My dad was very skeptical about anything new being introduced into his world. That is probably why we were still putting up loose hay for several years after those ‘new-fangled’ hay balers came along. He wanted to make certain they were here to stay before we finally purchased a used baler sometime along in the mid 1960s. His skepticism was not confined to the world of agriculture, either, for I’m pretty sure that he still believed the American moon landing was a hoax at the time of his death in 1997.
I guess I inherited some of Dad’s doubting mindset, because I catch myself questioning a lot of new technology until I either see it work on some neighbor’s operation or I somehow get forced into the adoption of a new procedure, technique or invention.
A neighbor of mine has spread fertilizer on my hayfields and pastures for several years. When his truck quit last fall, he informed me that he was getting out of the business and I needed to make other arrangements for getting the chemicals applied this year. Spreading a couple of carts of fertilizer last spring on fields too wet for my friend’s truck, I had ended up either running out of fertilizer too soon or ending up with a ton left over because I couldn’t make the 60-foot spacing precise enough through the hills and hollers of my farm. Since most of my neighbors have a GPS system on their tractors, and swear by them, I figured it was finally time for me to jump into the 21st Century. My friends and neighbors were amazed when I ordered the high-tech device, thinking I was still a couple of decades away from taking the plunge.
The gadget arrived last week and I spent an entire afternoon installing the system in my tractor. I felt like I did when I used to try to put together the kids’ toys on Christmas Eve, and I’m pretty sure the same person that wrote the assembly instructions for those toys also wrote the owner’s manual for the GPS system. But, by dark, I had it up and going.
I wanted to try it out before I wasted a $2,500 cart of fertilizer, so I proceeded to follow the instructions precisely as they were written by someone in a country on the other side of the earth, driving my empty tractor back and forth in a barren hayfield. I so hoped that none of my neighbors passed while I was making this experimental voyage. One pass to establish the ‘straight line’ from which all future passes would be calibrated, was made.
After establishing the benchmark, the lights on the computer monitor instructed me to “turn left NOW.” I did as instructed, but it looked a lot less than the 60 feet I was supposed to be from my first pass. I stopped the tractor and exited with my trusty tape measure in hand. I have ridden with my son as he navigates city streets listening to a female voice (his car GPS) telling him to, “turn right in 100 feet,” when those instructions, if followed exactly, would be persuading him to leave the road and drive into a lake, so I wanted to see just how inaccurate this ‘new-fangled contraption’ would be.
Driving a stake into the ground where my drawbar would have passed on the benchmark pass, I stretched the rusty tape measure out to where my drawbar was on the tractor as it was currently situated. The rusty, old, metal tape measure proved that the real measurement was only 59 feet, 11 and 1/2 inches.
Hmmm, I even think Dad would have been impressed with the degree of accuracy from the GPS device. On the other hand, he would have reminded me that I could get “almost” the same accuracy from hanging feed sacks on the fence every 60 feet for, “a lot less than you spent on that fancy gadget.”
Jerry Crownover is a farmer and former professor of Agriculture Education at Missouri State University. He is a native of Baxter County, Arkansas, and an author and professional speaker. To contact Jerry about his books, or to arrange speaking engagements, you may contact him by calling 1-866-532-1960 or visiting ozarksfn.com and clicking on ‘Contact Us.’
