A farmer's sense of direction...

... is clearly being aided in the modern era by GPS.

Many people have heard that on the modern farm, tractors drive themselves by GPS. I guess on fancier farms that may be true, but on our farm GPS just provides a helpful reminder when your eyes deceive you or your mind wanders. I thought I would show what a tractor GPS receiver looks like. Namely, here is a picture where I'm tilling right on the mark and headed in the correct direction. It's really not that impressive, but I'm doing good work and have all five orange lights lit up.

The GPS device is programmed with the width of our equipment and is able to determine parallel "passes" through a field given a starting heading. This allows us to most efficiently work through a field without doubling up excessively or skipping certain areas. It's most helpful when you can't really tell where you've been as with spraying or spreading fertilizer. However, here I'm using it when cultivating the field. The second picture is when the device is trying to tell me that I'm too far to the left and need to adjust slightly to the right to get back on the correct heading. Clearly attempting phone photography while working is not the way to directional perfection.