Ag Geek Speak
GK Technology Inc Team Members, Jodi Boe and Sarah Lovas talk about precision agriculture, agriculture mapping, agronomy and drainage.
Ag Geek Speak
21. The Montana Mafia
Join us for a lively and insightful conversation as we dive into the world of soil sampling with special guests Kyle Okke, Jason Hanson, and Lane Bothwell, who with us, Ag Geek Speak, form the Montana Mafia. This group spent a couple of days in eastern Montana collecting soil samples for Kyle Okke, and put the GK Field Mapper app to the soil sample test. Together, we explore the challenges, innovations, and camaraderie that make soil sampling both a science and an art.
We share stories from the road, including the creative setups of our soil sampling rigs—from mid-90s pickups to hydraulic probes—and how even small comforts like air conditioning make a big difference during long days in the field. We also cover how the GK Field Mapper app is transforming soil sampling with real-time updates and cloud technology, simplifying the process and enhancing collaboration in the field.
But it’s not all about the tech and tools! This episode is packed with laughter, friendly competition, and the kind of storytelling that highlights the joys and quirks of working in agriculture. From peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to the unspoken rules of teamwork, we delve into what makes fieldwork so rewarding.
Whether you’re an experienced agronomist or just curious about precision agriculture, this episode offers a fun and engaging look at the tools, techniques, and teamwork behind soil sampling.
The main dialogue of this episode first appeared on Agronomists Happy Hour
https://agronomistshappyhour.com/
Thank you Kyle and Jason for letting us replay and make sure to check their podcast out if you haven't already!
GK Technology, Inc. https://gktechinc.com/
GK Field Mapper: https://gktechinc.com/gk_field_mapper/
ADMS: https://gktechinc.com/adms-product/
And now it's time for a Geek Speak with GK Technology's, Sarah and Jodi, friends and I can't wait to get in the fields again.
Theme Song:No, I can't wait to get in the fields again.
Jodi Boe:Hello Ag Geek Speak listeners. We have a very special episode for all of you today. We can't wait.
Sarah Lovas:We are going to be hanging out with a bunch of misfits who think that soil sampling is fun, namely. Well, of course, Jodi and I were geeks, and then, along with Kyle Okee, Jason Hanson and Lane Bothwell, we all went out to Montana in August and went soil sampling, just because it's fun.
Jodi Boe:And to test out the GK Field Mapper app. Yes, soil sampling is fun and it's especially fun when you get to do it with other people that think soil sampling is fun.
Sarah Lovas:And the app worked beautifully. We were all logged into the same account and all of the points were coming across so well. It was so much fun. People have asked me why did you want to go soil sampling in Montana? Well, I had never been to Montana soil sampling, I had never touched Montana soils before, so that was my first chance to do that. It was very fun. And then, of course, you know, we just kind of all hang out and it was kind of like going to, you know, hunter's camp, except it was soil sample camp.
Jodi Boe:I thought you were going to say it was gonna be like going to Disney World for a second well, I was hanging out in the Blue Beacon.
Sarah Lovas:That's kind of a fun ride.
Jodi Boe:That is a fun ride even was like. It's even like decorated like a ride at disney world too which you'll find more about.
Sarah Lovas:I did not decorate it. You crazy people decorated it. You'll find out more, highly suggest listening.
Jodi Boe:This is it was a blast the super fun part about soil sampling with other people. At least in my experience, I've always soil sampled alone and sometimes, like you, just kind of do what you do because that's what's in your setup. But when you get to soil sample with other people, you get to see how their pickups are set up, how they organize their probes, what kind of tips they like in different situations. It's really really fun to not only hang out with fun people but get some really good tips to make soil sampling easier, make it more enjoyable and just be more efficient out in the field. And so there's a lot of shenanigans on this episode, but there's also a lot of really applicable and actionable tips for any of you soil samplers out there or anybody that's interested in doing a little bit more precision soil work on their own farm.
Sarah Lovas:And if you have ever been a skeptic that soil sampling can't be fun, well, listen up.
Jodi Boe:Yes it can be fun. It can be fun. I do want to say give a special thank you to Agronomist Happy Hour, Jason Hanson and Kyle Okee for setting this up, doing the recording. You may have heard it on their podcast feed. If you do follow them. If you don't follow them, do give them a follow and listen to their podcast as well. But thank you so much for letting us play this in our feed as well. I think you guys will really enjoy this, and a big thank you to Kyle Okee for inviting us out to Montana.
Sarah Lovas:in the first place we were soil sampling on his client's land. Clients out there are amazing. It was just. It was so much fun to go in and learn a little bit more about his business and, of course, all the other guys that were out there.
Jodi Boe:Sit back, take a listen and enjoy.
Kyle Okke:So this feels like deja vu, except I don't think we were all virtual here. The last time we were all in person it was only like a week ago.
Jason Hanson:Hold on a second Now, it's deja vu.
Kyle Okke:Well, when someone has a case of the Mondays, quite literally Jason holds up a case of beer before we hit record and he goes look, it's a Case of the Mondays from I don't know what was the brewing company record. And he goes look, it's a Case of the Mondays from I don't know what was the brewing company's name oh, it's irrelevant, no, it's.
Jason Hanson:It's no monday.
Kyle Okke:Monday Night Brewing yeah, there we go.
Jason Hanson:So a Case of the Mondays, yeah yeah, it's uh, yeah, it's 12 pack of uh, just straight IPAs. What could what?
Kyle Okke:bad, somehow not. I'm not surprised. What could go wrong? What could go wrong. We'll find out. Give us an hour. No, but we've got kind of a collaborative episode now. The only odd guy out but he still belongs on the podcast is Lane Lane Lane Bothwell.
Sarah Lovas:So Odd guy out. He is the odd guy. What Well, think Lane, Lane, bothwell.
Lane Bothwell:So I've got out.
Kyle Okke:Well, think think we're talking to fellow podcasters now, so I feel like we're going to use this, this episode, as kind of a. You guys will put it out on Ag Geek Speak with Sarah Lovis and Jodi Boe, and then then we'll put out this on Agronomists Happy Hour, and then you got Lane, who's probably drinking the best beer out of them all.
Lane Bothwell:I got a couple on deck here, so yeah, We've got to have Lane on here.
Sarah Lovas:We're just not going to have the content for either one of our podcasts to make this work. I mean, that's just how that works.
Kyle Okke:It's true, or naturally, Lane.
Jodi Boe:Is this a podcast announcement? Do you have a podcast that we should know about that you've started.
Lane Bothwell:No, I will keep you guests. I am not starting a podcast, thanks for bringing it up, though.
Kyle Okke:So this is what we have formally named the Montana Mafia, the group of the five of us on the podcast right now. So myself, Jason, Sarah Lovas, Jodi Boe, Lane Bothwell all of you we've talked before on the podcast, on each other's podcasts, in some capacity or one or another, and Lane and I did this little trip out to Montana and I remember how the whole thing started. I don't remember like when it was necessarily, but you were like reminiscing of this, like, oh, these custom combiners travel, you know, the kind of western part of the country or the western part of South Dakota. And he's like I've heard of consultants that go West River and go do custom sampling while they don't have crops up, and he's like that'd be cool to go do. And I'm like are you serious when you're saying that'd be cool to go do, because, yeah, I might have something for you. And then he took me serious. He's like, yeah, I'd totally go to Montana with you.
Kyle Okke:And so we did this together for a portion of it last year and then I realized like how much work it really was. And then it was kind of a deal where it's like that was so much fun, let's do it again. It's like we could totally invite a bunch of people to come and do this and so that's kind of how it. It kind of grew legs, so to speak, and not just getting any extra people to come help, but like actually like real soil nerds, real agronomy people that like take their job seriously, a lot of fun. And so I had the group of us come and help me out with some of my soil sampling work out in Montana, kind of like north of the Glendive area, so not terribly far into Montana, but it was quite the experience. That was a fun way to do it quite the experience.
Jason Hanson:That was a fun way to do it. It was. One thing I will say right off the bat is I don't know how you did it, but you picked the perfect week temperature-wise. No kidding, there was a little wind but we did not roast because I think Lane can attest to this, when Lane was out there just with you, it was a totally different situation.
Kyle Okke:It was like this week, right now, for me it was like 95 degrees. Today it was hot and it was like 85 degrees in my soil sampling pickup.
Lane Bothwell:Yeah, it was hot and still windy, it was brutal, but yeah, we did nail it. It was very comfortable, even if you didn't have AC. You didn't quite, you know, shrivel up like a raisin. Anyway it was pretty good.
Jason Hanson:Yeah, it was a good week.
Sarah Lovas:It was the best week to have the Blue Beacon out west.
Kyle Okke:So let's start with that.
Sarah Lovas:Well, let's start with that Now soil sampling pickups aren't really known to be like the most mechanically sound or aesthetically pleasing.
Kyle Okke:Yes, but I mean aesthetically pleasing, not and apparently it gets worse when you go soil sampling with you guys. Well, we'll get to things that have happened to the soil sampling trucks, but I just want to point out the fact that you're what year is that Dodge pickup years?
Sarah Lovas:I thought it was in 1996, but it's actually in 1999. So I'm like, yeah, I'm pretty high wage there.
Kyle Okke:Hopefully nobody chastises me for this, but I thought Dodges in that '97, '98 to early 2000s were kind of known to be in their lemon age. Because my dad had a 1998 three-quarter ton pickup and this is probably why, like no relation to why, I've named my one black pickup the Black Pearl. But he called it the Black Pearl. Now, subconsciously that's probably why I named it that, because that 1998 Dodge three-quarter ton just constantly was at the mechanic One problem after the next problem after the next problem, and so your truck seemed like it was just fine. But to go from Hillsboro, North Dakota all the way to Glendive, that's a trip.
Sarah Lovas:So I'm actually working on getting this stuff fixed so that I have a couple more amenities for the next trip, like, for example, the seatbelt doesn't exactly work, so don't tell the cops, but the seatbelt doesn't exactly work. And but I actually it's such a stellar vehicle for soil sampling that somebody actually wants to rent it. Coming up here, and they said, well, what? Coming up here? And they said, well, what's it going to cost? And I said, well, I've got a great idea. How about if we just fix the seatbelt and change the oil and we'll call it square and make sure it comes back with a full tank of gas? So that's what we're going to do, and so I will actually have a seatbelt the next time that I go out there. But I mean, it's a 1999 Dodge pickup. It drinks a little bit of oil. She's got about, oh, 88 000 miles on it now, um. So you just kind of got to make sure you've got the oil with you, um. But otherwise I mean, it's, it's pretty good, no catalytic converter I'm.
Kyle Okke:I just want to point that out. So it's, it's pretty throaty when, uh, you start it and get make sure you've got enough ventilation in the cab because of that?
