Mapping It Out

How can it be May already? Funny how when you're focused on the day-to-day time doesn't seem to be moving as fast, but then you zoom out a bit and look at the calendar and ask yourself, "where did the time go"?

From the field:

Made some progress this week. I have 2 drone pilots now… but I think this is going to be good. My tender (the one who will be changing the batteries, filling tanks, etc) can't be present for the entire season, so I'm going to mix and match between the 3 of them. Maybe there are even times where I've got the two pilots flying and I'm off doing something else? I don't know, I've got options regardless, which is a nice place to be.

The next steps for these 3 are going to be passing an exam so they're either licensed to fly the drone or licensed to mix chemicals. In addition, I'm working on getting the pilots into a training session so that we can all learn how to fly these things together.

Another big win from the week was being able to sit down with someone from a local co-op and better understand what they have available for mapping fields. I feel much more confident about the mapping side of things now.

However, here's a wrench that I wasn't totally expecting. Not many farmers are ready to commit to spraying until we get further along in season. Will most of them end up putting fungicide on? Probably, but it does add another variable. It's going to be harder to do the appropriate recon beforehand, because I may not have time to get out to each of the fields before we're in the thick of it. Just going to have to do the best we can!

Still waiting on an estimate for my trailer buildout. Getting increasingly nervous about that, because the longer I have to wait, the less time I have to find a backup plan.

From the office:

We're starting to get to a point where I'm shifting my focus to the ag side of things the majority of the time, which means that I'm on the road more, on the phone more, doing more research. This leaves less time for the office work. I'd say this week was a bare minimum type week, where I did just enough work to feel like I'm paying some bills. And I anticipate it's going to be like this for the next two months.

What I'm reading:

This week I went backwards in the reading department. I used my email address attached to this newsletter to subscribe to a bunch of other newsletters. I went back and re-evaluated which ones were actually helping me move forward and which ones were just filler material. I kept a few agricultural newsletters, but most of the CFO-type newsletters got the heave-ho. Sometimes less is more, right?

Thanks for hanging in - until next week!