Webinar: Optimizing Your Planter for Spring Success
Farmers commonly take time during the winter months to focus on machinery maintenance. When it comes to your planter though, are you focusing on the right fixes? Are you employing new technology to keep your planter current? You don’t need to go broke buying new iron but you DO need to tune into this discussion with the XA guys on planter upgrades.
Hey folks. Uh, we're gonna value you time. We're gonna get things started off. This is our first webinar 2024. We've been doing this for a couple years now. It's exciting, and we always aim to share good information you can apply to your farming operation to make you more successful. That's what Extreme Ag was founded on. Sharing information, insights that can help you in your farming operation. We're an open book. We, uh, are obviously here to help. We also are very interactive. If you have a question, you can raise your hand or you can go to the chat feature and we will address your questions. We appreciate the interactivity because chances are, if you have the question, someone else out here in the webinar land might have the same questions. So it actually makes the learning and the discussion so much more rich. So please do ask your questions. We aim for interactivity. We're talking today about optimizing your planter for spring success, tips, fixes, and upgrades. You know, farm folks have this winter spell. They talk about using this time productively to put the machinery in the shed and do the things to it that can make it work for you and give you greater returns for this spring. So, one of the reasons we wanted to do this is because we at the Louisville Farm Machinery National Farm Machinery Show, Kevin always corrects me on that. The National Farm Machinery Show in Louisville in February. One of the things we did, we had a panel and we were there to talk about machinery. And there's this inclination to say, well, some of these bigger farmers, they have the latest, greatest shiniest steel going in North America, and that's not true. So we're gonna lead off with Kelly, because Kelly has a 10-year-old planter to cover a lot of acres with it. And we brought on his chief mechanic there at Garrett Land and Cattle Bryce Ring. Bryce keeps everything going. And I'm gonna just lead it off here, Kelly, you've got an old piece of equipment, but it still works because what did you say about our man Bryce? He is the what? He's the head turd, Polish polisher. He is able to polish turds and make 'em all work. So anyway, I was actually struck. I came to your farming operation and I couldn't believe that as you know, forward thinking as you are progressive, you're kind of cheap when it comes to equipment. You're running a 10-year-old planter. Tell us how this all works. Well, we really don't feel that any equipment company produces a planner that we're satisfied with. So really all we're looking for is a good solid toolbar and a good solid set of commodity tanks to put the seed in. And the rest of the planner, we're really gonna customize from the openers to the, uh, fertility equipment to the parallel arms. We're gonna customize it so it doesn't need to be new and expensive because we're gonna rebuild the whole thing and, you know, from our, what our vision of it should be anyway, Right? Uh, I I prefer to call you chief mechanic versus, uh, head turd, polisher. But, you know, they drag the stuff in there. We joke behind the scenes that the, the Garrett land and cattle, uh, people are, can be hard on equipment. I think there's at least four, uh, combine snouts hanging on the wall that, uh, Verne has wrecked into rocks, trees, I don't know, downed cattle, whatever. Uh, but you keep things polished up pretty well. The, one of the more important things you do is making this planter run like a showroom new. So kind of walk us through your methods. Every year we bring our planters in. We just strip 'em down pretty much. We, uh, we go through standard typical wear parts that everybody else goes through your true vs. Your frogs that are protecting your seed tubes. Um, we just go through, we gotta make sure that planter has full range of motion, that row unit, and, uh, we start, we start from scratch. Um, not that we have put new on every year, but we, we want to take them components off, inspect 'em, look at 'em, and then we just start building back up from the ground. So we'll start with new TRVs every year. Uh, a lot of no-till, so start with TRVs and then just start going up. Hey, you're gonna do something for the novice like me. And by the way, I'm writing notes, taking stuff over here. What, what's a true v Is it something that everybody knows or is, or am I the only person that doesn't? Uh, your double disc openers are a true V is where you set your trench. Um, it's gonna actually cut through the dirt and, uh, that's laying your seed bed down. So What thing did you do last year besides routine stuff that was an upgrade that you think made a big difference or that Kelly can speak to, or Evans can speak to, or anybody else there that says, you know what? We made this change last year or two years ago and it really made a big difference. That's not just your standard replacement or wear item. Uh, parallel arms With the bearings, Parallel arms, hands down, hands down, parallel arms with bearings. All right, explain that You did right before we hit the record button. App parallel arm and why the bearings matter. Kelly, They, uh, with the hydraulic downforce, the other parallel arms, uh, with the bushing can bind up and with the bearings, it, it amazed me. You know, I don't wanna steal temple's thunder 'cause I know he wants to talk about this too, but yes, it, that was the thing that we did last year. That was a huge game changer. The the bearings really make it run smoother. And by the way, if you have any questions about any of this stuff, certainly, uh, from a mechanical standpoint, uh, you've got the people on here that can answer your questions. So again, put it in your chat, in the chat feature and we'll get to your questions. Temple. Speaking of parallel alarms, when we were doing our prep and walkthrough on this, you talked about parallel alarms. You got introduced to a new parallel arm system from the folks over there, Bryce and Kelly and Evans, and you put 'em on your planter. I asked the question, why does this matter? And you made a brilliant point, you said, all right, the parallel arms going across the field. Obviously we're planting now at six or eight miles per hour. I mean, I'm not planting that fast. I don't have, um, you know, my planters are like Kelly's mine or older, so I don't, I'm not going across the field real fast. Um, but What, but the point is, you're going, if you're going across four or five miles an hour, you start to get some bounce. And obviously then you're gonna have one seed that gets put in the ground at an inch and a half, another one that gets put in the ground at half an inch and you're gonna have a great variation of seed debt. Well, it's, it's not really about that. It's about singulation. So it's, it's not about seed depth here. We're talking about any bit of vibration that you have in that, in that planter unit affects your singulation. And that's, you know, from, you know, from one seed to the next. You wanna take all out as many variables as you, as you can. And what we found last year, you know, one, when I first ordered, uh, the, the parallel arms, I was dreading it the whole time. I'm thinking, my God, this is gonna be a pain because I hate putting them bushings in, you know, that come as, that's a OEM thing, you know, it's a, it's a bushing that rides it's metal on metal. Well, you know, with these new parallel arms that I got from integrated Ag, you don't have that anymore. It's a pressed in bearing in a bushing, and it rides on that bearing the whole time and it's super smooth. And I didn't know that it was gonna make that much of a difference because I had put in new bushings the year prior. So it didn't have that many acres really on those bushings, but I wanted to make every bit of progress that I could. So I thought that this was a pretty decent upgrade. It's not a terrible amount of money, but for this upgrade, it made a humongous amount of difference because we picked up like a three quarters of a mile an hour faster in planning speed. And I don't have a high speed planner, and I don't, I don't claim to want one, but when we picked up three quarters of a mile an hour and we're singulating better than what we ated prior, like, dude, I honestly, that's a home run for us. So, um, for that upgrade, that's well worth the money and the ululation that we got and being able to lay that seat in there perfectly. The problem is, is there's a ton of vibration on that plant that you have. And the only way to take it out is to do things like this. And metal on metal don't work real well. Okay, real quick about money. So the person that says, all right, I'm contemplating what kind of investment, I'm gonna make it into an older planter, but it's gonna modernize it. Is this, how much money are we talking about? Is this the, is this where you would spend money? Is this the first place to spend money on an upgrade? This is one of the first places that I would spend money. So like, if, if you wanted to talk to a guy, you know, if a guy called me and said, Hey, look, I'm gonna buy a used planner, and, uh, the, you know, the first thing that I need to do is what, um, the first thing I'm gonna tell you is one, you know, you're obviously, everybody's gonna put on all wear components, like true v openers, you know, certain bearings, certain things. But this right here is a game changer. It makes a big difference upfront of how the whole entire system works. 