Sarah Lovas:Because it does, I do think that I should change where the exhaust is going. But yeah, so there's no catalytic converter. But I also don't catch on fire anymore. I mean I was on fire a couple times so I kind of got sick of that, so I got rid of the catalytic converter. Also, nobody tells the cops about that one because I don't want to get thrown in jail but that but anyway. So that's kind of that story. But it's a great vehicle Otherwise. I mean I made it all the way out there. The air conditioning does leave a little to be desired. Lane did actually get a chance to experience the wonders of the Blue Beacon, so he can attest to that. I'm wondering do you guys think that I would stand a chance if I actually tried to recharge the AC in that thing? Do you think I should even try it?
Kyle Okke:If you never tried, it Should have said something. I totally have like one of those R91 or 134 charging cans, like it's the easiest thing to recharge.
Sarah Lovas:Really.
Kyle Okke:Yeah, there's nothing to it.
Sarah Lovas:Maybe I should add that to my rental agreement. Yeah, there's nothing to it. Maybe I should add that to my rental agreement.
Kyle Okke:Yes, you should, because it wouldn't cost him that much to get a can of that and just say just recharge my air conditioning.
Jason Hanson:Well, we were surprised you showed up, because going down the interstate with a Tupperware container on the top of that vehicle draws a lot of attention.
Sarah Lovas:It's not a.
Jason Hanson:Tupperware container. It's a Rubbermaid container. It looks like it from the average person. Let me tell you, it draws a lot of attention and apparently it's not a Tupperware container, it's a Rubbermaid container.
Sarah Lovas:It looks like it from the average person.
Jason Hanson:Let me tell you it's a Rubbermaid container. Okay, rubbermaid, but isn't it that you stopped somewhere and somebody was like wanted to buy that vehicle on your way out there?
Sarah Lovas:Yeah, I mean it was. So you know, I stopped in James town because they have a nice little gas station there which, if you get off the Interstate, they also have a nice bottle shop right by the gas station in case you need to pick up some amenities. And so that's what I did. But yeah, I was walking out and they were like hey, I want to buy that truck and I'm like sorry, it's not for sale.
Kyle Okke:I'm going on an adventure and you cannot buy this from me right now.
Sarah Lovas:I'm going on an adventure and you cannot buy this from me right now, forever. But yeah, so it does have a Rubbermaid container on the top, and you might be wondering why, and, honestly, I'm the only one in this group that has a Rubbermaid container on the top, and it's because in my backyard we have sugar beets here, and so when you soil sample for sugar beets, you need to pull four foot samples, so you need to have. You need to pull four foot samples, so you need to have. You need to use longer probes, obviously four foot probes you can get a full four foot sample, and so, in order to make that work with the cylinder, I had to cut a hole in the ceiling and then put the cylinder out the top. Well, in order to cover that up, so I don't have to experience rainfall inside Because I that I got going for it, I don't have to experience rainfall inside.
Sarah Lovas:Because I've got that going for it. I don't have to experience that. It wears a Rubbermaid container on the top. Lane, stop laughing.
Lane Bothwell:So I want to know is I can't even explain how Cutting it's awesome.
Kyle Okke:Is cutting a hole in the roof like a common thing in the Valley.
Lane Bothwell:It should be on the. It should should be on a T-shirt. It's kind of the soil sampling pickup image that you have in your head really.
Sarah Lovas:Lane. I heard you want to get into soil sampling four-footers.
Lane Bothwell:Well, no, I don don't you're wrong. Uh, I, I kind of inherently have to do them, unfortunately. But uh, yeah, I'll poke some four-footers here coming up. We got some guys chopping silage and we're in a uh, we're in a high water table and, uh, with silage comes typically lots of manures in our area. So I'll do some four footers, uh, for some manure management deal. But uh, I, if you don't have to do four footers, I would not recommend anybody looking to get into them. That would that just absolutely no, don't do.
Sarah Lovas:I agree with you. It's not fun you.
Kyle Okke:You know I find it interesting. You talk to manure management and probably nobody has an answer within our group here. But you know who has a lot of cattle confinements and dairies as you move, like east Wisconsin and Illinois, iowa, but a lot of people that soil sample there you hand probe, so do. Different states have different regulations on depths of nitrate samples. You pull and all that yeah.
Lane Bothwell:Very likely.
Sarah Lovas:You know, Minnesota's nutrient management plan is different than North Dakota's, is different than South Dakota's. North Dakota's is patterning theirs after South Dakota's.
Kyle Okke:Okay.
Jodi Boe:So one thing I've always oh, go ahead, footers. The one thing I've always wondered about Iowa. So I was recently at the Iowa Drainage School down in Nashua, Iowa, where in Iowa, drainage is very different, right, because they've had, they work in drainage districts and they connect to mains that have been put in 100 years ago for like a whole water district. Um, but I wonder if part of the concern about doing four foot samples is the risk of hitting thailand. Yeah, I never really thought about it until I went down there, but I think that's probably a lot more common if you're going four foot there versus up here. It's not out of the question up here either, but not as common that's.
Kyle Okke:It's almost something.
Jodi Boe:You need to have the GIS file of where your tile lines are, so you're not actually going right over top of it with a four- foot probe yeah just another new thing to avoid while you're you're out sampling so if you don't have a map for that already, get a map for that and if you need an app for that, we could totally put that map for that on that app for that and we'll talk about that, that app here in just a second.
Kyle Okke:But I I can't let go of the Rubbermaid container. So is it, is it just?
Sarah Lovas:can, it's okay if you do Not yet Not yet.
Kyle Okke:I feel like it's still unique, because are other people cutting sunroofs in their vehicles to put their probes in, to get the hydraulic cylinder in? Or is that a unique Sarah thing?
Sarah Lovas:So okay. So here's the deal. You that okay. So lots of four-footers get pulled right. Here in my backyard by Hillsborough I've got a sugar beet plant down, so pretty much most of the wheat ground that's going to be in this area, or small grain ground, we're going to go and pull it for four-footers to figure out how much nitrate is deep for sugar beet production. If you've got too much nitrate you will not have the quality of the sugar beets the following year, so that's why we do it.
Sarah Lovas:Okay, now, when it comes to actually setting up the soil sample pickups, I've got a one-stage cylinder, so it's a pretty long cylinder in there. It's electric over hydraulic one-stage cylinder and when I got that, I bought it from Egg Vice and I think yeah, I know they're still selling it, but prior to that, the ones that I used to use, like at the co-op, they were double stage cylinders, so then you didn't have to have them sticking out the top quite as far, which helped quite a bit, but I still feel like I've got more room for putting the four foot probe on, like when I want to do that.
Sarah Lovas:I think, honestly, having the hole off the top, even with the single stage cylinder, it's a little easier for putting the probe on and a couple things like that. It looks a little unique from the road. People I mean people either, you know they really wave at me when I'm going down the road because they know who it is. Um, at least in this neck of the woods they probably didn't done I-94 out west a little ways, but there's enough that it definitely caught some looks.
Kyle Okke:They probably thought you were a storm chaser when you got further west.
Jodi Boe:And actually, yeah, so like speaking of like the two cylinder or single- stage versus two- cylinder stage, that's actually like one of the things is the two- stage cylinder is actually shorter, I think by like five inches in the single- stage cylinder. So like, if you are concerned about not having enough clearance in your rig or like having to have a hole at the top to fit the single- stage cylinder, like you would buy the double- stage or the two-stage cylinder to get more of that clearance, at least with the current ones that AGVISE sells and that's essentially what you've got lane in your one vehicle that can do four footers right.
Lane Bothwell:You have a two-stage hydraulic cylinder we do have a two-stage cylinder in the in in the unit that I was actually using in montana, not because we were doing two, uh, four footers in Montana, but because it just so happens that that unit is the most comfortable one that I own and that's the reason why I took it out there. But I do have a.
Kyle Okke:Okay, now we're going to talk about more vehicles now. So we're done picking on Sarah.
Sarah Lovas:For you, though, I will say this If I had the choice of setting up a Dodge pickup a mid-90s Dodge pickup for a soil sample rig, I would not do it Because of the way that the transmission is underneath the chassis. Hey, take it easy. It was the right price on an auction sale, which is why this happens to be a soil sample rig.
Kyle Okke:Hey, that's why a lot of these are destined to be where they're at right.
Sarah Lovas:Exactly. But if you could find a Chevy pickup you're going to be able to have that probe closer to you. I feel like my probe is over quite a ways and it had to be that way for everything that was going on underneath. So if you're setting up the sample pickup and you can get a chance to find like one of those mid-90s Chevy half tons man, they are worth their weight in gold. Oh, rock and roll. I wish I was as cool as you.
Kyle Okke:Oh, I love my mid-90s.
Jason Hanson:My mid-90s truck. I could put a wet bar and a two-girl, one-guy hot tub in that cab.
Sarah Lovas:And have your own reality TV show.
Jason Hanson:I tell you what. There's so much room in there. It's unbelievable. And that was one of the most interesting things was just seeing how everybody has their vehicle set up. Yes, and things. There was some really cool things and then there was some really cool things and then there was some things that I was like what the hell, what the why would you?
Kyle Okke:you know, it was kind of that way, and this is where we're going to pick on Lane for a little bit, because the hydraulic like okay, so Lane was the only one out of the group of us with the soil sampling pickups that had a passenger seat. So Lane was the only one out of the group of us with the soil sampling pickups that had a passenger seat, which was really cool, because we had your guys' co-worker Travis, your app programmer. Yeah, from GK Tech. The app programmer Travis was there and he got some real firsthand experience. Well, matter of fact, he was in the driver's seat for a good portion of it too, I believe, and he hopped in the little half back seat in these little extended cab pickups too, and got to check it out in everyone else's rig too, except for mine. Mine wasn't very accommodating for that.
Kyle Okke:But back to Lane's. Okay, so you got a passenger seat on it. But back to Lane's. Okay, so you've got a passenger seat on it, which means that your probe placement is a lot closer to the driver's seat. And when I mean a lot closer, that son of a bitch is hugging your right hip.
Jason Hanson:It's in your right pocket.
Kyle Okke:Yeah, it is there.
Lane Bothwell:That's what it comes down to with these vehicles. Like you said, those mid-'90s pickups I mean most of the vehicles that are set up not because you had a choice of where you know the probe actually sits or is positioned, but is just where it ended up, based on what you wanted your pickup to be. So you guys don't have passenger seats. I don't really know why we use that pickup for a scouting pickup as well. So, for whatever reason we opted to, we just want to leave the passenger seat in, and we were notified that if you do that, this is the way it's going to be and it's like oh well, now we have a choice to make. Do we want the probe positioned where it's at, with the seat in, or do we get another option with the seat out, and it is super uncomfortable and I don't like it, but it works and there is a passenger seat and I'm guessing that any passenger that rides with me is happy that there is a seat there.
Sarah Lovas:And you have air conditioning.
Kyle Okke:I did have air conditioning. It's an important feature.
Lane Bothwell:That is a feature I'm not used to. That is the only vehicle with a probe in it that actually has a functioning AC. And I tell you what I was very spoiled. That is a game changer when it comes to space.
