Thread: My work.... Harvest and tillage 2007 (with pics!)

in some situations on long hauls yea i feel the same about the speed thing. When im driving a semi for my neighbor and go down to st louis twice a day during the winter i feel that way at times. Im not saying im perfect with my driving skills...when people are doing 45 down the highway for no reason at all but just so they can "cruise" it pisses me off because they dont have a reason to go so slow...no spare tire is on, their not old to where they think 45 is fast, there my age and they just drive around all day using mom and dads gas card....i know this because some of them are my "friends".

I'm not claiming im more important than anyone...but my job does play an important role to help the economy going, don't take it offensive, but i think growing crops to help various companies produce their products as well as feed people plays a little more important role than being the zamboni driver at the ice rink, lol.

My favorite two assumptions about farmers (a landlords daughter thought this last year at her wedding):

A. Whats it like living in the country with no tv, no internet, and no supplied water? I literally LOL'd at that remark for 5 minutes, not to embarass her, but we've had the internet for 12 years now, had TV for a LONG time...but only digital TV since '96, and we've had well water forever and dont have to pay by the gallon like you would in a town.

B. Farmers must be rich....by far the most outrageous comment ever said by anyone, on paper we're millionaires....but numbers and letters on paper doesn't mean a thing, our expenses are probably 90% larger than an average consumers. We have six figure fertilizer bills so we can keep raising high yielding crops to try and make more money, we have six figure machinery bills....newer equipment yields more income because the newer tractors use less fuel and are more effiicient, and new implements are wider and can handle faster field speeds, thus allowing more work per day, our fuel bill for each season is outrageous, i wont get into specifics, but just for this fall we have a 5 figure bill just for diesel, we pay an outrageous amount for repairs in the field because alot of stuff breaks and you cant take it to the dealer also a 5 figure bill.


I can go on and on about expenses....in short, however, with specifics....Fertilizer rates have increased from 50% to 90% over 2007 costs due to the commodity prices for corn and soybeans increasing. Currently, for 2008, we will be paying $300-$350/acre for fertilizer and seed, $150-$200/acre for renting the ground, and about $8/acre for fuel, also $8/hr for labor. With current board of trade prices, we're looking at about $650/acre net profit, so in reality after expenses, we're making the same $100-$175/acre that we we're before the biofuels industry made corna nd soybean prices skyrocket to the current levels they are at today. A quick glance at corn more than doubling in price compared to 2006 makes people think we struck gold, but in reality, everything else went up to accomodate the prices and keep us furthermore from prospering and actually having some money to buy newer machinery with just cash or renting/buying mroe ground.

Man I lived in Nebraska for 12 years and I kinda miss the harvest season, which never ends...

But my favorite thing to do was irrigation. Its always nice to get outta the tractor and into some water.

We did it the old way with small ditches and u-pipes.

YouTube - Reversed v2 [PC+XB360]

Featured some skeets, humorous fails, and (9/10) all hunter footage was on the Xbox 360.
Oh and more!



oh and PS: all was taken in one day of footage (the day the 360 patch came out.. a week before CC)