'cause it doesn't matter whether it's Singulation, um, you know, you've got a finger pickup, whether you've got a vacuum planter, it doesn't matter what it is, it can't hold onto the seed if there's a lot of vibration in it. So you can do all the other bells and whistles, but if you've got a lot of vibration in that planter, it's all for nothing. All right, Bryce, let's go to you. Since you're the mechanic, the, the mechanic in the group. Is this the, is this the easiest? Is this the lowest hanging fruit? Is this the, this, the thing other than routine maintenance and wear parts is the, is the wear, is the parallel arm the place to start? Well, prior to those bearings, we put 'em in, we used to replace the goalpost, which was actually what the planter unit hung off of, where those parallel alarms go on and red. And I can do those in the field before those bearings in like 20 minutes because we're putting 'em on left and right 'cause we'd break 'em. 'cause those row units would bind up. But since we went to those bearing parallel arms, we, we hardly put a goalpost on anymore. So, okay, so it save so it saves, it saves you one other re it saves you another wear item. Yeah. Can you speak to the, the, the vibration effect, Kelly? You know, we talked about it. It's, it's gotta be challenging enough when you're farming fields that have 40% slopes to get, uh, act get, uh, this, shall I say, consistent seed placement. So is this a key to making sure that among your other obstacles you get consistent seed placement? Yes, it is. Uh, I didn't think much like Temple said, I didn't think it was gonna make that big a difference. We did think we put 'em on, the only reason we went to these parallel arms is just like Bryce said, is for the maintenance, because we were breaking 'em all the time because of the binding and stuff. And Bryce and Red Vern, they got to be like a NASCAR pit crew changing 'em so fast because we'd have breakdowns. Then we went to these parallel arms, the maintenance issues went away, and we had two planters in the, in the same field. And just, just because the rain was coming, we were wanting to get the field done. One planter had the parallel alarms, the other one didn't have the older style. And the downforce map was remarkable after we looked at it, the difference how much harder the par, the older style parallel alarms had to push down with the unit and how much easier it was. And then there was a yield benefit, you know, and it was, it was a couple three bushel, things like that. Not, not a huge deal that you'd look for in maybe a trial, but like Temple talked about the, he, you could plan a little bit faster. The row unit is smoother, the maintenance issues go down. This, this is very low hanging fruit that we discovered by accident. Just trying to get away from a maintenance issue. Yeah, that's, that's the cool part about this. And now you're sharing with other people. So, uh, and eventually if you want, if you're listening and watching this and you want to pursue this, uh, these came from the company you do business with, uh, the Matt Reeder, right? Yes. Matt Reeder invented these Got it. In Iowa. Got all right. Uh, moving on, Chad, you finally joined us. We, we love it. Are you sitting there? Are you sitting there nodding your head saying yes? Are you sitting there saying, I don't know. I think that I would make another upgrade if I was gonna, if I had a certain amount of money, I'd make another upgrade. What's, where's your head going when we're talking about this? I mean, every time you, every time you talk to me, like, you know, if you're saying I'm gonna do an upgrade and you're a and you're a, a middle of road acre farmer, then I'm going, I'm going to push you to the electric planter. Like I'm gonna push you to electric planter. But to get rid of that vibration, you know, um, I'm going that way. But now if you're buying a, you farm 1500 acres, you can't justify. It's very hard justified an electric planter. And there's nothing wrong with older planters. But then that's when you get into the stuff that we're doing on these, those, and you know, just because you don't have a, you know, electric planter don't mean that you don't need to put these parallel arms on. But, you know, you just said one, one thing, you know, that was my one thing. Yeah. So electric Planter would be the thing you'd pushed on. And then when, when we're talking about upgrades, tell me something that you have done on your planting units in the last couple years that you say, man, uh, this, this definitely I can see the difference from, from the time of planning till the emergence to whatever. What, what's something you've seen in the last two years that you were like, man, I'm really glad that this, I I can see the difference pretty quickly. Um, you know, keeping your row cleaners in good shape, you know, with them things are trying to fall off all the time. You're planting over 'em and running over 'em, trying to make 'em grow in it, grow, you know, um, your closing wheels, you know, we went to those closing wheels that, that, uh, Kelly and them's got up there, that, that the first, one of the first things they developed. And they've been good for us because, you know, closing wheels are gonna wear and it's a maintenance item that wears, but yet you get good life. But yet it's, it's reasonably really affordable to, to maintain and to fix. So, you know, closing wheels is a big option. We can get on here and spend four days talking about closing wheels, you know? Alright. Speaking of closing wheels, Kevin wanted to make sure that he shared some information about the other end of it be before, way before closing is the opening. Um, what, what, you've got some information that somebody might need to know because they might, uh, find themselves in a bind. Yes. On the new, on the new dis that replacement disk on your opener disc, you true vs. If you go to John Deere and buy 'em, depending on when you, when they got their inventory at the dealer, the newest ones that's coming out now that are hitting the dealers, you have to change that. Uh, frog as Bryce ring calls it, right in the front, we call it a guard C tube guard. But you've gotta change that guide because it will not work. It's not compatible with the new displays that they've come out with. So if you go and get new displays and you go assembling and you're getting pinching or dragging and those things are not flowing properly and you keep trying to shim 'em out, uh, it more than likely is not your shims. You've got the wrong post up there in the front on that guard. You need to get that replaced. That's very important to know that. So you get new blades, opening blades, you're also gonna have to buy something for every row unit that, that, to make it so the new blades can be attached. If you hit the right series of part numbers on the new blades and don't get none of the older blades, yes, you will have to change. That's what we've been told. But John Deere, All right. Specific to John Deere, that's the kind of planter she run. That's correct. So we can't speak for any other brand. Cool. Alright, moving on. Uh, I'm gonna hear from Lee and then I, I wanna come back around the circle here. Lee, you talked about air seeders, this