Kyle Okke:And I know you were incentivized to bring that pickup over any other pickup solely for the fact that the year before you were in a pickup without Well, okay, so what, that three-quarter ton that you brought the year before? What is that? A 6.4?
Lane Bothwell:Is that the 6? It's a bigger. It's a 6.4, 6.8. It's a 2008 Ford. I think it's the 6.8.
Kyle Okke:Well, it was funny. I was just talking to another fellow soil sampler, a consultant we all know, Phil Wanner, yeah, and he runs a 7.3 diesel pickup with the clutch pump and all that which he likes, that part, yep. But he goes. Man, you got to pick your days. You can't go soil sample on 90-degree days because the whole damn thing gets hot. And then it's like you see, the temp on the engine get hot, everything gets warm. And I kind of had to laugh and I'm like, well, you know, it happens with the six fours too, because when Lane was out helping when it was like 95 degrees, he was taking this bent ass probe that he fucked up from earlier in the week and and he was propping up the hood and he'd park it into the wind and shut it off so that it would cool the whole engine bay down because he was so damn hot that that wrecked probe I have in the back that's not the hood open is probably the second most important thing of that pickup.
Lane Bothwell:You gotta have that probe to keep the hood open is probably the second most important thing of that pickup. You gotta have that probe to keep the hood up, because the hood's up a lot well, if you, if you'd have brought that truck.
Jason Hanson:You gotta cool that engine down in about 45 seconds.
Kyle Okke:On Tuesday we were out there oh yeah, it was like needed a switch or one of those mornings else.
Lane Bothwell:Yeah, the wind was something else. Yeah.
Jason Hanson:The Blue Beacon would have caught on fire. We'd have burnt half the state down and most of the western part of North Dakota too.
Sarah Lovas:Wow, Get a converter.
Jason Hanson:Yeah.
Sarah Lovas:No fire for you.
Kyle Okke:That's what I need to do straight pipe mine, just make it real throaty.
Lane Bothwell:Yeah.
Jodi Boe:The only downside is like just the noise. Right, like the hard thing driving a what I found like long periods of time driving a soil sample pickup having a hole even though you can cover it, it's a lot more road noise oh yeah no phone calls for me, and it's louder when you've got a hole in the roof too.
Sarah Lovas:The Rubbermaid does not buffer any sounds, so like the whole ride out. Oh it's, it's terrible. So the whole ride out to Glendive and the whole ride back, like I couldn't talk on the phone to anybody.
Kyle Okke:It was very peaceful you need to get like that aviators bluetooth headset, that Jodi's yep, that thing she's holding up right there.
Jason Hanson:Oh yeah.
Jodi Boe:This is 50% of the reason that I bought these, but they're like, uh, so my fiance was out mowing the lawn one day and he had these and I'm like, wow, are you listening to like music in those? Those are fancy, but they're literally like safety headphones to protect your ears. But they also have a microphone attached to it and Bluetooth speakers so then you can listen to music podcasts with really loud stuff going and then also take phone calls too and actually, like the microphone does a really good job at picking up sound, so like it is how you can manage in a really loud soil sampling truck or a tractor. This is not I do not have an affiliate link, but I should but it's an Isotunes headset.
Kyle Okke:Can a person find that on Amazon?
Sarah Lovas:You know, since Lane is so opposed to the Blue Parrot, he would look way better in those.
Lane Bothwell:I know I just like to abuse myself and I just stick the phone to my head and it's you got to pick your battles, Pick your battles. Oh yeah, here we go.
Jodi Boe:Abuse your voice. Recipients too, your phone call recipients.
Lane Bothwell:Yeah, anybody looking to set up a soil sample pickup? I think we've talked about maybe putting a resource book together because, like I said, I think we don't have a single pickup that should have been probably set up as a soil sample pickup, but it's the ones we had and it was the ones we have. So you just kind of go okay, that one's next put a probe in it and it comes back and you're just disgusted on how it's set up and and how uncomfortable it is. But that's the way it is. I don't know if there's anybody actually seeking soil sample pickups, but I tell you what there's. There's definitely certain ones to uh, that are to be desired, and it's's none that I have, that's for sure.
Sarah Lovas:It's not the one I have either. So check Ford and Dodge off the list is what I'm hearing. Mid-90s.
Kyle Okke:I wonder if anyone's ever taken a Toyota Tundra. Those are still too nice to use.
Lane Bothwell:No one would ever cut a hole in the floor of those things yeah, yeah.
Kyle Okke:So speaking of probe placement and stuff, so I I want to hear Jodi's opinion. So you're running my other probe pickup and that has an odd placement and in a distance from from the driver's seat. How how was that to use? Cause the, the channel, iron faces in a non-traditional direction, in my, to my knowledge anyways, and and kind of sits like you kind of go lean you kind of have like a weird, weird, grab to it to you know.
Jodi Boe:Yeah, so definitely, by the time I, I think the first day, what we sampled from nine o'clock in the morning to seven o'clock at night, I definitely could feel the muscles in my body that I was using to lean over. And then also, like, I had a really hard time with, like using my right hand afterwards because, like you kind of really had to finagle to get to the bottom of the um, oh, the collar, to get to the quick attach on the, the cylinder, just because of, like how that channel iron was facing. So the channel iron was facing like towards the front of the pickup instead of like facing me, so I I didn't have complete access to the, the bottom of the cylinder, but like otherwise, the one nice thing I think about having the cylinder that far away. So I think, what is it? Square in where the passenger seat was, you kind of had more room to, I think, position buckets and things in between the seat and the probe.
Jodi Boe:But I will say I think if I had to use that sample check every day, Kyle, I would need a like monthly or weekly appointment with a chiropractor.
Kyle Okke:Cause. I apologize that you ran that for two days, but that is also the sole reason that I am taking that to the to a shop here, probably tomorrow, and I've been telling them this for like months, but I'm going to finally do it Be like. I'm probably going to have to pay you as much as I paid the last person to install the whole thing, but I need a new hole and a repositioned.
Lane Bothwell:Because otherwise.
Kyle Okke:I just, you know, I just how I, I, yeah, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna keep people hired for very long to help me. When I give them a, you know they're gonna have to go to the chiropractor after they feel sore from like holding their arm in this weird position. And the good news is.
Jason Hanson:Is that at that first night? The next couple nights, the good news is we're staying at the Three Bloody Knife Riverside Inn. The pot smokers. The weed was blowing over. It probably loosened up your shoulders a little bit there, Jodi. You guys are down on that end of the hotel.
Sarah Lovas:We woke up one morning it must have been the last morning or something like that and I said to Jodi, my butt cheek really hurts from leaning over that hole all day. And she said me too and like it.
Jodi Boe:It really wasn't, like it wasn't that bad, like really the worst part you can tell me how bad it was.
Jodi Boe:I'm not going to be offended by it I think a person would get over, like the leaning over right, but the worst part is just like my knuckles, because like I kept but punching my knuckles into the channel iron, like that was the worst part, like bending whatever, but like the knuckles was just the worst. But otherwise, like what I love about your truck, Kyle, is you have a manufactured probe holder beside your cylinder and then also bucket holders and then also color- organized buckets. And we talked a lot about this as a group that anything you can do in that process of soil sampling to just take your brain out of it or take your mind out of it to avoid mistakes take your brain out of it or like take your mind out of it to avoid mistakes is so valuable out in the field. So like being able to take the probe really quickly out of the hole and then back into the little slot for it to put, like the probe slot behind the probe Awesome, takes a couple seconds out of going between holes and then just having those buckets there in place that don't bounce around while you're driving through rocky fields, really easy to keep straight top and sub and then the different zones.
Jodi Boe:So like it was great and it had ac. It was awesome. Oh, and a magnetic cup holder on the cylinder which, uh, who, who? Who started that? Because, like, whoever started buying those from harbor freight, like those are genius.
Kyle Okke:Cody Wahlstrom was the one that brought that one up, and so that was my welcome to Montana gift for all of you guys.
Sarah Lovas:Which is awesome.
Kyle Okke:Very good.
Jason Hanson:Thank you.
Kyle Okke:Yeah that's. I've never seen such a. I think it was Keri Buttke that was sharing the magnetic can koozie, and how it could hold a can of beer in there. But you're like the, the magnets, you're like, ah, you question how strong these were. And then you get this, this harbor freight one. It's like you aren't moving it. I mean you could, you could probably put like a five pound dumbbell on that thing and it's not going anywhere. It's good.
Sarah Lovas:The forklift knob is what I call it the quick turn knob suicide knob. Yes, that's a game changer, game changer. Thank you, Lane.
Lane Bothwell:I can't believe you, that's a Lane Bothwell thing. Just like the magnetic can holder. I don't know how you guys were sampling without them. That that's a it's a must it is very good.
Jason Hanson:Yeah, yep, I actually went, just bought another one for my other truck too, because of that trip yeah, because just like, just paint the picture of the problem right, like you're.
Jodi Boe:You're driving the pickup and you keep going a little bit to the left of the spot. You want to be on and like you keep. You're driving the pickup and you keep going a little bit to the left of the spot. You want to be on and like you keep cranking it and your arms getting tired because you're not getting there fast enough. But if you have the suicide knob on there, you just whipper around and you're at the spot. It is awesome and like you feel like you're playing a video game, driving from point to point, and it just it adds like a plus two experience to soil sampling in the field. It feels like a video.
Lane Bothwell:I like the rankings suicide knob driving 60 as well.
Jason Hanson:Trust me well, my tops, my top speed out there in a field was 50, and that was when. That was when we did the rodeo and that was when.
Kyle Okke:That was when we did the rodeo. Oh, I watched that all go down. Yeah, you and Lane were at least doing that, yeah. So so you know, we haven't talked a lot about what it's like out there in that area so well and generally as you move west let's just say from an east to west progression you hear about a lot of field sizes, let's say in like the central Minnesota or parts of Wisconsin, and you have a lot of small, fragmented fields, right. You're kind of in the interface of like lakes, country and rivers and woods and all that, and the fields get smaller. And then you kind of transition out of that as you move west and you kind of get more into farm country and then it's a lot of quarter sections or a lot of 80s and 40s and then as you keep going west, things tend to get a little bigger and a little bigger and a little bigger. And now even out here there were a couple fields that are like 30 or 40 acres.
Kyle Okke:But considering that there were fields that were that size, the average field size I think I had figured out was like 310 acres or something like that so the average field, averaging the smallest with the largest is, is over 300 acres and some of the biggest fields, like I think, uh, the official day one when we got going, I sent lane and jason after it was just about two sections, yep, in size and it was split up into two different fields to to kind of with the appropriate amount of zones and all that business, to to tackle it appropriately.
