Mother's Day Trip

After dance lessons, we drove to IL to Mom and Dad's and both my grandmas came over for a Mother's Day dinner. It was great! We took J and C over to ride with Pop in the tractor. Needless to say, they had a fit when they had to get out. We asked J what he liked about farming so much, and he said " I LOVE it ALL!"

We spent the night and this morning my dad got up at 5am to get ready to go to the field. They are going to try to finish the last 600 acres of beans today. Which means they will have to work until 2 am. It's supposed to rain tomorrow so there is a push to get it done. Just to put this into perspective, my Grandma and Grandpa Hendry used to farm together. They were partners, my grandma worked ground and plowed while my grandpa planted. It would take them 2 weeks to plant 600 acres! Dad is working ground while Steve and Luke are running the planters. Technology is so cool now, too. Steve got a GPS system for his planter last year. This thing bounces off 8 government sattelites and insures an accuracy of being off only less than 1 in for your rows. However, Steve doesn't have any old fashioned markers on his planter now so if he loses his GPS signal, he has to wait in the field until the signal comes back otherwise, he won't know where he has been. How much does a system like this cost, you ask, about $25-30,000! So Dad's new tractor that he drives has the GPS system this year, and it insures a few feet, I believe of accuracy for plowing. Oh and the tractors steer themselves with these GPS systems. What you have to keep in mind is that they DO lose signal every once in a while and if you aren't paying attention you end up on the other side of the field in a mess! LOL! Also, if you touch the steering wheel it kicks it out of steer mode. Can you imagine my children not wanting to drive and touch the steering wheel? Exactly! They kicked her out of steer mode a few times. It's a good thing my dad is so patient and he just laughs it and lets them feel like they are doing a good job!
Mom took J and C back this morning to ride a couple more hours. Then this afternoon before we went home we stopped and J and C rode a few rounds and then Mom watched them while Soph and I rode. I could have rode all day! I LOVE it! We had a fun Mother's Day! Now we are back home and Eric took all the kids outside so I could lay around and take a nap and relax. So I think I'm going to take a nap!