Serving all of Eastern Laramie County since 1908
Serving all of Eastern Laramie County since 1908
Sorted by date Results 176 - 191 of 191
There was a gradual progression on our farm to adopting a no-till cropping system. Our father passed on to us the value of conservation farming practices. He worked closely with University of Nebraska researchers and allowed them to do research on our farm studying stubble mulching practices and soil erosion on our farm. We continued down this path of trying to leave more residues in the field in our winter wheat/summer fallow rotation. Cheatgrass was always a problem, and at the time the best...
I’ve been asked to speak at the No till On the Plains winter conference in Salina, Kan., again this year as well as the High Plains No Till winter conference in Burlington, Colo. I’ve been asked to look back at over 20 years of no-till crop production and discuss the evolution of my no-till farming experience during this time. My sister Janet also gave me a memory stick for my computer for Christmas this year. Janet scanned all my parent’s photos and slides over the past 60 years on this memor...
There a couple large regional no-till meetings coming up that I’d like to talk to you about. I think it is very important for a producer who is considering adopting or has adopted no-till farming practices to attend. These meetings bring in speakers from around the region, country, and world to talk about the latest updates and trends in no-till crop production. These meetings are an incredible place to network with other no-till producers. You will also gain a larger perspective on the p...
The field pea meetings have all been scheduled and times and places have been finalized, so I wanted to pass this information on to growers around our region. These meetings will cover production of field peas and marketing of field peas. Field pea meetings this coming week are scheduled in Gering at the Farm and Ranch Museum on Wednesday, Jan. 16, beginning at 1 p.m. On Thursday, Jan. 17, there will be a field pea meeting in Albin. This meeting will be held at the Albin Community Center...
There are several educational meetings scheduled for January and February, 2013 that producers in our area should plan to attend. I’ve been going to no till crop production meetings for over 20 years and I have always felt that attending as many of these meetings as possible has always been time well spent. These educational meetings are a great way to meet and visit with other producers about their no-till crop production practices. These meetings always include speakers that cover a variety o...
As 2012 winds down I thought a little reflecting back would be a good thing to do. Sometimes it helps to look back on your successes that you were a part of over the past year and take a hard look at your failures to keep you humble and to continue the never ending learning process. Continuing education is important in every business and agriculture is no exception. I feel it is very important to be flexible in your decision making and embrace the changes that are inevitable. Mother Nature...
I’d like to start by wishing everyone a very Merry Christmas! I hope everyone is able to spend the holidays with friends and family spreading good cheer throughout our region. We have the results of our cover crop biomass sampling back and the cover crops performed about like we thought they would. I think we could justify the cost of planting the cover crops with the benefits we’ll see from producing them, but I do have some concerns with producing cover crops. Our sampling from the cover cro...
In the past couple of articles I’ve talked about how we have added diversity into our cropping rotations to diversify markets and improve soil health. We have added field peas into our dry land cropping rotation which has allowed us to diversify our herbicide rotations, improve and diversify our soil microbial populations, and add a legume in our crop rotation for nitrogen fixation. Our crop rotation is now winter wheat, followed by corn, then field peas and back to winter wheat. I also talked a...
My trip to Pierre, S.D., went well considering the wintery conditions I drove through on my way there. We had a couple of inches of snow here in Alliance and as I drove north through the Hay Springs and Rushville area they had significant snow on the ground, 6 to 8 inches. Fortunately the wind wasn’t blowing so the roads were in good shape. The band of snow lasted until just north of Martin, S.D. It was good to see some old friends at the Ag Horizons conference. I hadn’t attended this con...
I’m headed off to Pierre, S.D., for the annual Ag Horizons Conference this week to speak to the growers in the region about adding diversity into their cropping systems. I am looking forward to attending this meeting since it has been awhile since I’ve been there and I always look forward to these regional meetings. I’m certain I’ll leave the meeting feeling like it has been time well spent visiting with growers and speakers from this area. I’ve been asked to speak about adding diversity...
Last week I wrote about the wind storm that caused a lot of damage to the corn crop in our region. From what I understand the damage was pretty wide spread east and south of the Panhandle as well. I also spoke with a producer in central South Dakota who said their area suffered loss as well from the wind. We observed on our farm that our corn appeared to withstand the high winds better than some of the neighbor’s corn and I really don’t have a good reason why this would be. We had plenty of los...
Last week I wrote about the wind storm that caused a lot of damage to the corn crop in our region. From what I understand the damage was pretty wide spread east and south of the Panhandle as well. I also spoke with a producer in central South Dakota who said their area suffered loss as well from the wind. We observed on our farm that our corn appeared to withstand the high winds better than some of the neighbor’s corn and I really don’t have a good reason why this would be. We had plenty of los...
I was visiting with neighbors a few weeks ago about the bountiful harvest we were having in our area on our irrigated crops. The sugar beet and edible bean harvests were both above average in yield provided you had the irrigation water necessary to keep the crop in good shape. The early corn harvest yields were also showing an above average corn harvest could be expected. The following week “The Wind” came roaring through our region for a couple of days. The airport weather station reported 77 m...
I’d like to revisit last week’s article on the wind erosion on our farm. I’ve had plenty of time to think about my management decisions that caused the problem in the first place. I’ve had plenty of time to survey the situation and contemplate as I am stripping these fields with a chisel plow that we adapted to rough up the soil surface without damaging the wheat too extensively. We actually have a good stand of wheat despite my poor management thanks to a timely snow and rain which supplie...
One of the best visualizations I’ve heard for managing your soil moisture and the precipitation you receive is to compare your soil’s moisture holding capacity to a bucket. The size of your bucket depends on the soil texture, organic matter content, and soil structure. With good surface residues you can get the precipitation you receive to infiltrate the soil and start filling the bucket. If you have good soil structure you can get the moisture to the bottom of the bucket, and if you have good organic matter content your soil will act as a spo...
Mark Watson Panhandle no-till educator I really learned a hard lesson from Mother Nature last week with the winds that blew through our area. I also feel like a damn fool and I’m definitely humbled. We had severe wind erosion on our farm where we planted our winter wheat behind our field peas. I never dreamed I would have such a devastating loss of soil with the amount of residue we had on the soil surface when we planted our winter wheat. Unfortunately because of my carelessness, the soil t...