Kyle Okke:But it'll be farmed as two sections and and that's how they farm it and where they're able. There's quite a few fields that are just perfectly squared up, sections that are out there, and you go and you look at that and and you look at the zones and the amount of zones you pull for samples and and the transition and all that, and you go, okay, the zones are right, the all that feels right, but it's just you're it. You cannot soil, sample a section anywhere close as fast as you can a quarter section. It's just the distance that you got. I mean you get a few more um probes or whatever, just inherently when you have a field that big for your, for your initial like zone sample size, but it's just the distance you travel and and so if you want to try to keep you fishing with your time. Yeah, you're. You're like foot on the floor. Yes, you're hauling ass across fields, and lane and jason were really good at doing that what?
Lane Bothwell:what does that situation? Although it is a long ways between points, the, the cores were unbelievable. I mean the dirt out there, uh, the soil, so well, the soil, it's, it's a super.
Lane Bothwell:It's a super easy sampling it's a super easy sampling soil. It comes out of the probe very well, you know, and the fields are uh, for the most part, very smooth, being no-till uh for the most part. So you're able to pretty well travel pretty, pretty fast between point to point and there wasn't a lot of hang-ups for the most part between probe and probe, but there were big fields.
Jason Hanson:Okay, stop, everybody. Think of this, think of the word you're going to describe, to describe that soil. Okay, you got three seconds. Okay, I got it. Okay, Jodi, what's the word that you describe it?
Jodi Boe:Gritty.
Jason Hanson:Gritty Sarah.
Sarah Lovas:Flowery, okay, lane the word they would you describe it gritty, gritty, sarah flowery okay, lane baby powder oh, that's good.
Jason Hanson:I was gonna say fluffy baby baby powder is what I my word was too.
Sarah Lovas:It was so when, when Dr. Goos used to talk about you know in Soils 210, how to describe soil Goos used to talk about you know in Soils 210, how to describe soil texture, he used to describe clay as sticky, silt as flowery and sand as gritty, you know. And so when you would feel it, that's what it would feel like. And so it's interesting because I've had a lot of people, even from my backyard here in Hillsboro, asking how the soil is different. Now, of course, I'm here on Fargo clay and so you know that clay just sticks together right and it comes out of that probe in perfect sticks. You know perfect sticks.
Sarah Lovas:That, honestly, I just got done soil sampling a field last week after getting back from Montana and it came out in perfect chunks. But this stuff from Montana, it feels just like you took your baby you know baby powder container out or the flour container out of your pantry and imagine having flour come out of, like you know, a half inch, quarter inch tube. It comes out and it just falls apart. So whereas over here when we soil sample and we take and we get the sample out of the probe, it comes out in chunks Out there it comes out and literally turns to a powder. So it's really hard. I've struggled with trying to figure out what that zero to six inch depth was right away, because it's not like you could actually see it, like I'm used to having the core come out and then I can measure it. You can't do that out there, because it just comes out and that's and that's where the slotted probe is absolutely key out there, absolutely.
Lane Bothwell:It is you guys were right.
Jodi Boe:That's another thing that I learned about Kyle's pickup too is that he had a whole stash of flathead screwdrivers that had like perfect six inch like lengths on them, so all you got to do get to the top of the core, tip it up to the left, and then that six inch cuts and drops into the bucket. It was just perfect. And then, as soon as I lost one, I just had another that I could grab, so it was awesome.
Kyle Okke:That was a Lane idea. Yep, I learned that from Lane. And it's not just any old six-inch screwdriver. You can't just go buy a real like thick, you know stemmed one. You have to find one thin enough that fits between the slotted probe and and so you can cut it. Yeah, that's, that's an important part of that. And that was a little more difficult than I thought and I had to pay more for a couple of screwdrivers and I thought I'd have to pay just to get the like right size. But you're like you can't put a price on this worth it you can't put a price on accuracy you cannot no what I'm hearing is like a full line of Agronomist Happy Hour branded soil sampling accessories.
Jodi Boe:You've got like the magnetic cup holder. You've got the suicide knob, you've got specialty flathead screwdrivers that can only fit in the slotted probe and like cut six inches like there's a whole product line here.
Jason Hanson:It's the Lane Bothwell edition, that's what I'm gonna call it the Lane Bothwell edition.
Lane Bothwell:You have three book of cuss words that come with it too, A free book of cuss words.
Jason Hanson:So when I first got out there we went out on Monday morning the three of us, because the gals weren't there yet and I had to switch to a smaller hole. So Lane borrowed me a tip because it might, that's still, it would, just, it would not. I got down so far and that was it, and that was the key that I mean, the probe tip was hot went to a smaller, when it's dry yep, and that's why the dry tips exist went to a smaller hole and, man, it sampled nice and I'm not a slotted probe fan at all, but it works out there.
Jason Hanson:It worked like a dream. So I brought it back and I was like oh, we'll try this here. Uh, that's a cuss fest, that's a profanity.
Lane Bothwell:It does not work.
Jason Hanson:When you got when you got wet soil and it just doesn't work. So I'm still using my wet tip, but out there. So you got to have a potpourri of tools with you if you're going to do different things in different places or different soils.
Sarah Lovas:I totally was not the believer in the slotted probe.
Kyle Okke:These are the perpetually wet soil people telling us this.
Lane Bothwell:They're like I don't believe this, I don't believe this clays in general.
Kyle Okke:Clay in general is you want to have a solid probe.
Lane Bothwell:Yeah, I agree.
Sarah Lovas:I came out with my PVC pipe to dip my probe in WD-40 and I brought my extra large container of WD-40 all ready to rock and made sure I had drought tips in Brought my extra large container of WD-40 all ready to rock and made sure I had drought tips in my muck tip Nope, what a waste. Didn't need it, did you? Which, by the way, I think I stole somebody's slotted probe. I've got a slotted probe in my pickup and I didn't own one before.
Lane Bothwell:I came back with this so. I own somebody as a spotted pro clearly I probably threw, and like I probably threw it in there when I drove your pickup for those two fields I know and like.
Jodi Boe:On tips, though, too, like it really. Even if you're, if you're like in a place that is perpetually really dry or at a place that is perpetually wet, it doesn't hurt to just have a mix of those probes because, like I think in back to 2021, we had tons of questions at ag vice like, uh, my soil is way too dry. It just falls out of the bottom of the probe and sometimes I'm switching to a wet tip for whatever reason. Help the soil stay in the probe better.
Jodi Boe:It does Some days, just like how the soil is and the combination of moisture and air, like it just takes a different probe on a tip on another day. Or it could take just going from heavy-duty chromoly to like stainless steel. So like have a potpourri, even if it seems like it's dumb, like just have a potpourri because you've got no idea when it's going to come in handy dumb like just have a potpourri, because you've got no idea when it's going to come in handy.
Kyle Okke:So I've got. I've got a good answer. I don't know if I we were talking about the difference between like why I have so many stainless, versus like the chrome moly. So especially if, like, you'd know what we're talking about, if you you get your probes from egg vice, so you've got. You've got two options of probes.
Kyle Okke:You've got a stainless steel probe and you can get that slotted or solid, and then you can get this hardened chrome moly steel and it comes in a slightly bigger diameter and so the tips are a little different.
Kyle Okke:They're a little bigger and I will say those are way nicer on like your difficult zones, your hilltop zones, your rocky fields, and all that because they don't bend.
Kyle Okke:They or the collar will bend, but the, the couple places like I lean to do like stainless more, because the stainless has a narrower diameter and just getting in there to cut the zero to six and separate it, I always still got to like have my finger in there, you kind of like hold the subsoil as you're tipping the probe out, and that bigger diameter is you, just there's like I don't know if it's a burr or what it is.
Kyle Okke:But you got to stick your finger farther in there and you end up callusing or, you know, getting like splits in your cuticles and stuff like that more, and I just don't enjoy it as much. And then if you get into and then if you're using that probe because it might be the only thing you had in your pickup at the time and you hit any clay soil, everything sticks to curl Molly, hardened steel, everything and I it'll look like Lane Bothwell's peanut butter and jelly knife when he's like making sandwiches. Just gross is what it looks like, cause he doesn't fricking clean it off and he just raw dogs it from the peanut butter into the jelly. And I mean I guess you don't got to share with anyone else.
Lane Bothwell:So I tell you what it's okay you don't got to share with anyone else, so I tell you what it's okay, but you've been probably an all-time low for me for nude lunches.
Jason Hanson:I was pretty disappointed in my performance for packing lunches that week oh man, other than the peanut butter and jelly slider was a big win.
Lane Bothwell:Yes.
Jason Hanson:That was I had no idea.
Lane Bothwell:Yes, a PB&J slider that hit different.
Kyle Okke:Well, to my mind, you had no idea. No, like the Cash Wise dollar buns. Oh, those things are great. How?
Jodi Boe:did that compare to the oh, go ahead, no, go for it.
Lane Bothwell:Jodi, you probably have something to say how did it compare to the? Oh, go ahead. No, go for it, Jodi, you probably have something for safe how did it compare to the triple decker?
Jodi Boe:oh, the triple decker that was.
Lane Bothwell:That was a nightmare, a total regret. Uh well, first of all, it was a day old, which you guys knew, it don't? The the bread to jelly to peanut butter ratio was completely off, and then it sat in a couple full day and it was a complete letdown. I completely regretted eating it, but uh, um, you know, the slider is really made up for it and I don't know, don't don't do it.
Kyle Okke:A lot more bread in the ratio yeah, much bread, I don't know.
Lane Bothwell:It just kind of goes, you know, just like lunches. You know if you have a really good lunch, you know you're going to do whatever you have to do to improve your lunch the next day. Same thing with probes. From what I found is even from zone to zone here in eastern South Dakota and the conditions that you have, whether it's wet or dry, and shout out to AGVISE. They typically have something, whether it's a tip or the right probe, to make that experience way better. They really do. They have a lot of stuff to either to get the accuracy of taking your sample uh, not have it plug up or actually getting a good, accurate sample. You, you really do have to have an arsenal of of probes and tips and in different stuff.
Jason Hanson:And uh, same thing with lunches don't, don't eat the same well, the good news is for us is that we would come out to where Kyle was staying in his camper, which he drug out there, and we had a tremendous breakfast to start the day, which was usually well we had what Gotta start the day off on a good foot hashbrowns, and eggs and breakfast, sausage and bacon and OJ and coffee.
Jason Hanson:Well, everybody I'm the only dummy who doesn't drink coffee, apparently so everybody needed their coffee or whatever they needed in the morning, and then off we went and you packed your lunch, and the other shout out would be to Justin Rizvi with Lalleman, because they dropped us two flats of 701 Toro.
Jodi Boe:That was a good beer. That was great beer, wasn't it that?
Lane Bothwell:is a great working beer. They need to start advertising the working beer of North Dakota, I think.
Jason Hanson:Yeah, they have an opportunity. It was a limited edition. 701 Toro. I added my Mexican flair to Toro and it was a Laughing Sun beer and it's excellent. It's very good.