is something different, uh, wheat and soybeans, but still you wanna do an effective job. So you've got some feedback on what work you should do to keep your air seeders up to, up to snuff. Uh, yeah. We ran air seeders since back in the 1990s. And like Kelly mentioned, you're working with a modular system. So, uh, we just traded air seeders after running our other ones 11 seasons and they never let us down. And it's preventive maintenance and, and, uh, doing changes that we learned during that time. And, uh, they still plan like a new one, uh, right up to the time we traded them. Uh, one of the most critical things is, uh, you gotta have good blades and a lot of times we see people running their blades too long. And, uh, we actually run aftermarket blades. Uh, we run Forged Deo, which is a lot harder steel than the factory deer ones. And we've also ran Ingersoll blades out of Canada. They've been really good for us. Uh, both of those have given us a lot longer blade life and have worn evener and smoother than the factory blades. Uh, so that means we're eliminating hair pinning, we're getting a lot more acres out of them. And, uh, one of the most common things we've seen with guys when they change blades, a common mistake is putting them on backwards. Uh, they have a beveled edge and what you think, what the way they they would go is counterintuitive to how they need to go. The beveled edge has to go to the seed boot, not to the outside. So a good general rule is bevel to boot. When you re blade your air seater. Uh, we had a friend just two years ago re bladed his wrong, went out the field, uh, right away. I said, uh, do you know what you did? No, I put on, well, I said, I put on new blades, said, yeah, you did, but they're on backwards. Okay. Uh, went out to the field and you lose half the effect of new blades right there. Yeah. So you're doing all the work, you're spending the money and if you don't install 'em correctly, then you're gonna not get the effect. So that's a big one right there. So that's they, dear listeners, write that down. Okay. Uh, air seaters is, it seems to me there's a lot more complexity, Lee. And you said before we hit record, you said you probably got up to six different things that you've, that you've learned. You ran the same units for 11 years. They were still planting as well at 11 years as, uh, when they were new. First question is, if they're planning great at the end of 11 years, right? You run 'em for a 12th. Uh, we ran 'em on a seven year depreciation schedule. They were depreciated out and we finally got a dealer to the number that we wanted. So that, that's why they were trouble free during that whole time because we kept them up, but we finally got it to our number. Gotcha. I can tell you why, because they got tired of crawling under that one to unchoke it. And he said, now the new ones you can walk under, they unchoke it is there, is there, and they're right. Lee Is there truth to that? Uh, well actually the new ones labs, the pro series opener be a little bit easier to work on. Uh, but the majority of the air heaters out there are the 50, 60 and 90 series. And that's what we're very familiar with. We've been around the new, the new end series. Uh, we've been with them in the field. Uh, now we'll own two of them, but we have friends that own 'em. So we've been around 'em a lot. Uh, the first thing is the blades at the start. We run aftermarket blades. We get way better life. Uh, the blades stay sharper longer, they make us money. Uh, the second thing is, what we do differently is our gauge wheels. We do not run standard gauge wheels. We were replacing gauge wheels every year is double in, no-till we just eat 'em up. So we run, uh, a gauge wheel from need a mag, it's a neoprene wheel. And uh, the lifespan is several fold over the deer wheels. Uh, eventually they will start flaking on the outside edge, on the contact point by the blade. That's when we replace them. 'cause uh, that works as a scraper in wet conditions. So when that starts to break off, then we replace the wheel. But instead of doing it every every year, we do it every five years. So that's a huge plus for us. Uh, on 50, 60 and 90 series, the seed boot moves and flexes, uh, we're friends with the Hutterite colony that invented it. It's referred to as a boot jacker in the industry. And we ran the first prototype sets that he released and there are boot stabilizers. So it stabilized the boot. Uh, John Deere finally did it on their own with the Pro series. So we were doing that 10 years prior. So you're keeping your seed boot where it needs to be, which helps keep your seed in the bottom of the trench. Otherwise you're getting movement. You're get, you're getting variation seed to soil contact. You can, your depth could change a half inch on you. So we run, uh, the aftermarket boot jackers on our 90 series and then seed tabs. That is the lowest cost modification you can do in an air seater and it'll pay you back exponentially. Uh, deers feed tabs, they're too flimsy. Uh, we run the ones that kn themselves, they're called the vanilla tab. Uh, they're a hard neoprene and they push the seed into the bottom of the trench and they hold it down there. Uh, that makes us a lot of yield and low cost or like four five. Oh Yeah, I was gonna ask what a seed tab is. So this is the thing that's right behind the seed being dropped that it actually pressed it down to the bottom of the trench. It bolts in the b in the backside there's a bolt with a tab in the backside of your seed boot. And when your seed's coming out of the tube into the trench and the slot, that tab is pushing the seed down. And by switching to those tabs, all of our seed went to the bottom of the seed trench. We achieved consistency consistent down between that and the boot jacker. We went from seed like this to seed like that. Got it. Hey, real quick before you go on, ULI uh, temple's got something he wants to share. Temple wants to know if he can Can, I don't have anything I wanna share. I have a question. Um, my question is for Chad, Chad's probably like I've seen, everybody's, um, stands out here and we all try to do a really good job of getting good stands. I wanna know from me to Chad, how do you, what do you do? You've got high speed planters. Um, you've run older planters, you've run 'em all and your stand, you have better simulation than the rest of us. Why? Because I run a breaking plow. Come on man, give us some secrets. Oh, tell me what, tell me what you've done and you've changed mechanically that you've, that you've kind of, you know, something outside the box. So I'm going, we're going to talk freely on here, ain't we? Yeah. So when I had a, when I had, you know, this is not downing companies at all. So, but when I had a, a precision planter, because we all know that the Promax 40 stuff was, I mean, it is not junk, but it's junk, okay? You know, and I mean a seed tube is invented to run four and a half mile an hour or three and a half to, well, I'd say four and a half, four, two to four five mile an hour. Anything slower is a bounce. Anything faster is a bounce in the seed tube. That's what it's designed to run. And, um, so that limited us the speed, you know, we all plant, you know, from four seven to five five or whatever, it's still faster. So that's some. So then we went to precision meters and all the precision stuff earlier in the years and, and that helped. But I still had a skip and a double. Now if you take 'em to the meter, man, he's gonna run 'em and you're gonna look at the seed and you can't even tow what color they are. They got so much graphite on them and he'll say, oh, they're running a hundred percent. I promise you it's great. Well, them seed have been run 10,000 times and they're all rounded and polished and shined and they just flow a hundred percent. You get 'em home and your meters still doing 90%. So we, when we went to the, I mean, I'll, I'll hang my hat on anything. And I'm not a big just Deere guy, but right now the electric planter that Deere's got is the best planter on the market. I mean, I'm just, um, the, the new precision meters, I know the electric stuff, they've done a good job, but over the last couple years and they're doing better. But over the last few years, they can't keep the parts up with the demand of stuff they got. And you know, it's gonna break. I mean, it's going to break. Um, stuff's going to not run and modules are not going to go. And, and I'm not saying the deer's not faulty, but I have three deer