It has been 2,214 miles since my last blog and district coordinators are finishing up their county annual meetings and celebrating another successful membership year for Wisconsin Farm Bureau. Farmers are in harvest mode and in the past week, the weather has been great in northwest Wisconsin and you can see a lot of work has been done! Because I work from home, I sometimes get asked to help with running errands on the farm, mostly running to get new parts that were needed 20 minutes ago or even hauling gravity boxes.
So, this last week, my Uncle Ed was on the farm to help harvest soybeans and since I was hauling gravity boxes for him to unload the soybeans in to, he asked me if I wanted to take a spin in the combine. It took me approximately 2.5 seconds to say yes! Now, I grew up on a farm but this was my first time riding in a combine. This summer, however, I got the opportunity to work with Pierce County YFA members in the Ag Education Trailer at the Pierce County Fair that highlighted a combine simulator. Members talked to fairgoers about new technologies used in the combine including GPS and auto steer and then fairgoers got a chance to sit in the cab of a combine which simulated harvesting soybeans.
With that experience in my mind, I hopped into the cab of the combine and sat on the buddy seat. Ed first showed me the GPS technology that he uses and punched in the information for the field we would be harvesting. I was impressed with his knowledge. We found the field and got to work. As the soybeans started falling into the box, data was sent to the GPS system and we were able to see the average bushels per acre we were harvesting and the moisture of the beans. It is amazing to me to see how far technology has come and the information that can be gathered right from field.
For me, this was a chance to learn something new and experience technology first hand. It shows that you are never too old to learn something new and that you can indeed teach an old dog new tricks!
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