Kyle Okke:Yeah, Mexican lager is a great change-up. Yep, when you're used to like, you know the custom labeling being like here you're going to get a traditional lager or you're going to get a gold nail, and you switch it up just enough where you're like, hey, that's different but it's good and not just. It's not like putting in your Case of the Monday IPAs in there, where only a certain palate will enjoy that case of beer.
Sarah Lovas:That's a good Premium Grain Belt.
Jason Hanson:That was good too.
Kyle Okke:Grain Belts aren't bad. They're a little sweet, but not bad.
Jason Hanson:Well, I think we had Bush Lights along, we had High Noons along, there was some Ultras, there was uh, you name it Double Bum we oh yeah, that was okay.
Kyle Okke:Well, yeah, we can't forget about an important part of the show, an important part of this, so Lane's pickup, so so imagine this convoy, so we can like paint the picture all the way back to the beginning of the trip, and lane and Jason show up at my place, like I don't know, relatively at the same time on Sunday night and we take off Monday morning, and first place we went was to my shop and I hook up one pickup to the other, so I'm towing one pickup without a driver in it and bringing it out to Montana.
Kyle Okke:So we had a pickup for Jodi and then behind me these two guys are following and I think Jason is right behind me, going right behind, and then Lane was behind him and Lane's got a kegerator hanging out the back of his pickup and so I, I brought a camper out the day before, so we had kind of a base camp and so we, we had a place with electric hookups. Uh, one of the farmers I work with, he was generous to say hey, you can come, stay out of my place. I have 50 amp hookups right next to one of my pivots. You can set up right here in the driveway.
Kyle Okke:Awesome view, overlooking, you know one of his fields and yeah, and then we had the power to hook up the camper to all power and we hooked up a kegerator to that, and so we had from what? Eponymous Brewing.
Lane Bothwell:Dwayne Yep Eponymous Brewing, I brought two kegs. Of course, the fan favorite Double Bum, the infamous Double Bum. Yes, not a working beer.
Kyle Okke:Oh, you don't drink that during the day.
Lane Bothwell:No.
Kyle Okke:You don't have that in between fields, because there won't be a next field after too many of those.
Lane Bothwell:No, you wrap up. You wrap up after some.
Kyle Okke:Yeah, you're not going to get a job done there.
Jason Hanson:No, A couple of those and you'll actually enjoy a triple-decker peanut butter.
Kyle Okke:You won't even know what you ate.
Lane Bothwell:My evening meal. After a couple of Double Bums, I had a binge of pickled with my meal, probably, oh man.
Sarah Lovas:So it's really funny because I've had a bunch of people like trying to figure out why I would drive across the state of North Dakota in my Dodge pickup, fondly called the Blue Beacon, and so why I would do that just to go soil sampling. And I said, well, you kind of got to understand. Understand, it's kind of like deer camp, except it's for soil sampling. And I said that was the whole point. Is we just kind of get together and hang out and then at the same time we're soil sampling like as many fields as we possibly can, and it was soil sampling in a place I had never been.
Sarah Lovas:So I got to see soils that I had never seen before and really handle them. Because that's when you really get to know the landscape, right After you're driving up and down and actually seeing how everything lays on the topography. And then when you handle the soils and you really get to feel it and see the color, you know how much organic matters and they're just visually analyzing it, all that kind of stuff really helps you kind of get things figured out. And so when I explain this to people they all kind of look at me and they're like huh, and that's about all I get.
Jason Hanson:Yeah, you won't get it unless you're Because of the trip. They were saying oh, because of you, yeah.
Jodi Boe:Well, speaking of Deer Camp, we have not discussed the cosmetic upgrade that Sarah's vehicle went under in. Montana. Great segue and I believe it's called the Blue Buck now.
Sarah Lovas:Absolutely. I'm going to take Canva away from you, Jodi.
Jason Hanson:Me and Lane had two fields. So Kyle's like the command center in this whole thing and he's handing off. You got this field, here's this field, we punch it in on the field mapper. And so him and I, lane, had two fields and he had a south field and I had a north field and, lane, you can take it, you can take it from there.
Sarah Lovas:Well, we had to switch pickups too, because we had Travis, our programmer. This was actually really cool. So GK Technology launched a new app GK Field Mapper and so one of the things that we were doing on this trip was really everybody was using this app and really testing it out big time. We've got five pickups out there, we're all on Kyle's account and we're bringing up the zones and we're soil sampling off of it and it was working great. But it was really neat because the guy who actually wrote the app is in Wyoming and it was actually closer for him to come and soil sample with us than it was for me to drive from from Hillsboro.
Sarah Lovas:So he comes up and joins us and and he's just hanging out with all the different soil samplers seeing how we all, you know, all of us do soil sampling. So he's hanging out with Jodi, he's riding around with Lane and finally Lane is like or finally, travis is like I want to ride with Sarah. I literally have got one seat in the blue beacon, blue buck, whatever. I literally have one seat and and it's the driver's seat. And so, in order to make this work, you know, travis said well, can't we just change pickups with with Lane and then there'll be two seats in there and I said okay, which is all fine and dandy, until you get into somebody else's pickup and then you realize their soil sampling operation is is nothing like how you're pulling up, pulling samples in yours. I felt like loss.
Lane Bothwell:If someone, if you think, when somebody gets in your normal daily driver vehicle and they move the seat either forward or backward, like a half inch, and you can tell immediately. Just imagine if you have a system down to a T, to where it's like just memory. You can do it in your sleep and then you completely change that 100 it's.
Sarah Lovas:It's a complete catastrophe, is what it is Travis to this day, must think that I know nothing about soil sampling because I got it and I'm like where is this, where is that? You know? I'm trying to figure it all out. And Lane takes off at my pickup and he's like I don't even get air conditioning anymore. And I'm like, oh, trust me, there's more to this pickup than that.
Lane Bothwell:I was over the air conditioning real quick when I found a gold mine at that field. I know that.
Sarah Lovas:What was the gold mine? You can take the story from there.
Lane Bothwell:So we switched pickups. What was the goal line? You can take the story from there. So we switch, continue. I I'm in Sarah's pickup and me, and me and Jason go to our respective fields and I I have been to these fields before last year actually, and Kyle said that. So I was like, okay, I think I understand this. And I was like I'm pretty sure last year we had to go through this gate and I, I I said you can go down this trail, take a left here in your field. Well, I'm out opening my gate and I drop the post on this deer skull. And I was just like I mean, I was like, even if I didn't get that field sampled, I had a good day. I was like I nailed it. I picked up this deer skull and uh, and of course I had to go find, uh, some barbed wire somewhere. And I clipped some barbed wire and let's just say I put on probably one of the best additions right, be better than the Rubbermaid container to the Blue Beacon there. There's no doubt about that.
Jason Hanson:So I get back and Lane's sitting there and he's like the cat that ate the canary, you know kind of thing. And I'm like he goes, you should go check the front of the truck. I said did you put it? Because he's always giving Sarah a bad time. He's going to put some South Dakota State Jacks, you know, decals or coloring on there, you know, because it's kind of got that South Dakota State blue color to it. I said, did you put a sticker on that? Nope, Did you put a stripe? Did you do something on the front? Nope, just go look and I walk around the corner and I watch my pants and I'm like where the hell did you find this? And he's laughing, oh my gosh.
Jason Hanson:So we head back and we got a couple more fields to do and it's just getting dark now, right, yeah, so we, we end up getting done and we park kind of down uh, Sarah's out in the field doing it and we park kind of where over and we hope she saw us. And then Jodi and and Kyle come and they pull in where Sarah's at and like, well, we better go up there. So we, we pull in and she doesn't know this is on the truck, right. So of course she parks with the lights on and Lane's truck and Lane drives up in her truck and puts it right in the headlights and she goes walking out and I'm sitting in my truck just watching this whole thing happen and she's just like what is going on and then it was so funny, and then we was a late night, right, we couldn't, we didn't end up at Lindsey at the bar that was kind of the goal was to get to get to that little that night, though all I know
Sarah Lovas:is if you drive a Dodge pickup and you think you're gonna grab life by the horns.
Kyle Okke:Now I really can't you really need to know and let me paint like a.
Jodi Boe:Let's paint a picture of this deer skull like it's not just like a weathered old deer skull, like there is fur that is still matted to this thing, like this is a rough looking skull.
Sarah Lovas:It's a true treasure you know it's really funny what the whole thing is right. So I live in town in Hillsboro and um and and it's just really handy during soil sampling season to have my sampling pickup right here so like if I get a chance I can just like run out and go and soil sample. I've had a couple of neighbors ask about what is on the front of my Dodge pickup now and I kind of feel bad because we definitely have maybe some retired folks in my neighborhood.
Kyle Okke:You live in a nice neighborhood. Let's just say that.
Sarah Lovas:And they're kind of like so what's on the front of your pickup? And I'm like, oh, never mind.
Jason Hanson:Long story you might not find as humorous as I do, and our one rule was is that when we go back out to Glendive because we had such a great time, it was fun, I mean the Field Mapper, right. So there's multiple trucks running this and I came up with the logo, I think, the slogan. It's so easy that even Jason Hanson can use it correctly, right? So that should tell everybody who's listening that well, what is this? And I'm going to tell you right now it is kick, it is awesome.
Jason Hanson:So we have five of us out there and Kyle was kind of dictating giving us you know, this field zero is that's yours, that field's yours, this is a four zone, this is a three zone, whatever. And you just go through and punch this stuff in and boom, you would, you would go. So that is. It was great to have the people who are promoting it and the and the person who designed it to actually use it. So there was like legitimate, I mean we, I mean we're getting some stuff done out there as well, besides the goofing off, which was the fun part. But uh, yeah, it's, it's I, I love it. And so I've come back now and I started doing some stuff on my Surface Pro and yes, Kyle, I, I should just yeet them right out the window.
Kyle Okke:I can't believe you're putting up with the service pro and you haven't made. You know, I just told leah, like figure out whatever we need to do to get an iPad with cellular service in it. Yeah, because it's that much nicer it is and actually that app is so cool because so I obviously got multiple screens on my computer here and I've got ADMS open on the other side. I've got ADMS open on the other side and I actually just opened up a field that Sarah sampled and boom, there's all of her sample points right there.
Sarah Lovas:Did you get all the sample points back from all of us? Yeah, Yep. So they all came in your computer and they're all there.
Kyle Okke:They're all there, which is really cool because in some of those fields that you guys sampled last year, there were points on some of them, but not all of them. Yep, yep, and so that was. That was when lane and I did stuff together. My points came across, but some reason his weren't logging everything and and like that's one of the things.
Jodi Boe:That's what I noticed about sampling for you, Kyle, is like I was so much faster in the fields that there was points already there versus when.
Kyle Okke:I had to make the decision. It's so much faster when you have points and count.