planters, you know, high speed planters. I run one in corn. And so I have parts on hand. And so anything you do, you have to have parts on hand. But back to the question hand, when we went to the electric meter and then we went and we got rid of the balance, whether the bounce, first bounce was in a chain, okay, the next bounce is in those cables. Those cables are twisted and they got a spring deal. So the next vibration was in them. Um, if you had planters before, when we had stack planters and you had those dogs out on end, man, you could see the lo the center one one, the lo would be on that and it'd go take a population, 2000 seed on the wings. Um, so there's a lot of things we've had go on. Then when you go to the brush, when we put started sticking in the brush, we fixed a lot of our stand stuff. Now, the brush on a high speed planter, people say, oh, it's good for 10,000 acres, 12,000 acres. It's not a acres deal, it's a seed deal. So however many seeds you run through, the more acres you have, the longer your brush it lasts. The more bean acres you plant, the less your bean. You're planting 150,000 beans, you're planting 30,000 corn. It's just math. Um, so every year when I start, I take my brushes outta my corn planter. He plants 3000 acres. I put 'em over there on the shelf and I run 'em. They're the spare ones for beans. And I put new brushes in every year because when it don't stick that seed in that brush, that seed moves. And if it moves either way, then you just missed your window on simulation. So that's kind of what I was getting at Chad. You know, that's my 0.1 really, you really pay attention to every little detail. Two you hit on it, and I wanted to talk about that with you is because every little thing that's inside of those meters, everybody's talking about rebuilding metal and getting vibration out and this, that and the other. Everything in that, in that meter, if you had to tell anybody something, I would say everything in that meter every year. I, I, without the, you know, the disc, a lot of times, uh, I it's a total rebuild for me every year. I don't care how many acres do you go through. I trash everything in it, throw everything away, and we start over fresh every year. And that way you go through 'em really, really well. The second thing that we do, we take every unit, um, you know, meter and we throw it into the sink and we scrub 'em all out really good. We spray, um, graphite on the backside of all them plates, all that stuff gets reapplied every year. So we go through every one. And then once they're totally rebuilt, then we go stick 'em on the stand. So, um, paying attention and, and you know, the farmer is the mechanic and the mechanic is the farmer. And we're trying to all work together and we're trying to do a good job. Well, sometimes if we don't take care of every little teeny tiny thing, tiny thing, that one tiny, tiny thing on one row can throw it completely off and it's all for nothing. And, and, And by the way you just said that the farmer is a mechanic. We brought on a professional mechanic on here to dispel that because we know one thing, Kelly Garrett, he, he, they still for jokes sometimes send him to fetch a left-handed wrench. I mean, he's really not a mechanical guy. So let's face it, it's without Bryce there, nothing would, would, would turn up there. By the way, Lee, we're gonna come back to you because I know that we, we, you were about halfway or two thirds of the way through. Before we do that, I got a couple of, uh, a statement and a question. Andy Banal says, that's from, that's from Cass County, Indiana, by the way. Andy Ental says, producers need to take the seed they're going to plant to be run during calibration. I think that speaks to what Chad says. Chad's nodding his head. Bryce is nodding his head. What's he, what's he talking about for somebody that's a, a novice like me? Um, well I'll hit on real quick, Nebraska. Um, but yeah, he, he's exactly right. If you can, if you've got some bags out there, get a little bit of each one. It don't have to be each variety. It could be each lot, lot numbers even different, you know, 'cause you have size on there, whether it's a 60 pound bag, a 50 pound bag I already done to a 38 pound bag. Grab some of those different, and you can do a lot of vacuum setting. Um, if you, if you have, if you have to take, you got an older planter and you have to take your meters to get 'em on the stand and put 'em on the stand somewhere, or they bring their stand to you, have those seed ready, don't just let 'em dump the seed in and say, oh, you're ready. No, let's run some vacuum numbers on those seed to get your vacuum chart where it needs to be, you know, on those seeds you have in your shed. Take a little bit more time and do that. The next thing is don't we'll knock the field with our planters until we meter test. Like with electric planters, I can sit there and I'll spend, you know, I hope it's three or four hours. Sometimes it turns into a whole day sitting there with a machine running and I'm just testing meters, testing meters, testing meters, you know, and I'm marking X on my start working on 'em. And just anything you can do like that. When the planter goes to the field, it's lud up and ready. We dumping a 10 x amount of talc in. We just lost Chad. All right, Bryce, uh, you nodded your head on the calibration thing with seed. This is, this is making me think that things are a lot more complex than I thought they were. Michael Bloomberg said, farming's pretty easy. Just dig the hole and put some seed in it. You're getting Bryce, Go ahead. What was that, Damian? So the calibration thing before we lost Chad, you were nodding your head about that. So is this something you actually do? Well, back in college, I used to run meters and you would not believe, well, seed's expensive. And the last thing the meter guy wants to buy is seed. And, uh, you'd not believe how polished up that seed is and how used it is. It has less characteristics than a new bag. It's, it's crazy. Uh, what you can get out a, your seed when you bring it to 'em. Okay? So you're nodding your head on that, saying that, yes, take the seed you're gonna plant when you do a calibration. Don't use the, the, the stuff that's in a five gallon bucket. Use an actual bag of the real McCoy. Yeah, Got it. Hey, by the way, we're starting to GoFundMe account. Apparently when you live a mile and a half from the second largest airport and the second largest city in Alabama, they still don't have a thing called the internet. So we're gonna get a GoFundMe account put together so that we can actually get internet service. I mean, for god's sakes, the guys in McGee, Arkansas still have to climb up a pole and like crank a transformer to get internet. And they're watching this right now. And here Chad is next to a city of a half a million people and can't get an internet signal. Um, I wanna go to John Abramson. John said, are the arms with bearings only available for John Deere planters? Going back to that parallel arm discussion, temple addressed it. Uh, Bryce addressed it. Kelly addressed it. What's, what's the story, Kelly? I text Matt Reeder 'cause I read the question John put in there. Matt believes that he will have Kinzie arms ready for spring. He said he is a little behind schedule, which is typical, but he believes he'll have Kinzie arms ready to add to the John Deere, uh, supply. He's already got, I don't know what sort of planner John's got, but Kinsey and John Deere will be available this spring. What can John John tell us, Texas then send us a message. What kind of planner you got? And while you're doing that, lane Miles says, what is the best lane Miles was able to find an internet signal that works down there in the Delta region. Said, what is the best way to store your brush belts during the off season? Uh, Chad, if you're back on, that'd probably be a good one for you. Kev. Kevin has a good idea on that. Okay, Kevin, Three inch PVC pipe. Explain the process just, just on your, in your purlins in your shop. Just, uh, hang your pipe, make you a bracket. Hold the pipe out and just where it holds the pipe. And then the pipe will be horizontal. Just lay 'em all the way across that three inches, the same diameter as the wheel that the brush sets on. And just let 'em hang out freely. Get 'em outta that brush. Don't leave them in that brush over the winter in that holder. You want the brush hanging freely. So is this one of the things that you do that you think many farmers don't and