Planting Soybeans (and Mowing Hay) On an Iowa Family Farm! | Spring Farmathon 2025 Episode 4

Y'all, lighting is a continued struggle. So we're just gonna make do with this and hope it doesn't, it's not absolutely horrible. And I will tell y'all an official good morning. Welcome to Spring Farmathon episode 4, planting day 4. We got finished with planting corn yesterday, so we are going to be going into planting soybeans today. If you watched the last video, it was actually raining just like a little bit. We did not get much rain at all, just like six one hundredths, I think. So barely anything, and that should not delay us. So we are going to be able to get started nice and early today. We do have a little bit of work to do before we can get right to planting though. We are going to, we need to go over and feed cows, feed hay to the cows. There was a new calf born yesterday, so dad wants to look at that to hopefully tag it and that'll be good. So got a few chores to do this morning, then we'll get back and get the planter loaded up with beans and we can get that going in the field. There's the cow and her calf. You can't really see the calf right now, but we're gonna, we need to tag the calf. So I don't know how cooperative that cow is going to be for us tagging her calf, but we're going to try to get it done here. Here we go y'all. Bossy is ready to give back up. I'm not sure who she'd be giving back up for, the cow or dad, but she'd be helping somebody. Yeah. Well that makes things a little bit easier. Um, and if it was a bull, we'd have to band it too, but it is a heifer, so it wasn't as big of a deal and that mama cow was not happy and would definitely run somebody over. So we did not spend a lot of time over there this morning trying to get it caught to tag it because tagging it really isn't a huge deal for us right now. And we'll get it tagged at some point, but it's looking really good and yeah, the mama is super protective. So now we're back. We've had a little coffee break here to let things dry off just a little bit. And now we are going to head to the field. So we're taking the planter down there now, gonna fill it up with beans and then dad will get started in the field with bean planting. Y'all, there's baby kill deer on the road. Aww, look at it. Hi baby. Okay, I'm gonna get it back to their mama. Okay, we got them put in the field and off the road and their mama was right there looking for them. So I think they'll be okay. Now after that short break, we're gonna get back to filling the planter. All right, the planter is all loaded up. So dad's gonna get started with that. You have to refill a lot more often with beans because the population, which is how many seeds we're planting per acre, the population we do for corn is around 32 to 34,000. For beans, it's like 150,000 seeds per acre. So huge difference there and you have to refill a lot more often. So it won't be too long before we'll be refilling. For now though, the crew here, Emma and Eliza and I, we got the iconic crew right here, I feel like. We are going to go over to the cornfield that we planted on Monday, the very first one that was planted, and see what the seeds are looking like over there. We have arrived. This was the very first little field that was planted. Actually got a few weeds coming up out here. Those fields up there like don't have weeds, but this one down here does have a few. Let's see what we're looking like. There we go, just starting to sprout. If you guys can see it, it's a little tiny sprout there. Okay, there's one. You see there? It's got a little sprout on it. So they're just starting and they will grow pretty quickly now. This was planted on Monday. Today is Thursday, so it is going well. It's starting to sprout. Okay, we're just gonna replant this little guy and let him get back to growing. We are driving home and the crew's up at the lantern. She stood up and bonked her head on the planter and was suffering behind the camera. Yes. planting in the field without any problems and he's back up here to refill now. There's still some beans in here, so he was not emptied out, but we are going to be. He got enough room open in the planter that we can empty out the rest of the seed from the seed tender into the planter. That way he'll be able to keep going and papa can go get some more seed in the Okay, we got him loaded up. So y'all, this wind out here, I tell you it's a challenge. We got him loaded up and he's gonna head back to the field. We're gonna go up here and get some lunch. We'll bring him some lunch sometime and papa's off to get some more seed. Okay, I'm going to be giving a chick update for Abby for you. We got the chicks back in April and they were really small when they last shown them and they've gotten so much bigger. They have grown their feathers on. They are Rhode Island Reds and we got 22 of them. We put them in there in that chicken coop and then we put them out of the morning into this pen. So in this pen we have, along with the big chickens, Henrietta and we have Mr. Kent. He's going a little bit, he's old, been for a very long time. He's just going a little bit crazy and sometimes I don't think he even knows that chicks are there and just like actually steps on them. That's not like, does it hurt them or anything, but he's just a little bit oblivious. But the chicks are doing really good and yeah. Okay, dad is planting right now which is going