Seeding spring wheat

OK, I'm back!  Many months ago we decided that we needed to re-crop, that is,to seed spring wheat, on the acreage around our house, which was seeded to winter wheat last year.  This land has a severe cheat grass infestation that we have tried to clean up with chemicals and that isn't working.  So, back to the old fashioned method of planting a spring crop, two years in a row.  We have put this off for a few years because of the work load involved, but the time has come.

In addition to seeding the acres around our house, we had to spring seed the acreage that we did last year, to finish out that rotation.  All in all, we seeded nearly 1800 acres this spring, which has kept us very busy.  Many days all three tractors were running!

I took a few photos of some of the work that we did, but this is by no means a complete accounting of the two and a half weeks of intense work that we completed a week ago.

I don't have the stamina I used to have, but this particular day was a long one!  The moon was so pretty coming up as I was quitting for the day.

A few mornings later, and a different field.  I love it when I have this commute to work.

So, we had a bit of a mess in one field.  We should have mowed the spring wheat straw on this piece, last fall, but we didn't.  It was a good crop, lots of long straw, that refused to go through the drills as Reynald was seeding.  

Plan B......pull out the Mielke Mulcher!  This is the skewtreader that Reynald designed and built many years ago.  Skewtreaders have been around for ages.  Called a skewtreader because the gangs of spiders are set at a skew.  The difference with this one is that is folds up and moves down the road, which is a huge time saver.

And here's the designer and builder!

A skewtreader is designed to incorporate and break straw.  It's like a giant garden weasel!  We haven't used it much since we purchased our mower.  But, as mentioned above, we didn't mow this field last fall so.......

Now we are spraying our winter wheat crop, which we will finish today and then on to taking care of our summer fallow.  Hoping to be able to take a breath in three or four days!