they would benefit from removing those brushes out of there? This is something that I'm not even heard of, Kevin. Well that's, that's why I don't have to buy new brushes every year. Like Chad, I take care of my brushes. All right, Chad, you if you got a signal, and by the way, John Abramson says he runs a case IH planter, so we can't help him on parallel arms right now. Can we, Kelly, I'm texting Matt to find out if he can make some for John. We'll see what he, I can come up with. Sounds like we only have a prototype. Kelly. Sounds like we might have a prototype coming. I'm trying. Hey Chad. Chad, you, you were going down a road there when we lost you. What'd you hear? It was bad. It was 10 pounds of talc powder. You left us on a cliff. You said, you said you, you said you're using 10 times the amount of talc powder and then you cut out. Yeah. So like you said, just what they was talking about, we run our seed that's in the, in the shed and I've try to run the lowest one I've got and the highest one, if you know what I'm saying, the poundage wise, um, or seed size. And then we'll put 'em in a five gallon bucket and we really throw the top powder to it and we'll mix them up good. And then when we run it through that meter, that way we keep taling as we go. And that way the meter is good and TAed up, you know, like, um, because when you do a good deep clean on it, like temple was talking about, it's dry, everything in there is dry then because you use Dawn with it and you know, I know it'll clean oil off ducks and all, but it don't oil the planter up, you know? So, um, we'll, we'll put a bunch of TLC in there and get that thing tacked up. But when you get it running then, you know, and they even got the app where you can do it on your phone. You know, you can turn it on and off from your phone, but I just put somebody in the cab and get 'em to hit on and off and I keep watching everything. It's amazing that you'll see that meter will have a elope in it. You know, that thing will be sitting there and it'll be doing this. And then the, the whole, like you're talking about the stationary, you know, um, singulators, you know, they gone flick one way 'cause they stored this way and that way. And I mean, so you're true in that stuff and these things are just, I mean it's good and they're great, but man, there's a lot of stuff we can fix in that baby. Typical what you got. Well, the first thing I'm gonna tell you, when everybody gets their planters outta the shed and I have done it for years and last year I didn't do it. So I filled up my corn planter, didn't even think about it, and filled it up with corn tack went on the corn as we went in there and we went on the plant. And that thing about drove me absolutely crazy. I was ready to back it in the river and be done with it. I was off of it every five seconds. Everybody take a whole thing of tout, throw it into the seeds, um, tank and blow it through those hoses and lu them things up because I swear for two days I was talking to Chad, I said, I swear dude, I'm gonna lose my mind. I couldn't even make a round until we got all those two Shaking hoses. He's shaking hoses, man, you, I'm shaking hoses. Oh, that's all I was doing. Shaking hoses, tapping 'em. This one stopped up. That one stopped up and all. And it's simple. Take a bunch of tout and throw it in there before you start, start the fans up and blow it all the way through that thing. And once they get TAed and they get, they get lubricated, you'll never have any problem last year. Nah, I went ahead and just sent it. Nah. So I fault that thing for two days. Don't do that key thing. Don't you know what? Everything else that you don't do it don't matter. But definitely do that one All all right. Hey, I want to hear we got more people go around. Um, we also got some questions. So Andy Banal says, don't use talc and finger meters only use air. And then, uh, do we have an answer yet, Kelly for John Abramson? Uh, are we gonna have a parallel arm for him that fits a Case IH Planter? Um, Matt has not answered yet, but I'm working On it. Okay, and then Lane miles, which is really Matt Miles says, when will they get closers for a, is it how I say that? Monism Twin Row Monte. Got it. Uh, There's, there's only, there's only three of them in the country and he has all three of them. Do we really? I say it's, it's not, it's not on me that I've never seen this word before. I just figured it was Arkansas, uh, language. Anyhow, I figured it was ac I figured he was actually trying to call it like monoculture or something. But anyway, so all right, we're not gonna have anything for that. Is that what I'm hearing? No closers for his thing. Kind of go ahead Jeff. I think it's, I think his son-in-Law bought three great planes drill. We're gonna go down there and send them things to the front. All right, uh, we have a, we have a question then from Kim who says, what is the closing wheel? One stage versus iron cast wheel? I have a 12 rows exact emerge, so I don't know if that's a question for back to Lee or maybe who else was talking closing wheel talk here? Uh, Chad. So, so they put that heavy cast wheel back there and I mean, that thing break your foot when it falls off here, but they put that thing on there for the high speed planter. When they said high speed. I mean, I think that's the worst wheel you need to note to sell. Like that's the worst marketing idea that deer could ever had. My dad said that's the stupidest thing everybody wants, who wants a planter to plant fast with? That's the stupidest thing I ever heard of. They should have named it something with precision or something. But with a high speed planter's exact emerges, they put that cast wheel back there because it's for the weight, it's running for weights, you know, and so that's, that's back there. All right. Um, we're gonna go back to leave Before we do, I wanna remind you, by the way, if you enjoy these webinars and you keep up with the extreme ag stuff, it's obviously interactive, it's also informative, but you know what, it's also a degree of entertaining because these guys all have a lot of entertaining attainment factor. We have a show coming out. January 30th is gonna be episode number one of the Extreme Ag Show. I want you to mark your calendars, I want you to be ready to watch it. It's gonna be awesome. Our man, Tim is working on it with Will. I've even got a role in this. It's called the Extreme Ag Show. It's gonna be episode one, comes out premieres uh, January 30th available on Acres TV and on YouTube. So make sure you are watching our announcements for that. Um, Lee, did we miss anything? Then you got through part of your list and then we, we, uh, got diverted air seeders. Uh, well we're about halfway through here. I'll try to speed it up. Uh, the seed lock wheel is right behind your seed tab. Uh, we run the factory ones from Deere. There are two aftermarket versions of seed lock wheels that are narrower, that some guys do like in their environments that'll fit down tighter into the furrow. We tried them. We didn't see where they paid, you know, doing $70 a row. That's what I urge the people. If you're gonna do some of these things, if you're apprehensive about cost, try eight rows, do something, see how it works in your farm, then jump into it, you know, 'cause all this costs money. So, and then after the seed lock wheel, an air seater, you come back to the closing wheel and they have a solid cast wheel. Now Deere has a notched one. And, uh, we ran our air seaters about three years and we switched over to a spiked wheel. Uh, there's two main ones out there. There's the Martin 20 point crumbler that's a little popular, it seems like more in the east, southeast. And then we run one out of Kansas called the exact of the T wheel. And the ones we had on, we ran over 40,000 acres before trading in. They're still good. Not one issue with them. Uh, on soybeans. We've gained up this. The first year we put 'em on, we did trials. We were gaining up to a day and a half sooner emergence and over a thousand in sand by running those T wheels. And they run at a slight angle so they stay engaged in the ground and they chop the furrow. Uh, we get a lot better exchange of oxygen in, uh, the root zone where we're germinating. Uh, we can visibly see that, uh, getting better emergence on any crops that we plant. And they give no trouble. The cast wheels we don't like about 'em. I have ran beside air seaters rode on 'em, driven along them for years watching that. And the cast wheels had always bounced with the trash. Uh, with our T wheels, we eliminated that and our closing wheels actually engaged all the time with the conventional cast. We were getting a bouncing effect and we were getting it, we're smashing the seeds, slowing down emergence, or we weren't packing at all. So, uh, that was a real big plus for us by doing that. Uh, the Deere no-till opener. I mean, it revolutionized no-till seating. It really did. It's a great unit. And Deere has incorporated some of those changes into their pro series. Uh, that was part of the reason we've moved to the pro series. 