Awesome Field Day

What a great day. Beautiful weather, record crowd, beautiful corn, good discussions. Probably the best I ever participated in and I have been to many. It was pretty as the flowers and as nice as the wonderful people here.

The crowd was almost double last year's record numbers. The planned for a big crowd and still ran out of plates, ran out of programs and publications, then ran out of meat and almost everything was gone by one o'clock. It was a great compliment to the FAR Maize Committee that organized the event and Mike Parker, the Maize Research Coordinator.

I did another TV interview and an interview with an Australian-New Zealand contractor magazine. They went very well.

The best compliment I got was a farmer who told me he flew from the south island to hear me talk. It was easy today because I was prepared, I had super support and everything just fit together.

The planter sitting there made my sessions very meaningful to the farmers and industry people. My host brought his planter parts and pictures we could share with the existing notill planter.

I think New Zealanders are ready to attempt more notill. Costs of production are so high, this is one way of controlling costs and labor for more net profit.

Another key is what I told you about the notill conference and every good conference. The topics and speakers all fit together and complimented each other. That is extremely important for a successful event.

Tonight we had dinner with the staff and committe members and evaluated the day. Everything went so well it was more like how can we ever improve this? It was that good.

Tomorrow we meet with the full board for more planning and evaluation. It is a good group and this should be fun. It is good to help where you fit in.

This trip is going to fast. Next thing you know I will be complaining about that big plane ride again.

Ed