Reintroducing Yourself to Your SeedMaster Seeder

Feb 01, 2023

I’m in the midst of trade show season which has me travelling back and forth across Western Canada. At each trade show I find myself chatting with farmers about their seeding plans for spring. These conversations have reminded me of the importance of reintroducing yourself to your seeder each year. You need to immerse yourself back into your seeding operation fully, because it’s only going to last four to six weeks and then you’re off to figure out that sprayer that you haven’t looked at since last year.

First off you need to make sure all your hydraulics — the hydraulic cylinders, the fold and the opener cylinders — are all functioning properly with no leaks. Next you need to refresh yourself on how to operate your monitor. You should make sure all the wiring is connected and working. There’s nothing worse than sitting in a tractor cab trying to relearn the monitor when you could be in the field seeding.

Third, you want to make sure you’ve calibrated your metering. It only takes a few minutes and is one of the most simple and effective precision operations you can do. If you don’t take the time, then you run the risk of putting seed and fertilizer down at an incorrect rate — costing you money, yield, or both.

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Video: Spring 2026 weather outlook for Wisconsin; What an early-arriving El Niño could mean

Northeast Wisconsin is a small corner of the world, but our weather is still affected by what happens across the globe.

That includes in the equatorial Pacific, where changes between El Niño and La Niña play a role in the weather here -- and boy, have there been some abrupt changes as of late.

El Niño and La Niña are the two phases of what is collectively known as the El Niño Southern Oscillation, or ENSO for short. These are the swings back and forth from unusually warm to unusually cold sea surface temperatures in the Pacific Ocean along the equator.

Since this past September, we have been in a weak La Niña, which means water temperatures near the Eastern Pacific equator have been cooler than usual. That's where we're at right now.

Even last fall, the long-term outlook suggested a return to neutral conditions by spring and potentially El Niño conditions by summer.

But there are some signs this may be happening faster than usual, which could accelerate the onset of El Niño.

Over the last few weeks, unusually strong bursts of westerly winds farther west in the Pacific -- where sea surface temperatures are warmer than average -- have been observed. There is a chance that this could accelerate the warming of those eastern Pacific waters and potentially push us into El Niño sooner than usual.

If we do enter El Nino by spring -- which we'll define as the period of March, April and May -- there are some long-term correlations with our weather here in Northeast Wisconsin.

Looking at a map of anomalously warm weather, most of the upper Great Lakes doesn't show a strong correlation, but in general, the northern tiers of the United States do tend to lean to that direction.

The stronger correlation is with precipitation. El Niño conditions in spring have historically come with a higher risk of very dry weather over that time frame, so this will definitely be a transition we'll have to watch closely as we move out of winter.