Serving all of Eastern Laramie County since 1908
Serving all of Eastern Laramie County since 1908
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I would like to wish everyone a very Happy and Prosperous New Year! I thought I would inform everyone on some upcoming regional conservation agricultural events that I’m sure will provide excellent educational opportunities to producers. I have been attending these regional meetings for several years and I always feel that this has been time well spent. You get to listen to educators speak about all kinds of topics relating to conservation agriculture and network with like minded producers f...
I’ve met a lot of really interesting and enjoyable people through my travels and involvement with conservation agriculture and continuous no till crop production. Two of my favorites are Brian and Keith Burns. Brian and Keith took it upon themselves to establish Green Cover Seed. Green Cover Seed is a cover crop/forage crop seed distribution business. Brian and Keith decided early on with the establishment of cover crops that someone had to become a distributor of the vast variety of seed n...
I would like to start by wishing everyone a very Merry Christmas! I hope everyone is surrounded by family and friends to share in the holiday season together. This is a truly wonderful time of the year! There is an educational opportunity for everyone interested in no-till crop production practices that is easy to use and is generated via email across our state. Once you belong to the [email protected] you are able to post an email on any topic you are interested in discussing about no-till crop...
In the past, I’ve spoken at No-till On the Plains and the High Plains No-till Conference and been asked to cover looking back at our history of no-till crop production and the evolution of my no-till farming experience during this time. My sister Janet gave me a memory stick for my computer for Christmas several years ago. Janet scanned all my parent’s photos and slides over the past 60 years on this memory stick. I’ve been looking at these photos and reminiscing as well. One of the slide...
Last week I visited about the results of the biological tests we ran on our winter wheat stubble which showed very low microbial activity. The winter wheat sample had a total microbial biomass number of only 1,248.84. This low result would be expected since there is not much actively growing in the field and the residue is a high carbon-low nitrogen type residue. This high carbon-low nitrogen type residue explains why winter wheat residue is valuable in our region as the residue is hard to...
On our farm we sampled five fields for biological activity this fall. We waited to sample the fields until the middle of September. The reason we waited was to get some rain so we could get our probe in the ground. We also figured moisture may increase the amount of biological activity. The fields we sampled were wheat stubble from this year’s wheat harvest and field pea stubble from this year’s field pea harvest. We also sampled a field of dry land corn and a field of cover crops that was pla...
Modern day agricultural producers are constantly striving to lower production costs and improve their stewardship of the land. Many producers have adopted conservation agricultural systems as a means to lower production costs and improve the health of the soils we work with on our farms and ranches. Leaving previous crop residues attached to the soil surface helps protect these soils. Using no-till crop production methods that provide minimal soil disturbance when planting and harvesting the...
As you look back through agriculture there have been some real turning points. Agriculture saw the first real leap into production agriculture in our country with the Industrial Age when mechanized agriculture really changed the face of our country. Larger and larger farms were created as it became possible to produce crops on many more acres. The next big breakthrough came with the Green Revolution where fertilizers, pesticides, and plant breeding really came to the forefront and were adopted...
I want to start by thanking everyone for their well wishes following my knee replacement surgery. Everything went well with the surgery and I’m now going through the physical therapy getting a full range of motion back in the knee. I have always thought living in rural western Nebraska is a great place to be where everyone is surrounded by friends, family, and neighbors who are truly concerned for the well-being of one another. Judging from the view from my couch, looking out the window, and m...
[Editor’s Note: Mark Watson is still out of commission, recovering from surgery. This is an article he originally wrote in February of 2012, but has been ‘tweaked’ to reflect today’s wheat and oil prices.] Dr. Dwayne Beck from the Dakota Lakes Research farm near Pierre South Dakota will be presenting at the upcoming PNTP Winter Conference, February 23-24 at the Gering Civic Center. He often begins to engage his audiences by asking the producers in attendance where they want their farms to be i...
Our way of life in agriculture across the breadbasket of America is being threatened by special interest groups who disagree with how we conduct our business. These special interest groups disagree with how we produce the food which feeds the world. Our image as stewards of the land and livestock is being tainted and it’s important we start telling our side of the story. These special interest groups are well organized and well funded. Their sole intention is to dictate policy so the food we pro...
