Prudent farm managers generally don’t blindly cut expenses during challenging economic times; rather, they look for those places where eliminating costs will have little or no impact on crop yield...
Seeding grass along with alfalfa has always been standard operating procedure in some areas of the U.S., including the Northeast. Although it’s less common to see in other regions, the popularity of...
Growing up on a row crop farm in Mississippi, the only experience I had with hay or forages was pitching small square bales onto a trailer. We baled a couple dozen acres of grass hay for the goat herd...
Winter, spring, summer or fallAll you have to do is callAnd I'll be there, yes, I will.You've got a friendThese lyrics from a 1971 song by Carole King remind us that we all need a friend. The same i...
The alfalfa seed industry has gone through a massive makeover in the past 20 years. There are significantly fewer seed marketers, breeding programs, and the number of university testing trials is down...
The problem is easy to identify, and so are the plant symptoms. The answers are often less apparent.There’s no need for a magnifying glass to see that large equipment, driving across alfalfa fields...
The Midwest dairy farmer’s lament was to the point: “If I didn’t have to worry about winterkill, I’d definitely grow more alfalfa.”This farmer, like many others sitting at the meeting table...
Back in the day, I would constantly correct people when they referred to a “fall seeding” of alfalfa. Fall is simply too late; more correctly, it was, or at least should be in the North, a “late...
It was actually a sulfur study. I was at Joe’s farm to gather some alfalfa tissue and soil samples from one of his fields as part of a statewide assessment on sulfur fertility. What with fewer indus...