There’s an old saying: “Always a bridesmaid, never a bride.” It’s usually said of a person who has potential that has never been fulfilled. Perhaps no forage species deserves the bridesmaid moniker more so than red clover...

It’s always interesting to note the variation between regions and farms in regards to how much plant stalk remains in a field following a corn silage harvest. In California, I’ve seen fields cut s...

The USDA’s Farm Service Agency (FSA) recently announced that emergency haying and grazing will be allowed on Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) acres contingent on the current state of drought sever...

As with planting corn or drying hay, so much of the daily grind of growing and harvesting crops is as much an art as it is a science. Nowhere is this truer than when building a silage pile or packing...

Alfalfa hay price holds in JuneThis year has turned out to be an odd and challenging one in many respects. Apparently, a normal hay market trend is joining the plethora of oddities. Alfalfa...

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...

Let’s face it: When it comes to making hay, the cutter, baler, and forage harvester get most of the glory and attention. But on many operations, there is also the all-important step of raking.Used i...

Who doesn’t like oats? In 1930, there were nearly 40 million acres of oats harvested for grain in the United States. By contrast, the 2017 Census of Agriculture pegged harvested oat acres at ju...

A couple of weeks ago, my neighbor purchased a new push lawnmower and parked his old lawnmower in the front yard by the road. The old model was both leaking and burning oil. “Somebody wil...

While on a farm visit last week, I found myself wandering around the dairy farm’s feed center with camera in hand. I got about 60 feet away from the center face of a bunker silo full of corn silage...