well and the other thing we have going on today is papa is actually mowing hay. So the grass has gotten up and grown big very quickly and technically the grass isn't super tall but it is starting to head out which means that it is as tall as it's going to get and it needs to be mowed and this is actually really young grass so once we mow it off it will come back even taller and it needs to be mowed off in order for it to grow better. So papa is working on mowing hay, the first cutting of hay for the year. It should be a very nice sunny week and all of that and should have plenty of time to dry it out nicely and we'll get it baled up. So this is what we got going on today. It seems to going well so far. If you remember we did put new blades on that mower and it looks like it's doing a very good job. I just came down here and dropped Lemuel off of the tractor so he's in there riding with dad and the planting is going well. They're working towards the creek right now and they're getting along good. We got back. The mower has stopped so we're gonna go see what's wrong. What's going on? Did the seat pull down? Is the stuff okay? Is the setup okay? It's not that heavy to get. Papa's gonna go try it make sure it works. There's the big rollers here. There was just like a wad of grass and some mud wedged in between them which messes them up so it should work now and then we lifted it up so it's not cutting so close along the ground and that should help a little bit I think. So we're gonna try it out here and hopefully it'll do well. Well that's not what we wanted to happen. Well that was not a great start. I had just talked to dad on the phone and he was asking how the hay cutting was going when I was down there dropping Lemuel off and I was like he's going good he's getting along well nothing's going wrong and then I get up here and the tractor has stopped and something indeed had gone wrong. We're just letting it cool down right now the belts are really hot so we're just leaving it parked there for a bit and the plants are still going so you know that's the main thing if something else breaks down we'll fix it later as long as the planter stays going that's a big thing. So we are just gonna head to the barn right now and get afternoon chores done. I'm pretty sure I have dirt on my head too. Do I have dirt on my forehead? A tiny bit. Okay so ignore that please but we're gonna go to the barn and get barn chores done for the afternoon now. Hi Nala. Find the chickens? Yeah that's pretty good. I was chilling oh there's mama cow she is ready to charge Emma. Emma's up there checking on her. There's Molly chilling out under the trees. We found the chickens. Come on. Come on guys. That's the only one that is the only one that was up in the woods yesterday. There you go. All right try and get him up to the barn. There's Emma to help you if you need it. Okay we got the mower fixed. It was just plugged up and cutting too low. Papa is going right now. The mower is up and running good. Still pretty wet because we got a little bit of rain this morning but it'll dry out because next week is supposed to be like 80 so. Okay we filled up the planter again so dad's going with that. While he was here to pause to fill up the planter he came up here and looked at the mower. We did get it fixed. The belts had cooled down and we got all that stuff unplugged out of it. We raised it up a bunch and it seems to be working now. It definitely needed to be raised up and the it just needed to get completely unplugged and it everything cooled off and it started back up and dad worked on it for a bit and it's been working good ever since. So he's got this field finished and he's going to be moving over here so he it's looking good and everything's doing very well. Alrighty y'all it is now I don't know what time it is but sometime in the evening and dad just got filled up again. He's not going to need refilled for the rest of the day. Should be able to get that field done at least. I don't know how much he's got left on it but he'll definitely get that field done. It's a 100 acre field and we are going to call it a day. Papa got the hay mowed. He might still be working on that and the mowing has been going smoothly which is great. We just came up here and got neighbor's chores done and we are going to head home and the crew here the trio here the awesome crew that y'all just love. We are going to head inside and call it a day. So I don't know what we're having for supper tonight but I am french toast and bacon. There's a supper you don't hear every night. We're having breakfast for dinner. It's going to be great because I'm starving. Would have been great otherwise but it's going to be extra great because I'm starving. So we're going to go inside and get cleaned up and just chill for the rest of the day. So hope y'all enjoyed this video. Thank you guys so much for coming along. We are into bean harvest. If all goes well we could finish I just said bean harvest. Thank you for paying attention and correcting me. I can tell they listen to what I'm saying. We are into bean planting and we if everything goes well we will hopefully finish all of planting this week but we'll see how that goes. That is going to be it for this video. Hope y'all have enjoyed coming along with us so far. Hope you're looking forward to coming along with us again tomorrow. Thank you guys so much for watching and we will see you tomorrow.