Well That Didn’t Add Up…

[00:00:00]Good morning, folks.

[00:00:02]Today, we're just right back to jumping on the cultivator.

[00:00:04]So far, it's seeming like we've got our fertilizer rate pretty dialed. Up on the other farm where we started, it was hard to tell how much we were putting out because they were all really small fields, but now that we're here on pretty big fields, we'll find out real quick how close we are.

[00:00:18]This cotton wasn't moving very fast in the beginning, but the last week or so, it's really taken off. It's starting to look pretty good. This side of the field is pretty sandy. You can see it's not super full in there, but the further we work that way, it looks really good.

[00:00:32]Now, we're going to See how straight we are.

[00:00:41]We normally don't have any GPS issues, but up on the other farm, for some reason, there's a bunch of dead spots where I don't get any signal. So, I ended up doing probably a third of the farm with the old eyeballs. Now, we'll just fire up the pump, drop her down, ready to roll.

[00:01:01]It took a lot of adjusting on the pump, but we figured out the sweet spot is about 4.3 mph.

[00:01:06]We've got our remote turned about a third of the way up.

[00:01:10]We've also got a lot of this bindweed, like a lot of it.

[00:01:15]The cultivator does a pretty good job of getting a lot of it, but we really just need to spray it, like bad. Our sprayer had a broken boom cable that took 2 weeks to come in, and now we're already here with the cultivator. So, it's like we might as well just cultivate it, knock a bunch of it back, and wait till after we water it, so that it'll take in the chemical better.

[00:01:32]They might all be excuses, but well, I mean, we're already here with the cultivator in the field. So, what are you going to do?

[00:02:18]>> Everyone around here has got different setups for their cultivators, but we like to run these discs first that dig up right next to the cotton.

[00:02:25]And for example, like they'll kill that weed right there.

[00:02:28]And then these sweeps come and make a little furrow, which then drops in fertilizer down this tube right in here.

[00:02:35]And in the back is just a big sweep with a plate on it that covers up that fertilizer, and then it also helps this We call these bombs.

[00:02:42]Makes a nice furrow for that water to travel down. My mom also forced me to take the last little bit of homemade banana bread.

[00:02:51]Thanks, Mom. All right. Well, the tanks are empty.

[00:02:54]And good news is we're out of the sandy ground.

[00:02:57]And now I'm making the long trip back to the top of the field.

[00:03:01]It's really not that long of a walk. If you just put it in point five, you look a lot further.

[00:03:05]Thought maybe if it looked further, you'd feel bad for me. Our storage tank of fertilizer is up at the other farm, and so I was going to fill up a tank to bring it down here. Uh but one of the tires was all the way flat, and of course it's a Saturday, so none of the shops are open to patch the tire.

[00:03:18]So, we're going to rob one off of this one.

[00:03:33]Let's try this one-handed.

[00:03:40]Okay, so we made it up here, full 1,000-gallon tank of fertilizer. And uh What's dumb is it's a pretty new tire.

[00:03:49]We still got the little nubbies on the side.

[00:03:51]The fun part is going to be seeing if I can jack this thing up with a high-lift jack.

[00:03:56]It's going to be the most exciting thing I've done in a long time.

[00:04:00]Well, if it goes successfully. I guess it's still exciting either way. It's just not going to be fun if it goes bad.

[00:04:07]Should I just drain a little bit out of the tank before trying this?

[00:04:10]Probably.

[00:04:11]But, that takes more time.

[00:04:16]So far, so good.

[00:04:21]Okay.

[00:04:27]Forgot I probably should lower this tongue all the way down so that we don't have as much weight on the back.

[00:04:35]All right, that should be a little bit safer.

[00:04:47]We free yet?

[00:04:49]Little bit.

[00:04:51]Maybe one more.

[00:04:54]Ooh.

[00:04:56]Do it.

[00:04:58]Come on.

[00:05:05]Okay.

[00:05:08]Let's give it a try.

[00:05:15]Damn. Still got the extension off now. I bet I bet they come off.

[00:05:22]Well, yep.

[00:05:26]You know, sometimes when we use our brains a little bit, things go our way.

[00:05:31]Get this guy off.

[00:05:35]Get out of here.

[00:05:37]Wait, not that far. Have to dig out underneath cuz this is not going to be tall enough.

[00:05:43]How far off are we?

[00:05:49]Only like 5 in. It's Dang it.

[00:05:54]All it took was a couple of chops with the shovel and uh we're on there.

[00:06:03]All right.

[00:06:05]Here goes nothing.

[00:06:06]Oh.

[00:06:07]Probably here goes everything.

[00:06:12]Ooh.

[00:06:13]Ah, it's not too bad. I'm fine.

[00:06:19]Oh, yeah.

[00:06:21]That's it.

[00:06:23]Got those lugs torqued down, threw some air in all the rest of the tires, got it all hooked up, so we're good to go.

[00:06:37]All right. Well, we made it. All four tires stayed on. They kept air in them.

[00:06:42]And all the fertilizer stayed in the tank.

[00:06:44]Today, we're right back to doing the same exact thing.

