3 Men, 3 Trucks and A Sprayer

There's a business around here called Two Men and a Truck. I came up with my own version called one young man, two old men, three trucks and a sprayer.

People slow down to watch when we spray. Picture this, one man about 20, two over 60 with a pickup full of chemicals, an old box truck full of fertilizer and a semi full of water loading and mixing into a self propelled sprayer. There is never enough room for us all on the back roads but we make do.

We crawled up on top of the water tank on the semi to dump a 50 lbs bag of citric acid into the tank, started pumping the water into the the sprayer and then start loading that mixture with my recipe.

On this farm it was acidified water with 15-3-3 liquid fertilizer plus boron and zinc mixed with a dose of corn syrup per acre, plus my scientific deduction of 26 ounces of Ignite, 4.6 ounces of Clethodim, 4 ounces of Headline fungicide, and 1.5 ounces of Providence for good measure.

The Providence is a pyrethroid generic insecticide in tune with God's Providence and clethodim is a generic Select for grass weeds because Ignite is strong on broaleaf weeds and weak in the knees on grass. The corn syrup makes a good sticker spreader and late beans need some N and always a little of everything else.

I did get divine intervention though as it was cloudy when we loaded and a slight breeze from the south which could blow my Ignite onto the neighbor's RR beans to the north. That would make black beans. He even stopped to remind me. About the time Neil was making his turn to spray that end the sun popped out and the breeze switched from the south to from the north and the mixture stayed in my field. The other old man said you must be living right and I just looked up at the sky and said Thank You Lord.

I just have to laugh though when we do this as we look like some kind of gypsy camp with this setup. And people do take notice, they really do.

I came back one week later and the beans are bright green and there are so many black weeds it looks like an Agent Orange attack on a Viet Nam war scene.

You would really have to know me and my background and history to fully appreciate this scene but it makes me smile.

For those of you who know soilife aka John Haggard from Crop Talk, he's applying big quantities of fertilizer by airplane for next year's crop and here I am spraying bandaids again.

For me, bandaids are a big step up. I was told I have the highest insurable double crop soybean yield in the county and did that in just seven years so I think we are on the right path.

I woke up at 5 AM and saw lightning to the west so come on rain, you can do it.

Ed Winkle