Chương 42: Planting Corn

Day 29 Dydd Mawrth Mai 7th (Tuesday) Today we were going to plant corn. My corn planter was a John Deere DB90 thirty-six-row planter. The 90 stood for ninety feet. It was going to be absolute overkill for anything we would be doing today, and honestly, probably for the rest of my life. It could plant pretty close to one hundred acres of corn per hour in ideal conditions, which we had here. The ground was nice and flat, and there were no obstructions. In many ways, it was pretty darn similar to my grain drill.

The grain drill used belts to run the hopper on the two tread-like tires under the hopper. This machine actually used electronics to make things precise. It made things even more precise than the grain drill. In the future, it could be an issue, but the planters had proven to be pretty reliable over the ten years this technology had been in service. This planter was actually the family's second machine. I was happy that the System brought it over with me.

The planter folded in on itself multiple times, and when being transported, it was only sixteen feet wide. It also held up to 100 bushels of corn in its twin yellow bins. Each bushel of corn seed was enough to plant roughly three acres. So the seven bushels of corn that Colin and I put into the twin hoppers that sat above the middle of the corn planter looked like a pitifully small amount. It was fifty-five feet long with its huge drawbar with a central shaft and V-shaped stability bars.

If we were able to keep using it in the future, we would have to make sure that we put our corn fields all together so I had space to turn around, and to make better use of the machine's ability to plant a lot of acres very quickly. With the in-cab display system that I would teach Colin how to use now that the 'secret' was out, I could control which rows put out seeds. I would only need to make eleven and a half passes with the planter to put seed in each of the rows that were spaced thirty inches apart.

On the last run, we would turn off half of the seed drills. The traditional method that farmers used here still, and on Earth all the way into the early 1900s, involved making small dirt mounds in a diamond formation, and adding six to eight seeds in each mound. My machine would plant in straight rows with a seed spaced every six inches. The only thing we weren't able to do that I would have done back home was add in liquid fertilizer as we planted.

That would hurt crop yield a bit, but this fresh soil, along with my crop bonuses, should offset most of that. I had offered to let Emily ride in the tractor for the twenty minutes it took for us to plant the twenty acres of corn, but she insisted Colin should be the one to finish up the planting. Colin was so excited to see how the electronics worked that I didn't work too hard to change her mind. I insisted she ride with me when I took the tractor to the woods so we could have a good long talk about things.

She agreed, but only after several attempts to get out of it. If I didn't know any better, I would think she feared riding in the tractor. Once we were ready, I showed Colin the computer monitor that showed how to change the speed that the corn kernel was dropped, how to change the amount of down pressure the planter put to make sure the seed was at the proper depth, and even how to set the drive assist so that we would have straight rows without GPS.

My cheeks reddened thinking about how poorly I ran the planter without GPS and drive assist. Thankfully, I got the planter lined up on top of the corrugated rows, and then the drive assist kept me straight. Eleven passes and twenty minutes later, we had planted all twenty acres.

"This sure takes your, one day at a time motto, and smashes it down," Colin said with amusement in his voice. I just shook my head and smiled. With the corn planted, we were officially done planting for the year. What would have taken a week doing it by hand had taken us only a few hours. We had fewer than twenty hours of tractor time for the entire process. Between planting and trips to get wood, we had burned two hundred and fifty gallons of fuel in the last month. That left us with two hundred.

I still had three-quarters of a DEF tank since a full tank of DEF would last two or three diesel fuel-ups. I used the hydraulics to pull the arms in on themselves, and my ninety-foot-wide planter shrank down to a little over sixteen feet wide. It still weighed almost forty thousand pounds empty, so it would never work without my massive tractor, but if things went well, I should be able to get three or four years out of it without having to replace too many parts.

I had some more tubing, and spare parts enough to fix six or seven of the individual planters. Maybe I could find a way to fix most of this stuff. System willing! As we pulled back up to the cabin, I spoke to Colin.

"Hey buddy, I need to have a talk with your mom about things moving forward. I know you'd love to be a part of that, but I think it would be best if your Ma and I talked things out between the two of us first." He looked back at me and swept his hair out of his face.

"I'm almost old enough to be considered a man by the System. I should be there for the talk." I nodded and sighed.

"Listen, you're right, and you've been shouldering a pretty big responsibility the last few years. I'm impressed, I really am." The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

"But?" he said, not quite sullenly, but without any enthusiasm in his voice.

"But." I chuckled.

"There's a difference between doing the man's job, and being a true adult. I promise we won't be discussing you specifically." He laughed bitterly.

