Wednesday 5 August 2009

Little blobs of white goo

I was riding past a park today when I noticed what appeared to be large blobs of shaving cream dotted across the grass. Each of these blogs was a bit smaller than a human head.


There are dozens and dozens of them in this photo.


It took me a few seconds to work it out - it's been probably two decades since I last saw anything like this. And as I rounded the corner, my memory proved to be right.

I didn't get a photo of it, but there was a tractor going across the grass towing a boom spray - spraying for weeds. On the end of the boom, there is a "blobber" - some sort of device that drops a blob of foam at regular intervals. This shows the tractor driver where they've been, so they don't double spray some patches and miss others all together.

It's the sort of thing that I'm used to seeing on farms, but I've never seen it used in the city before. Nice to see those "advanced" city folk catching up with the innovations of those rural hicks.

3 comments:

what's an agronomist? said...

Old tech, dude. Up-to-date boomsprays use GPS for autosteer and auto-switching (the boom knows where it has already sprayed and turns on & off automatically).

Boy on a bike said...

I guess that reinforces my point that us "sophisticated" latte drinking urbanites are in fact 7.94 light years behind the hayseeds in the boondocks.

kae said...

I'm at an "Ag College", they teach them how to navigate a tractor there.