Jodi Boe:Yes, absolutely, and like backing up a step too. So what GK Field Mapper is is it is a GIS app for your phone, and in this instance, so GK Technology. Right, we are an ag software company, and so this is our entry into the app space. So, android users, iOS users, this is something that you can download, and you don't have to be an ADMS user to use it. You can be someone that has never heard of ADMS before, which is our, basically our.
Jodi Boe:It's a whole panacea of things that it can do, but for most of you that are listening, you'll probably think about it as being a zone- making software. But GK Field Mapper. What's great about it is you can load your zone maps into the app, you can load your sample points into the app, and then you can go out, and either you can download them before you go out, have them on your phone, or load them into your phone before you go and have them when you're out there in the field, and then, when you're actually out in the field, you can very easily mark the points and then get those points back when you're back at the office, and the thing that makes it super fast is the fact that it connects to the GK Cloud. So if you are an ADMS user and you're somebody that makes zone maps and then goes out to the field to collect those samples for those zone maps, you can push them up from ADMS and then you can have them in your phone as soon as you've got cell phone signal, or on your iPad, whatever you're using the soil sample. So it's super quick that way and we've had it out for what is it?
Jodi Boe:A month now. We've learned some things about it and we've got improvements on the way too, but it's been great and, like we talked, we've talked a lot about, you know, different things that we do each of us to make soil sampling easier and faster and more mistake proof, and this is a big improvement and folks go look for it in the app store, look for it in the Android store, give it a try 100% worth what the app costs?
Kyle Okke:Yes, absolutely, yep, store. Give it a try. 100 worth what the app costs? Yes, absolutely, yep, the the, which actually doesn't cost any different than any other app you pay for.
Jodi Boe:Yeah, yeah, so yep. And and to be clear on pricing, like it is free, you can download it. You know you, you have to have, like, you have to sign in with your name and like your password, but you do not have to buy subscription to the GK Cloud, you can just use it. But having that subscription, uh, there's different rates and different memories. You can pay for that, but that will give you access to that cloud feature where you can push data back and forth.
Jason Hanson:I've got to say one thing because I'm probably going to have to. I wish the mapper could keep my ThinkPad battery charged on my freaking computer, so I'm probably going to have to jump here and do a little recharge. But the maps that we had to deal with were so awesome. That was one thing. Like I missed out on probably one of the best pictures of a zone that I've seen in a long time, and that was the one day you and I, sarah, we're on a section doing it right, and I graciously took the red zones because I had the red truck right and I'm in a red zone and when I drive into the spot, imagine a section of land and there is this little red circle. Imagine a section of land and there is this little red circle, and when I drove into that circle I was sitting in the middle of a green kochia patch, the exact size that was on that map. Now, this map, I assume Kyle, was probably made in January or February, and here we are at the end of August.
Sarah Lovas:And it's perfect. It was so much fun being out there to see that, to see how, when zones are set up, the way that they're supposed to be set up, and you drive in to the different zones, they just make sense you can tell. You can tell by where you are sitting in the field on the landscape. You can tell by the different colors of soil that you pull up.
Jason Hanson:It's amazing yeah, so that was. That was something that it's uh, so it's, it's the person that's putting the, designing it together, putting it, putting the stuff together. But that was that was really fun to get into some really big pieces and when you got a program that's like you guys have.
Kyle Okke:It makes it. It makes it easy when you want to do something.
Sarah Lovas:So to that point, though, I want to ask a question, cause, Kyle, you made all the zones that we pulled out in. Montana. So you made those zones yourself that we pulled out in Montana. So you made those zones yourself. And I know Lane you have Kurt make a lot of zones down your neck of the woods right yeah, yeah, Kurt's my guy. So when you drive into zones, I mean, do you see that thing too like when it works?
Lane Bothwell:yeah. So that's a very typical thing for us, where Kurt, of course, will be in the office. He'll go through a lot of imagery, he'll put a map together and he'll spit it out and he goes okay, here's the map, go sample it. It's not just go sample it, it's go verify that map. And, with the program that you guys got just makes it first of all extremely easy to make a map from the office and then it just makes it extremely easy for me when I'm out there taking the cores, to verify that. Yeah, this, these zones make sense, or it's. Hey, maybe some changes can be made to either this zone or this zone should be now turned into a blue zone because it's wet, granted, it's still low yielding, it's still a different zone. So the the app is extremely easy to use. It's it makes us very efficient, it's very versatile, it makes us to have a lot less equipment and it just makes the overall experience for me and Kurt as a team to try and get this done accurately extremely easy and done very well.
Sarah Lovas:It is pretty neat to have really awesome zones like. I've noticed that too when I've soil sampled around. Here too, when I make zones, you know you drive into places and it just it makes sense. When you drive into that red zone, you know you're in the place where you're supposed to be yeah okay, maybe you might come across a place where you're like, yeah, I should mod this out.
Sarah Lovas:It's still a low production area, but it's low producing for a different reason, so I'm going to mod this out but, for the most part, when you drive into a zone, it just makes sense because of the way the zones are set up and then those are the things that we can do with the app as well.
Lane Bothwell:Where? I was just going to say that's very easy, quick changes with the options that you guys have that go right back up to the cloud that Kurt can see, basically in real time, as I'm out in the field, making the changes to the map he made, you know.
Kyle Okke:That's probably why I like the app the most. Yeah, right now is sure. It's super simple. Like I can sit on my desktop right now and it just takes two right clicks, save to GK Cloud and then boom it's, it's in the app and I'm ready to sample. Like, to me, that's way less steps than what it used to be, when I would have to be just hooking in a thumb drive, transferring files onto a thumb drive and then bringing a thumb drive to a different surface pro computer and then transferring again and and hoping that my surface pro that's been riding around is getting rattled to death and getting full of dust that it's going to survive enough to transfer files. So so one part, just like the, the app being seamless like that, just where you're like right click, save the cloud, doom done and and it's great.
Kyle Okke:But like, the Quick Marks thing is like such an upgrade too. So that's, I keep different buttons on mine now. So I'll have, like you know, like an anomaly, like if something's really weird, I'll have here's. That, here's my normal point. And then here's like a mod area point, because I totally have fields and I've been doing this now like around, like this stuff out in Montana. It's like I like it so much out there because, like you guys said, like the zones just match, it's really cut and dry. There's not a whole lot of weird delineation that happens out there Like great example of where he was today.
Kyle Okke:There's two very different poor productivity areas one that's like straight heavy clay and very salty and very a lot of salinity, and then there's more of like topography related sand and, and so it was super easy to go in there and they show up on the map the same color because they're both poor productivity. But if you start mixing all that together, you you don't really get a true representation of what that field should look like. Because if you're starting to pull in like these clays that are high in salts, well it's also probably really high in like potassium and it's high in some other things too, where when you're pulling like sand ridges and stuff like that, that's going to be really low in potassium, that's going to be really low in organic matter and it's going to not be good. And those really heavy salt areas are going to be super high in nitrates. They're going to be super high in potassium. They're going to be potentially higher organic matter.
Lane Bothwell:And now there's an easy way to be like completely different.
Kyle Okke:Yeah, and and now, like you know the way, the way I do my sampling, I've got barcoded labels already printed out on bags. I'm set to go the way I am. I carry extra bags. But you know like, unless you have a good way to mark where you've been differently, you know why save another sample because it would be more hassle. And so now it's like oh hey, I hit a clay knob, okay, different bucket, different mark, and you just start to mark them differently. And then you, then it's so much easier to just separate out your, your different low productivity, because some low productivity areas you can't do anything to fix and some you can right, and so to separate out those things and that's great, it's exactly what I do.
Lane Bothwell:It's exactly what I do when I'm giving a map. Um, I, I give different marks for different productive areas, and it used to be. I wrote this down prior to like this area Northwest corner that should be. It's still a low productive area, but it is not a red, it's a blue zone and I had to have to write this stuff down. Now, with this app, it's literally like three clicks, boom, different mark. I sample the zones completely differently. The marks are separated by color. They're easily identifiable. Kurt makes the changes Done.
Sarah Lovas:Yeah, because when you get done sampling like if you have those marks set up so that you are sampling like an area that needs to be changed to a mod area or something like that if you just make a quick mark for a mod area, those sample points go directly back to Kurt or like Kyle.
Lane Bothwell:When you get back at sampling they'll be there at your computer, like right now you're not writing notes down that you hope you can find that you used a marker that barely worked on a sample bag you probably lost anyway. That was my system now. It's just like bing, bing, bing. Kurt gets the information right away. He makes the changes, we get the sample bags made correctly. It's just so smooth.
Jodi Boe:So to illustrate what this means in the app and to kind of put a picture of what we're talking about and having these Quick Marks you can set up, so, for example, all of us that are running the app out in Montana, that's five different samplers.
Jodi Boe:And so what Kyle had done is he had made these template quick marks in the Field Mapper app, which you can do for points, lines, polygons, continuous points. Each of us had our own Quick Mark and so if we're out in a field, mine would be GK Jodi, and so Kyle can see every single quick mark that I made for sampling points out there. Lane's got a different one, but like you can do multiples of these in the field, so, like if two of us were sampling the same field, there'd be two sets of quick marks in that field and then come back into ADMS as different layers. And so same thing with, like, your mod area points, your abnormal soil sample points. Those would be the different layer of points that would then come back to ADMS and you can view them as separate as the other points. So there's flexibility in how you can collect data out in the field using the GK Field Mapper app.
Kyle Okke:To me that was the big deal.
Lane Bothwell:That was even making a boundary for Kyle.
Kyle Okke:I got into a field and a portion oh gosh, I gotta go look at that one it was like kind of cut up I know exactly the fields it was two different crops, so when I got into it yeah, I was like I don't know.
Lane Bothwell:I think this is probably something Kyle wants to know, so I I just made a boundary of there.
Kyle Okke:It is actually sure what I did, but I made a boundary of what I did, but I made a boundary.
Lane Bothwell:This was wheat, this was whatever the other crop was, and maybe that needs to be fertilized differently, and it just showed up right as cloud. I didn't have to transfer a thumb drive like we used to do or anything like that. It was extremely easy.
Jodi Boe:I'll text you a screenshot of the line I drew on a satellite map in the field where I thought this boundary was, and then you can figure out how to bring that boundary into ADMS later. Yeah, yeah, it takes a lot of that guesswork out and a lot of the hassle of moving data back and forth.
Kyle Okke:Yeah, that boundary you drew it showed up and you're just perfect.
Sarah Lovas:That's awesome.
Kyle Okke:Yeah, I just went and loaded your points and that boundary for that particular field you're talking about.
Sarah Lovas:Maybe this is just me, but one of my favorite features in the app is that you can get directions to a shape file, so like if you've got a boundary or sample points that are in there and you you ask the app to give you directions to get there. It's really handy, so if you don't know where you're going, you can like kind of figure out where you are going. I'm kind of always the person just following everybody else on these sorts of deals, so it was kind of nice to have an idea.
Kyle Okke:so that navigate two options pretty nice, especially when you're helping someone else out in an area where you don't know where they're going, so that that part's especially nice there's hills out there, like high hills.