'cause some of those things are standard, but not all of 'em. Uh, we're gonna get new T wheels to go on our new Pro series units and we're gonna do some of the changes because we're gonna make good better. That's what we're gonna do. All right, I got a, uh, I'm looking at, other questions are coming in here, and we got one from Lane before we get to the one from Lane, which means that Matt, what's happening, by the way, Matt Miles is watching this and he's trying to throw curve balls at his buddies in here. And I, I like it. Uh, Bryce, before we get to that question from Lane, I want to ask you, you do the stuff, you drag the planter and you do all the stuff, it's still not foolproof. Last year you had a planter problem that was so persistent out when the field, when it was time to be planting that you wrapped a bunch of cables around your neck and tied it to the, uh, up boom. And then red said, lift it up, boys, you're gonna hang yourself. You were joking, but you had a persistent problem that you were, that you did not get passed in January in the shop that still presented itself in April and May on the field. What was that problem and what will you do to keep from having that happen again? So that's, that's the tough one. That was, uh, software problems there. And so all the, all the work we do in the shop, sometimes we just can't, we can't fix software that's, that's on the, the company you use side. So that was the most frustrating part is we knew the fundamentals and the hardware was good, but we could not track down what part of that software or component was bad. And that's what took us the longest, happened to be small module all the way in the back, took that all the way into the back of the planter and took us a long time to get that. So that's the hard part about doing all the work in the winter. Sometimes just can't beat the, beat the software. Yeah. So h how you finally got rectified without any physical injury to yourself? Correct. All right. And then the, while I got you on here, I want to ask you then also, uh, to be thinking about this, we're gonna address it. What thing do you think most farmers don't do in the off season to their planters that's a fix or an upgrade that you think that they, that they would benefit greatly from? So I want you to be thinking about that. And we're gonna go to this question from Lane, and then we've got one from Wayne Boden, but, uh, the Wayne Boman first, I feel one of the very best improvements to my planter was that the depth of gauge arms with bearings, I can keep my opener to gauge wheel contact. Perfect. The factory arms drove me crazy trying to keep contact to openers. Perfect. Anybody want to comment and take off of what Wayne had to say? I mean, I can, I I did the same thing as what, um, Wayne's talking about. I, I changed a lot of my stuff over to Barron's, whether it was a closer arm or whether it was a gauge wheel arm, I changed all that stuff. And it does, it, it all goes back to like trying to make sure that that planter has perfect everything, perfect seed to soil contact. Perfect. Um, you know, every little, there's a lot of adjustments on those planters, and that's kind of what Chad was talking about. Like you gotta pay attention to every one of them details. And that's what Wayne's talking about. That's one more thing that he's paying attention to, that you're getting that perfect opening and that perfect amount of firmness on there because you are setting everything up. So making those small changes because the change that he's changing from it is a bushing type system that he's changing from a bushing type system to a bearing type system, which makes it tightens up all of that stuff. Okay. Uh, lane miles question for Chad or Temple, let's go with Chad first. Chad claims he can add 10 bushels per acre on our corn crop by tweaking our planter. What would you do? What's the plan? What would you, what would you go down? First off, you had to get an owner's manual because there's only apparently three of his brand of planters in the, in the entire North America. So after you do that, and then Kevin's laughing also, so I want to go around the horn here. What would you do to the miles planters to help them get more yield? I, I, I know what I would do because I'm not that mechanical. I'd take those planters, I'd put 'em on a truck, I'd take 'em up to where Kelly Farms and I'd put 'em in the ground there and I would get 10 more bushels per acre right there. That was my Answer. That's a great answer. That was my answer. Okay. Aside from doing that, I'll, I'll start, I'll, I'll start. One thing, one thing, um, I'm gonna slow them boys down a little bit. They think, I mean, not, not, I'm not bashing 'em. I love 'em. I'm going, we gonna, we're gonna get through it together and they going to fix me, help me on mine. Um, but they, a lot of people think that you can take ground pressure and fix, you can take hydraulic downforce and fix rough ground and you can't, hydraulic downforce is not made to stick the planter in the ground just to make it ride better. You can't fix bad ride with hydraulic downforce. And so, you know, you, you, you have to ease up on it and understand that you're trying to do two different things. You need good ride out of one thing, and then you need firmness out of another thing. So we're going, we're gonna have a good discussion about distinguishing that. Okay. So you would, you would start by making them have better firmer, softer ground. Let's, Let's, here's, here's a, here's a, here's one that you can understand. So if you're in worked up soil, Damien, sir, you don't need 400 pounds of down force to make this thing ride better or anything worked up. I just don't hardly ever see you going over a hundred, 150. It just don't take a lot to hold that unit down it's weight. Okay? Um, and if you're in no-till like Kelly, you know, and you're trying to cut through three foot of residue that you need to set on fire, you need about 800 pound of down force. Yeah, no, I mean, so anyway, there's, you know, no till takes one thing and conventional takes another, and these boys are all conventional is what I'm saying. Okay, so you're saying that they, you think that you would correct the down pressure, um, on the units, on those obscure Chinese made planters that Matt's running? Well, the ones I'm talking about is a deer planter. It's not obscure Chinese. It's top shift. Why? Okay. All right. All right, all right. All right. Cha Temple, what would you do? Well go to Kevin first. Kevin, what would you do, uh, if you were gonna, uh, change their planter setup? Well, Chad stole mine there. I know how Matt runs them. Boys run hard as you can run and, and I, first thing I do slow 'em down. You'd slow 'em down. Okay. Simple down. I, I don't know, because I kind of had the same question for Chad is what, um, Matt had for him because Chad pulls in my lane and sees my corner. He said, man, I can add 10 bushels up right there because you got a mess of problems out there that you ain't any seeing. So I kind of had the same question for him, since he wants to be a smart ass all the time and throw us all under the bus. What, what, what, what am I doing wrong, Chad? I thought the same thing from me and you just walking his field up there in Maryland too. I'm sorry. Sorry. Temple. And Then, and then, and then, and you know, we bashing on Temple and Kelly and they hang three seventies in NCGA and be like, what's up boys? Y'all make 300 yet? Yeah, they need to come farm our concrete, don't they? Okay. Uh, I want to go back to Bryce. I asked you what thing do you think that you might, um, and we, we addressed Wayne Boden, by the way, right? Everybody's good with that. I mean, he, Wayne was talking about hi, what his findings are. I don't know if there's any concurrence. Is there any, any agreement or anything like that? Best improvements to his planner was the depth gauge arms with bearings. So