[00:06:47]The only difference is we've got to add a little something to the fertilizer.

[00:06:50]There's certain soils in certain fields that we have to battle something that we call root rot. What happens is in the early and in the middle stages of this cotton, it'll look fine, looks healthy, it'll put on fruit, and then late in the season, it'll just crisp up and die.

[00:07:04]So, that's why we're going to mix in a different chemical with our fertilizer so we can help battle that. Some people inject it at the beginning of the season when they're marking their rows. Some people do it when they're cultivating.

[00:07:14]Some people do their whole farm.

[00:07:16]But, we just do certain fields. Dad already came and dumped it in this morning, so now I'm just making sure it's all mixed up in the trailer.

[00:07:34]Finally got this big field finished, and after a bunch of tampering with how fast I'm going and turning that pump up and down, spent a little bit of time on the calculator, and uh seems like we're right where we need to be now. It all massed out to about 21.67 gallons per acre, which is right where we're shooting for. We're shooting for 22.

[00:07:53]The the website I used isn't super accurate, either. It was just a little online satellite acre measurer website thing.

[00:08:03]And so, it's not super accurate, but all that matters is that we're closer than we were last take. All it really was was some simple addition and subtraction, and you can't really mess that up too bad.

[00:08:15]Well, anyhoo, we'll try one more tank in the morning and math it out. And if we're seeming like we're on, we'll rock and roll. So, I just finished a third of this field, and the tanks were only about halfway full, just a little over.

[00:08:28]And after mathing it all out, we're still we're still right on track.

[00:08:33]Not really sure what that fluke was, why all of a sudden we put out way too much for that little bit on this upper field.

[00:08:39]It couldn't possibly have been any sort of user error.

[00:08:43]No way.

[00:08:44]Mhm.

[00:08:46]Yeah, probably.

[00:08:47]The nurse trailer is empty, so we're going to head back up to the other farm, go pick up some more. We're not going to do any more of that Zaiway stuff, which is for the root rot. We're just going to put a little bit in the tanks when we fill the tanks back up, because only the last little bit of this field needs it. It could benefit everything. But if you saw the price of one individual 2.5 gallon jug, it kind of makes you think root rot's not all that bad.

[00:09:11]I kind of forgot how fast this goes when you're not changing a tire.

[00:09:15]Real quick, before we head out, I'm going to hop on the 4450 and chisel plow the top of this field over here.

[00:09:37]We've already got that Ziway dumped in here. It's like pure white. Looks like milk.

[00:09:42]Yeah, this this cotton really could use the cultipacker a month ago.

[00:09:47]Cracked pretty bad. We have the cultipacker down here to do this field behind me, but by the time this field needed it, it was already back up at the other farm.

[00:09:56]And we didn't want to bring it back down here cuz we were going to cultivate soon anyways.

[00:10:00]Still probably should have done it, but the cotton's big and healthy right now, so I guess it didn't need it that bad.

[00:10:06]Earlier this morning, I got this field all finished up and you remember in this field and the field above, we had a lot of bindweed.

[00:10:14]And now that we've got just this field and this one, they're both pretty small.

[00:10:17]We're not battling so much bindweed on these, but it's a lot of these morning glories. During planting season, you want to be planting into wet dirt because the cotton loves moisture. But, so do the weeds. The cultivator can get a good chunk of them, but when you have ones like this that are right up next to the cotton, like that one, that one, that one, even that one.

[00:10:37]These are pretty much the whole field.

[00:10:40]As soon as we can, we're going to get the high cycle out and come spray all this because if we don't hurry, it's going to get a lot worse than it already is.

[00:10:47]This field, just like the field we did yesterday, has a lot of these cracks in it.

[00:10:54]Crazy thing is is we did run the cultipacker on this, but it didn't seal it up at all.

[00:11:01]Honestly kind of surprised that this cotton looks this good and it hasn't dried up yet. Cultivating it will throw dirt back on top, which helps, but until we actually water it, it's not going to seal up. And we're not going to get water on it for another little bit, so hang in there.

[00:11:26]Yeah, so I guess that spot in the beginning that I showed you with all the weeds was like the best spot in the field because all of this up here is way worse.

[00:11:36]Uh yeah, apparently like way way way way worse.

[00:11:41]There's not much left in this nurse trailer, but we don't need much more.

[00:11:45]We've only got I don't know, maybe 2/3 of this field. So, this will be enough to get us I'm guessing maybe maybe half a tank.

[00:11:56]Hopefully.

[00:11:57]Turns out I was a little bit overly optimistic and it's only like maybe a third of a tank.

[00:12:04]So, hopefully that's enough to get this field finished. If it's not and I have to drive up to the other farm, spend an hour getting another trailer full, I'm not going to be very happy.

[00:12:15]So, that's exactly what happened.

[00:12:17]We got all the way across, all the way over to here, and all we've got left is about 2 acres of really short rows up right here.

[00:12:24]And uh that means we're probably about 25 gallons short. So, that's cool.

[00:12:30]>> [music] >> Like seriously, this is seriously all we've got left. Just this little chunk here.

[00:12:38]We couldn't have made it that far. All right.