Sarah Lovas:We don't have that in the Red River Valley. I can always see where I want to go here and everything is completely square. There's like hills and stuff like that out there.
Kyle Okke:It's very confusing around here because your pickup's going to need to be in four-wheel drive to climb the slope. To get you know like it might not be these like huge fields and gentle slopes like they have there. It'll be all of a sudden you're like whoa, how am I driving up to get to that zone? Like I'm gonna have to. I just can't like drive straight up this hill like I'm gonna have to like make an approach on it and like come in an angle.
Sarah Lovas:Just stay in the right spot so I don't like roll out of the zone once I get up there.
Kyle Okke:Once you find this spot, it shouldn't be so bad, although today there were a couple of spots Like I the slope I was on. I'm like there's a trick to sampling on a slope because your you know, your quicktach collar wants to like kind of hang to level.
Jodi Boe:Yes.
Kyle Okke:And you do not want to. Yeah, and when you know so, when you're in an angle you don't want that probe to push. You know what the angle is going to push, and then the probe's hanging level and then that's where shit bends. You don't want that stuff to happen. So that's where the six inch screwdriver comes in real handy because, like, you can push the probe to the angle of the way the cylinder is going to push it and then it goes straight into the ground, you know, perpendicular into the ground. I had to do that a few times today so I didn't bend my probe.
Sarah Lovas:So when I came back to the Red River Valley and I sampled my one field about four miles away from the Red River all one soil, type cargo clay, completely flat I just like hurried up and put my pickup into neutral and I didn't have to worry about rolling in neutral and then I ran my probe and it went straight down and came back up again. It was amazing.
Kyle Okke:Park and break. Important features.
Jodi Boe:Yes.
Sarah Lovas:It was so weird getting used to putting my pickup in park out there. That was so weird. I'm getting used to putting my pickup in park out there, that was so weird.
Lane Bothwell:Well, the Montana experience is. It's quite amazing. When you get a group of people who are experienced in pulling cores, you know the amount of work you can actually accomplish. You know with the equipment we had, you know the app. You know with the equipment we had, you know the the app, you know all the experience that we had there and, of course, all the pickups and all the equipment and then just the amount of just shenanigans you can have put on top of it. It's, it's an experience that's you know. I mean, there's something about having a lot of fun and getting a lot of shit done at the same time. That doesn't happen. So that's the Montana experience that I know. Where you show up, you get a lot of good work done. That's quality. And then the amount of fun that you get to have kind of afterwards or even during, that's the Montana sampling experience.
Kyle Okke:The analogy Sarah used earlier, I think, is a great way to describe it. So it's like deer camp. So you get a bunch of people that go to a hunting camp. It's not like they're all together all the time when they're doing that, like if you're going to go on some deer hunt, you're sitting by yourself all day, you know, on some deer blind or a stand or something like that, but then you're meeting up maybe mid-morning, or some people sit all day, but you're getting back for mid-morning, for lunch, or you get supper later and you're hanging out with everyone. After the fact you're talking about your day and how everything went well.
Kyle Okke:It's really no different, but in a working capacity yeah and what we did there, because we're all kind of working independently and you're like, oh yeah, that one field, kyle. Oh man, you shouldn't, you, you shouldn't be sampling the red and orange zones on this. Matter of fact, you shouldn't even be sampling the yellow zones. You should just be focusing on the high productivity area, because all you're doing is everything in your equipment list when you're in these rocky, absolutely horrid garbage ground areas. And Jodi has learned too.
Lane Bothwell:What.
Kyle Okke:She. There you go.
Jodi Boe:I don't know if you can see this, but I'm holding a stainless steel slotted probe in the shape of a J I didn't think that A stainless steel one. That is amazing. It does. It's amazing. I'm sorry, Kyle, a wall hang.
Kyle Okke:Hey, it's a badge of honor is what it is. It's a badge of honor to have that.
Jodi Boe:It is just how it goes, yeah same with the red zones on that field.
Kyle Okke:So there's a field that we wouldn't have done this year because that field went to pulse crops for next year, but it would be one that would be experienced the following year. In the mod zone or having the different quick marks feature is definitely something that I would probably use on the field just to mark out the different soil types. And so out there, like everyone described, or when Jason was asking like how do you describe this soil? And you're like like flour or baby powder or fluffy or you know whatever you want to say, Well, there's another soil type out there that's like rock and gravel, river rock, Just that river rock. Yeah, yeah, it's beat the hell out of any equipment you're trying to shove down there.
Kyle Okke:And and, uh, there's one field that was actually like on the main highway we came in would have been on the east side of that highway and I remember doing. It was a field I did and remember going across it. Like every hilltop you go across, you're like oh God, this is never going to work. You look down on the ground and it's all river rock. You're like I'm not even going to try to stick this, Like there's no point.
Kyle Okke:And then you drive to the next hilltop and it's like baby powder, you know, just like the real flowery type soil, and you'd go, and then every other hilltop was like different, and I'm like this is unique, like how is this one so nice and this one's so full of rock? And so that's something I wish I had when I went through there and, matter of fact, I could identify what hilltops had rock on it, because I did proceed to drive to every hilltop in that field to get the red zones and the only ones I actually collected were the flowery soil types and not the river rock ones. So so I I kind of, in a way, I already have that data or have it separated, but it's, it's just you know again, another thing you could do with that app just separate out these things and go.
Jodi Boe:What was the final like? Do you have stats on how many fields were sampled during that week and then how many acres that was?
Kyle Okke:I can give you some rough guesstimates. Um, let's say the way this worked out. There there were 60, I think it was 68 fields and total, let's say, but there's 64 fields that were zones. So there were 64 zone fields that were were taken that week and I would say an average, we were pulling three and a half zones a field when you figure it out. So now you're talking 224 different soil samples but at two different diffs. So you so, so approximately 450 bags of soil that were collected for for the job that were there. Now, acres wise, I I never did check, but just between the couple of farms there, I I know roughly it's like right around that, like 19, 20, 000 acre kind of mark there is, is the amount of acres that represents, but between the two different farm operations. That just on what we soil sample, not but um, we didn't soil, sample their whole farms by no no, anything that would have went to a pulse crop.
Kyle Okke:They have a pretty standard uh approach to it and and so they just flat rate a you know as much phosphate as they dare you know with in a starter package or whatever. Or some one of them grows, I think. But what do you just? They just put down. Now there's a stat that maybe Jason kept track of.
Lane Bothwell:Jason, did you keep marks of beers?
Jason Hanson:Well, my truck was fairly consistent. So hey, I will say this First day I picked up a six off the flat right. So Lane's all about the ice and the ice at the Three Bloody Knives Riverside Inn is they got this?
Sarah Lovas:huge scoop bucket.
Jason Hanson:And Lane's, like I think he was going to throw his back out for how much ice he was going to bring in that cooler. So he brought that along and I got some ice and a six was about good for the day. Well then, when Travis was along like yeah, he's a programmer, but that boy can drink beer I brought a 12 along that day and that was not enough. That was not enough. So we blew through those two cases on the flats and then we did go out one night to the bar. It was Thursday, that was the Bison-Colorado game. We went to that and I think we put a fairly decent dent in your Double Bum keg.
Lane Bothwell:We did, we did. I don't know how we did it. It's going to run out here any time, yeah.
Jason Hanson:Yeah, that was mostly Kyle and Jodi, I think.
Lane Bothwell:Clearly. Clearly my favorite was probably having to load it up in the back of. You know, of course, the farmer that we were working for was awesome.
Kyle Okke:Yes, Of course the farmer that we were working for was awesome. Yes, he is.
Lane Bothwell:He had a mat in the back of his side to plug into the side of his house so he could grill us some food that evening. That was probably a highlight of drinking beers.
Sarah Lovas:That was so funny. He's like I was hauling hay all day and I just did not have time to stop and pick up beer.
Jason Hanson:We're like don't worry, don't worry, we got you covered. We're good, yeah, we're doing, we got you covered.
Jodi Boe:They also have a cat that can do somersaults. Like I'm not even kidding.
Lane Bothwell:Oh yeah.
Jodi Boe:That was my highlight, like not beer related related.
Lane Bothwell:I'm very sorry, but Miss Kitty can do somersaults yeah, it's always a plus when you're working for growers that really care. You know that they're, they're really into what you're doing. They're, they're, they're they. They believe in the system. You know that that makes the work all that much better to do. I mean the compliments that he was given, you know, not just to Kyle but to everybody. This guy was a standout farmer and that makes the job all that much better. It does make it a lot of fun.
Jason Hanson:It was just fun to go meet him, meet his wife, see their place, see their operation. Uh, I got like the really cushy composite sample. It was right across from where we camped, where the camper was, so it's on the pivot and he drove like the perfect one, just small enough, right next to the camper.
Kyle Okke:Yep, just hammer it out quick and be done that was kick kickoff for that game.
Jason Hanson:So I'm listening to the game and he drives up and he's like I'm kind of curious as to what is going on. You know, when you, what are you doing? So I was just, I was just showing them, even on the composite, I was dropping pins and I said this is great, Kyle just gives us the stuff. We get the field. Here's our cursor for the truck. We get the field. Here's our cursor for the truck.
Jason Hanson:We go to it and we drop pins and these show up, and so next time we come back we'll say he's like really, yeah. So then I was like he was all excited because there was this wasn't like you know an avid costello type routine, peanut butter and jelly type crew here, I mean it was. It was pretty professional actually.
Lane Bothwell:That's the A-team man. It's happening, yes that's right.
Sarah Lovas:Professional what we're trying to figure it out, but we're professionals, hey.
Jason Hanson:I tell you what I had more fun making memes and things like that over things that had happened over the last couple days. I'm actually going to drop that on. You're very good at it too.
Sarah Lovas:Yes, somebody else.
Jason Hanson:Yeah, someone else, and it was mentioned. Someone else gets in your truck and they've moved your shit in your soil sampling truck. You've lost your space, your mind. You don't know where you're at in the soil sample sphere.
Jodi Boe:Yeah.
Jason Hanson:Yeah.
Jodi Boe:Like I do not use TikTok much. I do not have a personal account, but you should all follow Rock and Roll Agronomy on TikTok, if you don't already. Jason is gold.
Jason Hanson:I don't need that pressure. But, like we said before, I think we even started podcasting. Content creation is a lot of work If you want, depending on what you want to do. If it's entertainment, it can be just whatever, but if you're actually trying to get a point across on things, you got to put some thought into it and it's tougher and it takes time. So I don't know and there's a lot of other stuff too that we did. I'm really curious because we probably mentioned I don't know if you guys had to go charge my computer, so I was like off for 10, 15 minutes or whatever. But we had a chance to do what we call a rodeo and that is, we got everybody on the same field and everybody got a color and then Kyle basically blew the horn and we all took off and it was just chaos and it was so much fun because everybody's competitive and you want to get done first and, uh, there was a couple things in there, and that was yes, you want to do a good.