"Everyone is always wanting to talk about things like I'm not old enough to handle it." I patted him on the shoulder.

"Listen, I understand, and I know how you feel. But I need to talk about some things with your mom that should be between me and her for now." He looked at me sharply and in a neutral tone, asked, "Are you going to ask her to marry you?" He didn't sound angry, but I couldn't tell if he was happy about that thought. I laughed nervously and barked out, "Ha, no! I swear." He frowned at me, hesitated, then said, "Why not? Don't want to? I know she's already thirty-six, probably be hard to have kids." His voice quieted.

"And then there's me of course." I grabbed him firmly by the shoulder.

"Bud, I don't have any damned idea how this conversation veered onto this path." I shook my head and continued, "but I promise, even in this theoretical scenario that everyone keeps putting forth, I would never discard you. You would be a part of this family no matter what." He smiled at that.

"Thanks. I wouldn't mind if you married my ma, you know that?" Holy hell!

"I'm not asking your ma to marry me today!" I shook my head. This conversation had certainly gotten away from me. I looked down to see Emily looking up at us, her face narrowed in suspicion. Oh god, I thought. How loud was my last statement? The tractor was running, and the door was closed, but was I still too loud? I sighed, then said, "Colin, get out of the tractor. Your mom is riding out with me, then we're gonna walk back to the homestead before we figure out the irrigation thing.

I need to drop the planter off at least."

"Yes sir," with that, he opened the door and descended the steps to the ground. I was feeling some butterflies in my stomach as Emily began climbing up to the cab.

"Have a seat." I smiled and gestured towards the spare seat next to mine. She nodded nervously and sat down, then smiled and said, "This really is very comfortable."

"It is." I agreed.

"My seat is even better. Well, let's get going. We might need the tractor again, but I'll get all of the equipment tarped up." She nodded.

"Hopefully no one ever questions why we bought so many canvas tarps."

"I'm sure we'll be fine." I was a little worried that the bishop or someone would check it out, but I wanted to keep things out of the weather as much as possible. It would help slow down the deterioration of the hoses at the very least. Emily waved around the cab.

"You know, this is all a little overwhelming."

"Yeah. I get that. Is that why you didn't want to even sit in here before today?" I asked her. She looked at me.

"It certainly played a large role. Colin loved riding with you as well. It was a good bonding time for the two of you. It was obvious to me from the very beginning that you were from another world. In his mind, Colin did too. But he wanted to believe you." Speaking about her son, she smiled fondly.

"He never would have turned you into the authorities because I would have told him not to, but I felt it would be best that he saw you as a person so he would never feel the need." She looked me in the eye and then said, "Speaking honestly, we never would have turned you in at the beginning because we needed you. When you almost immediately said we could work together I had to latch onto that hope that we would finally be okay," Emily said, her eyes boring into mine.

"But within a few days I was already beginning to believe that you really did intend to work with us." She let out a short laugh then.

"I was prepared to continue our little deceit for quite some time, maybe forever. But, as Colin said, Mr Roberts forced our hand there." I shook my head.

"That guy is more than a little unhinged. I don't know if he came from my world exactly, but if not, then one very close to mine. It sounded like he was a shady guy there. He told me he genuinely likes living here." I sighed and continued.

"He lost his mind when he saw my tractor. He thought my carelessness could harm him too. He's probably right. I thought no one would be coming to see us with corn planting underway. Guess he proved me wrong." Emily pursed her lips and thought for a moment before she said, "Yes, you do need to be more careful moving forward. You said the tractor will be hidden for the rest of the year. Luckily there are not many people around who could just stumble upon it." She looked around the tractor.

"Well, enough unpleasant talk. Are you going to tell me a little bit about this machine? Colin is always talking about it." I smiled.

"Sure. You see this paddle looking thing?" I pointed to a little lever right behind the steering wheel.

"I push this pedal on the left, called the clutch. Then I push this lever forward and to the right. Then let go of the clutch once it says we're in forward mode. Then I push this lever on the right hand side here, forward and it'll make us move. The thumbwheel on the side of the lever changes our speed and the little one to the bottom gives us more or less power." After I explained a few more things, I got us moving, and we talked about the various instruments and screens in the tractor as we drove to the forest.

I don't think she was as enthusiastic as her son had been, but she humored me and nodded along as I explained things. It felt like a weight had been lifted off my shoulders as we rode towards the forest. I was a farmer, not a politician. I wasn't as tactful as I needed to be in this world, but with Emily and Colin on my side I hoped I'd be smarter moving forward.