is anybody want to spin off on that pretty much agreement. The one thing I'd build on the, those depth gauge arms is make sure they're shimmed up, especially in no-till, we like to have a lot of corn stalks get in there between the truves and those gauge wheels. Um, and that can really start throwing your planter depth. And wh but as far as the question goes is what I think a lot of guys overlook and it's something basic is your seed tubes, uh, making sure the ends aren't all messed up. Um, you see a lot of nicks, if guys don't get those seed tube guards changed in time, those tru gouge right into your seed tube and right there. All your top end work of all your bearings, whatever you wanted to add onto your last thing that seed sees before it hits that soil is the bottom of your seed tube. And if it's messed up, it's all done. So just take a look at those as you're going through it this winter. Bryce, When you say messed up, you mean like it's, it's got, it's got, uh, some kind of damage to it that then it, it bangs the seed around, or what, what would it do? What, how would it harm the seed or the seeding process? There'll be burrs, there'll be cuts in it. Um, you know, it's all plastic there. So any, any, any irregularities. Any irregularities in that, we'll start making that seed bounce around down there. But main, mainly nicks and stuff, you know, hell, rocks in the trench can mess that up if you, if they're bad enough. So yeah, just look for any damage. Got it. So seed tubes are the one that you think maybe gets overlooked. It's fairly easy to address. It doesn't require, you know, a lot of money probably, I'm guessing it's a fairly affordable replacement. Yeah, if you're doing it all, you gotta make sure that last thing that seed sees is good. So just keeping on off of those, What do we, what are, what do we not hit on, on? We talked about tips, fixes, we, we talked about fixes, we talked about upgrades, talked about modernization. And then, uh, Kevin looks like he's ready to go. What, what did we miss? Yeah, So last year we run, uh, fur force for our second year, but we went fully automated from precision planting. I'll tell you that turned out to be a disaster. Um, the modules were nothing but trouble. And, uh, so we're going back to running that 4 0 4 on manual this time. So if you're thinking about spending that extra money on the upgrade, I would recommend you just stay in with the manual, uh, air pressure on that furrow force at this time. And they've gotta get some kinks out before you spend that kind of money. I'm sure they will get 'em out. But, um, you know, we did the John Deere planter upgrades a couple years ago, and during covid we could not get the, um, independent hydraulics, uh, downforce. So we kept our delta force that we run for many, many years, but we've had so much trouble out of the, uh, SRMs in our high humidity here that we're taking all that off now and, and we've finally got the deer equipment to come in and we're gonna be running the deer downforce. I do miss the delta force on the lift. I really love that part. And the delta force has worked really well for us. The only problem we've had is so much downtime with those SMS and kind of get, like Bryce, you know, you start scratching your head and, and you wanna, you, you, you think about what you could be doing besides working on this planter every day after you get a shower, rain or a heavy dew. So, um, just some things to think about. Some things that we've cost us a lot of money, we've made changes, but, um, I would not spend that extra money on converting those fur forces to automation. Kevin, well, I got John, one of the recordings you and I did about a year ago is with capstan ag in there. I always forget, is it select shot or Sure shot. And this adds another, this adds another element to what we might be doing. It could be an upgrade or it could be keeping the thing fixed. The idea with Capstan ags Select Shot. Sure shot. Which one is it? Select Shot. It's, um, we've used that for, um, uh, Kelly and I's run it for several years now. Had some pretty good luck with it. John Deere's coming out with one very similar that I think is a factory offer this year as well. I understand it's doing real well. Um, but we're very happy with Select Shot. Um, really not had much trouble. The neat thing about it is if you wanna run a harmful, uh, product that should not be put on the seed, you can choose to put it, you know, two inches off the seed. You got a lot more versatility with It, right? It gives you, it gives you versatility. But in terms of your inputs, is there anything that needs to be handled on it to make it keep working as well, as it as it should? In other words, is there any off season stuff that, any adjustments? Bri, Bryce, Kelly, anything you're doing to that? No. Clean. Just keep it clean. Yeah. Winter, keep it clean. That's got it. Pretty foolproof. Say it again. It's Pretty foolproof. Good deal. All right. Hey, Lee, you got anything on the way out there here about Air Seeders that you want to leave us with? And while you're thinking of it, Andy Ental says, when you change the disc openers, change the seed firm at the same time. That's a tip that he has for anybody that's, uh, doing that. So, um, all right, Lee, you got anything on the way out the door here? Air seeders, Uh, by doing just some simple changes, you can make a huge difference in, uh, your stands and, uh, and emergence. And we're, uh, a walking testament to that, a friend of ours that, uh, uh, we farm in, in the same area. And anyways, uh, they, I gave 'em a chance to be around our seaters to see what we're doing differently. And they, they run five 60 foot air seaters. And anyways, they went and they started doing those things and they switched two of them over like ours for this fall. And they said, uh, by this time next year when they go to plant winter wheat again, they're gonna have all five of 'em switched over. So, I mean, that made me feel good. The things that we spent time on over the years figuring out yes, to make our air feeders better, they saw it too. So they were willing to make the step. And the same thing on planners. You know, uh, take those steps to keep improving on yield because it's not how fast you go through the field. It's about getting that best sand you can because you're pan your planting pass, they say on average dictates 55 to 65% of your final yield. That's, that's pretty amazing. So that planting and seeding pass is very important. So just say that again, just to let it sink in. Why, why we're having this webinar, uh, in January. You've got time to do the things we talked about optimizing your planter for spring success. And why does that matter? Again, give us those numbers again, Lee. Uh, I was reading a research article and they exempted trees from it, but it was vegetables, row crops, grain crops. It was all crops included lumped into this. And on average, 55 to 65% of your yield is dictated at the time of planting, because you think about it, you're establishing your seed bed in your root zone. What we're talking about tonight is critical steps. I like it. Dan Keo asked Kelly, help him out here. What's the company's name that makes the parallel arms with bearings? It's not just the arm bearings, it's the whole air arm, isn't it? Right? It's the whole arm integrated ag solutions, Integrated ag solutions. If you get ahold of Kelly, he can help you out on this. All right, we're gonna go around the horn here. Temple, uh, what, what's your, your last, last quick round here of advice, tip fix, upgrade lesson you've learned on optimizing your planner for spring success while you got time right now in January to be thinking about it, You get time. Take all your seed meters apart, pay attention to every detail. And then once you get it out there and you get running and you get in the field, take some time after you get a couple hundred acres on it or 50 acres on it or whatever you might have, go back over everything because there are all those settings, a lot of 'em are going to change. So go back over 'em. There's a couple things. And another thing that I'm gonna tell you is there's 8 million ways to spend a gazillion dollars on your planner and none of them, uh, make your planner worth any more money. None of them not worth. Keep it very simple. The simpler it is, the more money you're gonna make and the more time that you can spend in the field not working on stuff. Oh, everyone's a little counter to Kelly Garrett. He's running a 