much about it. I'm just gonna have to make the best of it and thank you guys for being patient with that. So stay tuned for more farmathon episodes. I hope you guys are looking forward to planting and I know we're all very excited to get going with it. So it's a beautiful day today actually. It's like 80 degrees but it's very very windy so I'm in this nice truck to record a little outro here. But that is about it. I'm gonna head inside now and we will see you guys in the next video.