Lane Bothwell:Do it effectively.
Jason Hanson:yes, Cover your zone Yep and Leadfoot Lane. Over there You've got to watch him, because if you're going to try to keep up with him, holy buckets sir, you're going to get some air time when you're making some jumps and all that. And then that was the spot where we came in and we decided and at some other podcast we'll probably have the song that's going to come out, right, and this is this is for you, sarah about I know that's why the look on her face is like, yeah, what's going on here?
Jason Hanson:what we're. I'm not going to divulge it here. We'll wait, I gotta, I gotta work on a little bit, but we like to give each other a hard time when we're out there too, because it's part of the fun.
Sarah Lovas:Let's just say we all like to give each other a hard time. They all like to really pick on me.
Jason Hanson:Actually that's very true.
Lane Bothwell:Yes, it's a little bit true.
Sarah Lovas:It's a little bit true.
Jason Hanson:I'm trying to drive across the state of North Dakota on a Friday before Labor Day weekend and not get caught by smoky bears with a stupid deer skull hanging off my license plate.
Jodi Boe:It was the only Dodge out there, so it's pretty easy to get picked on. And that rodeo field though that was a two-mile-long field. It was fun. Without a lead foot you don't get that done. That was so much fun it was.
Jason Hanson:it was good, so we'll have some drone footage.
Kyle Okke:Kyle was Kyle get that uploaded so you can access it. Jodi, I've got your link, I just, and I've got a drone sitting next to my desk now. I just got to actually spend time in here where I can go upload it.
Jodi Boe:Was it anything like me? Where, like I, started to look at the GoPro footage and then realize that the 20 minute soil sampling video that I took out the front of my windshield was like 11 gigs?
Kyle Okke:Yeah Well, yeah, I haven't looked to see how big some of these files are, but yes, it was it was so much fun.
Jason Hanson:That was such a great trip because we sound like goofballs but we're pretty serious about what we do and to go out there and experience a different area, somebody we didn't really know to work five trucks at one point together, six people, five, five trucks. The field mapper worked outstanding and so everything's kind of like clicking along and that was that was probably the fun, funnest part of it and just to be able to soil sample with people that do this job from so many different areas.
Sarah Lovas:I mean, you think about all the geographies that we come in from, um, so so to have all those different place places coming in and just really seeing farming in a different place it was really fun.
Lane Bothwell:It was really fun yeah, anybody that spends a lot of time soil sampling it we all know that it can. It gets long. You know you got your good days, your bad days, but they're really. It really goes to show that there's actually a group of people. You're not alone, you're not the only person out there having a really day trying to pull cores that that there's actually a. There is a a fun group of people out there actually getting a lot done and having a lot of fun doing it. You know you really find a group of people that you have a lot of common with and actually like to, you know, maybe hang out with and have a beer with and have a lot of common with.
Jason Hanson:The funnest comment I got was somebody had said or they got a comment because we were posting content Every day we'd go out, I'd take stuff and then I'd put it together and whatever. And somebody had said to someone else that got to us was like great, these guys are making it look like it's the funnest on the whole planet. And now my farmers think that I'm gonna want to do this and I'm like, oh, that's we mission accomplished. Yes, that was it. It came across exactly how it was for us it was.
Kyle Okke:It was an awesome experience yeah, and, and to me this is you know, yes, there's like a job at hand that you got to get it done and and all that. But it's also a time of year where it's like a little more relaxed and it feels less high stakes because, like we all know, like and I think that's why we all enjoy this part so much is like oh, this is the fun part, it's the actual soil collection and then it like starts the whole thing, that that goes for the rest of the year and it's going like okay, then it's fertility planning, then it's compiling all that information, putting it together. Go, here's what I think the fertility plan should be. Do you think this is what the fertility plan should be? And then you get like a nod or uh, no, I want to change some stuff here. And then you get like a nod or a no, I want to change some stuff here.
Kyle Okke:And then you start to put together the fertility plan and then you're like okay, this is how much NPK you're going to need. And they go and do their purchasing. Then it gets quiet for a little bit and then it gets hectic again, you know, come spring, when it's like okay, this is all got to come together, hear the maps, you know, and try to make it all talk and come together and and make the prescription come out right and and all that, yeah. So it's to me like the fall is the fun time and I think that's why we all enjoy the same sentiment, because you're like, yeah, this is like, yeah, you got to get the job done, but it's definitely a more like no fire on your kind of time, you know I agree to have all the turn and burn.
Sarah Lovas:That goes with the rest of it yep, I think it's really important to remember too, just in case anybody's out there that hasn't pulled a soil sample ever in their life. When you see the agronomist happy hour um t-shirt that says if you ain't swearing, you ain't soil sampling, there is validity to that, so just just keep in mind almost every day you soil sample.
Kyle Okke:There's a few cuss words yeah, even in montana I don't matter where you are.
Lane Bothwell:Yeah, I agree.
Kyle Okke:It doesn't matter.
Lane Bothwell:It doesn't matter.
Jason Hanson:I had a great day cussing I mean sampling today.
Jodi Boe:I want to say a Winnebago Man quote, but I don't want to get you guys censored or whatever.
Kyle Okke:Oh, we already put it explicitly, you go for it? Oh good.
Jodi Boe:If someone says one more time, my mom listens to this.
Kyle Okke:Well, now we know if she's going to actually listen to the whole thing, because we're like an hour and 40 minutes into this now. Yeah, so.
Jodi Boe:This will be a great test. Perfect.
Kyle Okke:This will be a great test to see how long your mom actually listens to this podcast and if she's really paying attention when you get to this. This point, but oh great but with that, I think that that's a great kind of segue to say.
Kyle Okke:You know we can kind of wrap this one up, but yeah, I mean like I can't thank this group enough for the help you guys coming together and getting this all done together like we have. But then the camaraderie and having the fun we did doing this I mean, like you said, you know it's like a hunting camp, you know it's like you got stories, you're sharing about it, you're thinking about the next time you go do it and you can get together. So yeah, it's a lot of fun.
Jason Hanson:I do appreciate, uh, I don't mind the work, but the work goes really quick If, if you're with people that also enjoy what you do, and afterwards you uh, it was so many things I picked up and got and pulled out of that whole experience too, whether it was pieces of equipment or advice or stories or whatever, so it was great.
Kyle Okke:I'm ready to go back again, oh there's Christmas presents that I'm getting for all of you.
Jason Hanson:I got back and it was so boring.
Kyle Okke:I have mild OCD and there's like something that drives me.
Jason Hanson:I was sitting. I'm like I'm the only one sampling today.
Kyle Okke:This sucks. I don sitting, I'm like I'm the only one sampling today.
Jason Hanson:This sucks. I don't have any working beers. And there's no peanut butter and jelly stories. And there's no, there's no, there's nobody that called the Black Pearl the Black Squirrel.
Kyle Okke:Oh yes.
Jodi Boe:Someone is really bad at hearing, and that's me Sorry.
Kyle Okke:With those special noise canceling headphones, I wonder how good you could hear.
Jodi Boe:Yeah, not at all wait, Kyle, you said Christmas presents, that's chiropractic appointments for a month I'd have to work on that too Well thank you to GK.
Kyle Okke:Like color-coded buckets or important things.
Jodi Boe:Yeah, thank you guys so much for having us out there and for hosting Kyle and for being a fantastic host, and even though you made us work, it was really fun. And thank you so much for letting us test our new app and experience eastern Montana.
Jason Hanson:it's a blast I'm ready, ready to do it again. I'd go, I'd go anywhere again with this group and anybody else that would want to do it, to go help somebody or just pull into an area and do it, because you don't realize how fun it is until you actually can't attest how much fun it is to just like go do it with someone else too.
Kyle Okke:You know that's you Phil Wanner.
Jason Hanson:Phil Wanner, we're talking to you he knows, I know the conversation he knows Lane has planted the seed.
Lane Bothwell:I couldn't agree more. Oh man, that 7.3 diesel really has a fit, I'm glad it started, yeah, and I'm not going to lie. I didn't know if it would become what it is.
Kyle Okke:It takes two of us to make this whole thing happen. Yeah, you're just talking about a daydream and I'm like let's make it a reality.
Lane Bothwell:Yeah, it was right up my alley, so it was exactly what I was looking for, and then it just got better.
Jodi Boe:Discovery Channel if you're looking for a show to host or like a special. Oh.
Kyle Okke:I'm telling you we could play this off like a gold rush. We could have multiple seasons like oh, the Mafia has returned to Montana and this time there's new players in the game.
Jodi Boe:They're like comes in on your territory Just kidding, no shade to anybody. A new crop consultant comes in on your territory just kidding, no shade to anybody. A new crop consultant comes in on your territory trying to take acres away from you.
Kyle Okke:yeah, somebody slashes your tires can't go in oh, there could be so much just fake drama painted into the whole thing. I love it. So that's there we go. We're gonna spin this to the Discovery Channel or we'll find some other, just like total, like low- key streaming service.
Sarah Lovas:If the Discovery Channel is coming out to hang out with us, they got to stay at the same motel that we stay at. People will not understand.
Kyle Okke:That's obviously at the Three Bloody Knives is where they're going to have like the spot that they can interview you and you can talk about your day hey but we saw at least a four bloody knife spot on our way to the Beer Jug.
Jason Hanson:Oh, to eat, yeah yeah, so I mean it's like, okay, an extra bloody knife rating, or it's pretty convenient to be right at that spot and just head out.
Sarah Lovas:I don't know if I could stay at the other one that one was pretty sketchy yeah, probably be it burned up before next year but, but I'm.
Kyle Okke:But I'm kind of serious because there's another hotel that burned up, like last year, not not too many blocks away from there.
Sarah Lovas:So as long as it doesn't take the the Blue Beacon.
Kyle Okke:We need that girl yeah, you're right, keep that Blue Beacon or the blue buck in tip-top shape. Yeah, and everyone else listening. We hope that you find this little reignited spark for soil sampling, for as much as we enjoy it, niko, have fun out there and I highly encourage you to do it with friends, because then you're going to have that much more fun again. And, as always, just thanks for listening all the way to the end. Thank all of you guys for just coming and talking about the previous week and the fun we had, the work we got done and and why we enjoyed so much. Hopefully that translates out to everyone that listens and we'll catch you guys the next time on not just Agronomists Happy Hour, but uh, how are you guys? Use Ag GeekSpeak. Geek Speak
Sarah Lovas:You're going to have a marathon episode for this one, is that okay?
Kyle Okke:Can we do a?
Sarah Lovas:traditional sign-off.
Kyle Okke:Let's do your traditional sign-off.
Sarah Lovas:At GK Technology. We have a map and an app For that.
Kyle Okke:Oh, and there you go, we'll see y'all. Cheers, cheers, cheers, cheers.
Jodi Boe:No, I can't wait to get in the fields again.