10-year-old machine and he puts money into it every year. But is there some truth in that? The point is, you guys, actually, you were the one that said it, Kelly, at the National Farm Machinery Show. See, Kev, Kevin, I keep getting it right. I said the Louisville Farm Machinery Show, you're the one that said, yeah, we're at a farm machinery show, but we don't, we don't think that the answer to being successful is just going out and spending a bunch of money on new, new paint. No, we, a new planner isn't necessarily set up the way that we want. You know, the, with the, uh, the downforce and the other components, the closing wheels, we want the parallel arms. We want the different things we've talked about tonight. And, uh, uh, we really believe in some customization, you know, with the no-till that we're in no-till corn on corn with the hills and the terrain that we're in, things like that. Um, it, it, it very, it, you can spend a gajillion dollars, but you need to spend the money wisely. All the bells and whistles aren't always what's up? I would say the number one thing you need to do is buy a service truck and hire a young man like Bryce. That's the best way to make your planner keep Going. Well, he, he's gonna get the closing comment because this was the, this, this was Taylor made. You're the one that said we're gonna bring him on. So Kevin and Chad, whoever wants to go first, um, get us out the door. One thing you do, one thing you've learned, one thing you didn't do that you should have and you make it a religious practice. Now, I heard about taking those brushes out, which I think Kevin said a lot of people don't do. That might be your one thing that kind of was a discovery the hard way. No, I mean, we, we figured that out pretty early on. But, uh, now the one thing that we've not talked about tonight, that's really important. Check all those wiring harnesses. Check your wires. Look for pinch points. Look at your look for white corrosion on those connectors. Um, really pay attention to all, every single detail from the tractor to all the way to the closing wheel. Don't let anything go untouched unlooked at, because it will bite you and cost you a lot of money and a lot of headache when you get to the field. Okay? So you're talking about like, because a, a wire, a piece of wire gets frayed or it gets and all of a sudden you got short. It could get pinched, it could get frayed, it could have got chewed by mouse over the winter or mice and you, I mean, you never know and you could've had somebody come by and drop a weight on one of the wiring harnesses and never told you about it. I mean, got it. There's all kinds of things that happens on the farm. Chad, last thing now. Mike, Mike mute. You're muted. Sorry. Sorry. Ease up. Um, I'm a, I'm a lot like what Lee said. Uh, if you're gonna try something, uh, get three or four of 'em. Put 'em on the outside rows that gets you. If you do four, they get you where you got eight right next to each other. I'm big on that. My planter's got half of it right now's got conceal on it. Half of it's got tubes like temples on it. Uh, some of it's got the inverse system from yield 360. You know that wave four rows has got wave on it. Um, some of it's l and d Ag. I mean I got like four or five things going on to see if we see any difference. They'll all do the job, you know, different closing wheels on it. So I got stuff hanging all over at different times just to see what's going on all the time. Got it. Going to my headliner. My headliner here, my closing, my closing guy. Bryce, Just remember real simple. They haven't changed in a long time, the basics, but you just gotta look. They're overwhelming 'cause there's repetition on working on 'em. But just look at every component and keep it, keep it simple. Um, start with a good, when you're going in to start working on 'em, make sure you have a good solid plan. Make sure you've either decided on what systems you're adding, what sub systems you're subtracting, so you don't have to do that work two, three times that do it all at once. That's awesome. His name is Bryce Ring. All right, so you heard from Lee. Thank Thank take him off extreme ag. He knows that's the man right there that has done that before he, Kelly is sitting in and like, boys, we're gonna change this up. Yeah, right. Well, Kelly, yeah, as we said, Kelly said, uh, I don't know. It's, it's good. What did Bryce, what, what did we just hear? Kelly admits he knows his weakness. He says, uh, best thing you can do is buy a big service truck and put a guy like Bryce in it, and then, uh, then your planner will work. Last year we started Bryce on a project on a planner. I may or may not have changed my mind a couple times. Bryce doesn't appreciate that we're now on the same page and we will have a solid plan before we're working on a planner right now, and we know what we're gonna do. We're not gonna change our mind. No, it, you just gotta repetition, just Burn. Get A lot of people get overwhelmed with planners. So just, I was overwhelmed with Bryce and Burn telling me I can't change my mind. And I think that we talk about being overwhelmed. I saw the video, you were so overwhelmed with the planner that in May you red, red was gonna, uh, string you up. You were gonna string yourself up because you were so uh, overwhelmed. His name is Bryce Ring. He's a special guest. He's the head mechanic at Garrett Land and Cattle. You're getting accolades already. Matt Miles just, uh, texted then that said you did a great job. So anyway, we're glad you joined us, Lee. Thanks for being here. To about Air seeders, Kevin, talking about the opening wheels and that inf important information. Remember, if you're changing those out and you have a deer product, you better check to make sure that it's compatible. What is, again, with the attachment arms, Uh, your, you're truly opener disc the, the seed tube guard in front. Got it. Frog Is bright. Spring calls it. Got it. And then Temple of course, parallel alarms. And then somebody got some really good information about that. The company's called Integrated Ag Solutions. If you wanna look into the parallel alarms that have bearings. Temple talked about that. And Temple talked a lot about, uh, slowing down and, and, uh, making sure that you're getting a consistent seed depth placement. Um, and then Chad just, um, but when he wasn't walking around his house trying to find a signal, he gave us some really good information, uh, about all kinds of planter stuff. Anyway, I wanna remind you that the acres, so that, uh, you can go onto to Acres TV or YouTube at the end of this month and you'll be able to see the extreme Ag Show. This has been a year in the making. It's got some really awesome content. You're talking about going around to these guys' farms and showing the behind the scenes stuff. It's not just ag people, it's for everybody. It's informative, it's got an entertainment component. It's also got some feel good, uh, angle, and you're really, really gonna like it. So you'll be able to share it with everybody. It's the extreme Ag show coming January 30th is premier of show number one. Look for it. Uh, we're doing this again on February 1st. That's right. Our 2024 monthly webinars are gonna be amazing. We actually really set this schedule out just like Bryce talked about. We, we came in with a plan. We got this thing set up on February 1st. We're gonna do marketing and crop insurance strategies to elevate your farm in 2024. I know this is not as sexy as high yields, but we're heading into a year with low commodity prices been predicted. There's gonna be a lot closer to break even, or even some near losses out here in agriculture. So, you know what? Mind your Ps and Qs financially, this is exceedingly important. You wanna talk about your legacy. There is no legacy if there's not a business that you can hand down. And you can do this by taking care of your finances. We got Jared Creed with JC Marketing coming on to talk about the money side of agriculture using crop insurance and a marketing strategy to elevate your farm in 2024. That's the topic for February 1st. It's the first Thursday of the month. February 1st is our next webinar. We will see you there. Till next time, thanks for being here. On behalf of Temple Kelly, Bryce Lee, Chad Gavin. I'm Damien Mason. Thanks so much for being here.
Growers In This Video
See All GrowersJohnny Verell
Jackson, TN
Temple Rhodes
Centreville, MD
Kelly Garrett
Arion, IA
Kevin Matthews
East Bend, NC
Chad Henderson
Madison, AL