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The new-to-us baler my husband bought did not come with a user's manual. He's had plenty of balers over the years, but this is the newest (while far from new), the most electronic and the first he's had that uses net wrap.

All of that combined to make a somewhat frustrating experience in getting going with the baler. So, he asked for my assistance.

Don't be confused. I am not mechanical. At all. I have little idea how equipment works, and am mostly useful in holding and finding things. But what my husband knows is that I am very good at Googling.

I found videos to show us how to install the net wrap. That was the easy part. Figuring out how the monitor worked and how to configure the settings were different things entirely.

I searched for a user's manual and found nothing that would be immediately available. I searched for information on the type of monitor that particular baler uses. There were several options, so that didn't help much. I was coming up blank in my searching, which is very abnormal for me.

I decided it was time to pull out a newer tool. I opened the Google app on my phone and took a photo of the monitor and searched. And I started getting somewhere. Google's artificial intelligence tools started bringing me information about the photo, and I started asking it questions.

Soon, I had figured out what most of the icons on the screen meant, how to change the size and density of bales and what the various symbols and graphs on the screen could tell us as the tractor started rolling.

We made a small number of bales that night before we started smelling smoke. Thankfully, the baler was not on fire, but we did find a spot on it that was overly hot, leading to more searches about which parts might not be moving correctly. After a series of questions and photos, the AI overview gave us a synopsis of possible problems. My husband mostly has it figured out and is waiting on parts.

But he had to go back to an older baler for the moment to keep making hay. The problem was, that baler — with many thousands of bales having gone through it — is getting worn out. For whatever reason, it keeps trying to tie twine around bales even after it should be done. After trying the simple stuff — greasing, cleaning, etc. — we again dove into Google. The AI overviews of all the mentions of the problem gave some ideas, including one that seems to have worked — at least for the moment.

I know there are more attempts at high-level use of AI on farms, but for us, getting answers on things we don't know in short order might be the best use for now. When you run old equipment, you almost constantly need support, and often more support than professionals can provide. A quick use of my phone seems to have saved us some frustration.