[00:12:41]Now we're finishing up.

[00:12:44]Everything went to plan, so that's good.

[00:12:46]Satcher farm is officially cultivated and fertilizer injected. So, now we'll uh start making the trek up to the Eden farm.

[00:12:55]Also, we're getting some rain up there in the hills.

[00:12:58]Not just over there, but over here on this side, too.

[00:13:02]It'd be cool if it was like right here raining, but we'll we'll take up there.

[00:13:12]Well, that's awesome.

[00:13:25]So, uh that was a severe weather warning for violent winds and quarter-sized hail. Just take this as a little reminder to be specific when you're [music] praying for things cuz uh we've been praying for moisture, just uh not the frozen kind.

[00:13:42]It's definitely growing over there. It's a lot darker.

[00:13:45]A lot of wind up there.

[00:13:50]The rain's here.

[00:13:52]It's uh been pretty nasty, dusty rain the whole drive. And then just a few minutes ago it started raining pretty good. And uh this windshield wiper definitely doesn't work, so we're not going to try it.

[00:14:04]We're just going to act like we can see.

[00:14:06]It's kind of weird cuz we've got sunshine that way and semi-clear skies and even right above us it's not that cloudy.

[00:14:14]I've even had some lightning come from back behind me that way. I haven't seen it with my eyes, but I've seen the flash of light come this way.

[00:14:21]Well, this is what we got now.

[00:14:23]Surrounded by clouds all the way around.

[00:14:26]Plenty of thunder, little bit of lightning.

[00:14:28]It's coming down pretty good.

[00:14:30]I also uh had the surprise of my life as I jumped down from that ladder about jumped on that snake right there.

[00:14:37]The reason I was fearing for my life, not because I'm deathly afraid of snakes, I'm deathly afraid of getting bit by a rattlesnake. As I'm jumping out of the tractor, I glance down in the air and I see something similar color to a rattlesnake.

[00:14:54]It might have made me scream like a girl. Starting to come down a lot harder. I also don't have a way home. I got to wait for my dad. I could go and sit inside, but it doesn't rain very often. It kind of feels good.

[00:15:06]It's been about 15 minutes.

[00:15:09]It is in fact still raining.

[00:15:12]And I am in fact still outside.

[00:15:15]I am just now realizing that I'm going to be riding in my dad's truck.

[00:15:19]So, it kill me.

[00:15:24]Kind of forgot about that.

[00:15:27]Well, I made it back to my truck and here in Thatcher we didn't even get a drop of rain.

[00:15:32]No.

[00:15:33]I forgot to film it, but on our way home from Eden out there driving past the fields, there was standing water in all the furrows.

[00:15:40]Well, this is some of the aftermath from yesterday.

[00:15:44]I mean, this is a field. I mean, there's cotton in there.

[00:15:47]Up on this end of the valley, there's a bunch of stuff that flooded pretty bad yesterday. And it sounds like I was a little overconfident in the fact that they were wrong about the hail because [music] our farm up in San Jose on the other end of the valley got hit with it. I haven't made it up there yet, but my dad has and he said it's not too too bad, but I mean no hail's good. Next time I'm up there, I'll make sure to take a little clip so I can throw it in here.

[00:16:10]You can see all these leaves got knocked off.

[00:16:14]All of this got torn up.

[00:16:20]Some of it's fine. Like that, doesn't look too bad. Then there's some plants that look like this and just everything got knocked off.

[00:16:28]You can see how much moisture we got.

[00:16:29]There was a lot of standing water. It's been 2 days and there's still some out there.

[00:16:34]Um Sir, where where where did you come from?

[00:16:40]I just walked from around my truck and he was just Hey.

[00:16:47]Ow.

[00:16:50]Dude, chill out. That thing just disappeared. I don't even know where it went. But anyways, this is really why we're here.

[00:16:56]There was standing water in the bottom of all these furrows just yesterday.

[00:17:00]There's extra water in the canal and so they asked if we had anywhere that was ready for water and we didn't. This was going to be the first field that we were going to cultivate, but since it was so wet, we hadn't gotten to it. This year, since water's already so scarce and it's only the first irrigation, it's kind of hard for us just to say no. So, we brought the cultivator in here and it made a lot of muddy clouds and honestly we probably killed some cotton like this.

[00:17:26]Sorry, buddy.

[00:17:28]And when I say a couple of plants, I really just mean a couple of plants. I mean the rest of the field looks really good. Well, except for the rocks right there.

[00:17:35]Everything else looks pretty good.

[00:17:37]Especially the bottom.

[00:17:41]What in the world?

[00:17:43]This is This is not my dog.

[00:17:47]Hello, friend.

[00:17:49]Hello.

[00:17:52]Hello.

[00:17:54]Oh, yep. Just go ahead and walk right all over the cotton. Yep, that's fine.

[00:17:58]Even though it was just one storm yesterday and the ground's already dry, it still feels pretty good to get some rain. They're saying it's going to rain again next week, but who knows? It changes every single day. But in the meantime, thank you guys for watching. I appreciate all the support and uh we'll see you in the next one.