The United Nations estimates that the world population has now surpassed 7.3 billion humans living on our planet. It took 123 years, from 1804 to 1927, to go from a population of 1 billion to 2 billion people on our planet. The United Nations estimates it will take only 10 years from now to add another billion people and reach 8,000,000,000 people in world population. World population will grow an average of 78 million people per year. That is a rather amazing and sobering statistic. The strain...
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...
Last week I had the pleasure of speaking to Dr. Ron Bolze's students at Chadron State College. Dr. Bolze invited me to speak to his farm and ranch management class. I really enjoyed getting back in the classroom to visit with tomorrow's leaders in agriculture. The students were very interested in my topic of conservation agriculture and how we can work towards adopting conservation agricultural systems to produce food, fiber, and fuel. I really think the next generation is more focused on their...
Last week I introduced you to Dr. Rattan Lal, director of the Carbon Management and Sequestration Center at Ohio State University. Dr. Lal published an article on his concepts for developing a conservation agricultural system for our farms and ranches. His concepts involve adapting five steps towards a complex conservation agricultural system which concentrates on improving the soil's health as we move into the future of production agriculture across our nation. Last week we looked at the first...
I had a nice visit with Dr. Dwayne Beck the other day. Many of you are familiar with Dr. Beck as he has been a pioneer in no-till crop production in the High Plains. Dr. Beck manages the Dakota Lakes Research Farm near Pierre, South Dakota and will be celebrating their 25th year of operation at this farm in September. Dr. Beck has spoken at numerous no-till field days and winter conferences around the region including our own Panhandle No-till Partnership's winter conference. You'll be happy to...
Field pea production on our farm this year proved to be interesting, much like all the other crops we're growing. With all the abundant moisture you would hope this would equate to bumper yields. Other growing factors such as hail, cold spring temperatures, late snow storms, late freezes, and disease made growing the field pea crop a challenge. On our farm the field pea yields ranged from 0-70 bushels per acre depending on circumstances. I have heard of some very good yields this year around...
My knee replacement surgery has been put on hold. I developed a bacterial lung infection prior to surgery. My doctor put me on antibiotics for a period of five days that lowered my white blood cell count, but not to normal levels. I then took another 10 days of antibiotics and I'm scheduled to go back in for more tests soons to see if I'm healthy enough for surgery. It turned out to be a blessing that my surgery was postponed as my son Jacob, who works on the farm with us, was diagnosed with pne...
Believe it or not, the end of the growing season is rapidly approaching. Now is a good time to check your fields for the level of residue you have in them. If you find your residue levels are low and there is a large amount of bare soil observed you may need to assess how you can change your residue management to improve your residue levels. The level of residue you find in your fields directly affects how much moisture your soil is able to provide to the crop you had growing in the field....
[Editor’s Note: Mark Watson has had knee surgery, and this week’s column is a reprint of a previous column.] Last week I introduced you to my “2/3 Golden Rule” that I came up with for crop rotations for our region. During our recent field days we had quite a bit of discussion on crop rotations and I came up with this simple concept to remember with two thirds. The first part of this rule is to always have a minimum of two thirds of your crop rotation be made up of crops that produce high am... Full story
[Editor's Note: Mark Watson has had knee surgery, and this week's column is a reprint of a previous column.] During our field days around the Panhandle recently there was a lot of discussion on choosing a good dry land crop rotation and how choosing your rotation will really determine the success of your no till crop production system. I'd like to share some of my thoughts on choosing a good rotation and some golden rules that we go by after more than 20 years of no till farming. I titled this... Full story
We started wheat harvest yesterday and the wheat crop is a good one. Test weight is running a little light on some loads, but not as bad as I thought it might be considering the amount of rainfall and disease the crop had to contend with. The rain is falling again this morning, so wheat harvest will be delayed again for a few days. Hard red winter wheat is a dry land crop that likes good precipitation at the right times. I actually think the abnormally high amount of rainfall we received this...
During our Panhandle No-till Partnership’s field days we also looked at no-till production practices on irrigated acres. The farms we visited have been using the standard irrigated no-till crop rotation of winter wheat, corn, dry edible beans and back to winter wheat. Some of the producers are now including field peas as part of their crop rotation. On our farm we have moved to a winter wheat (followed by a forage crop), dry edible bean, corn, field pea crop rotation. We feel this rotation w...
One of our visits during the Panhandle No-till Partnerships field days included a morning tour of the High Plains Ag Lab located near Gurley, Nebraska. Dr. Cody Creech and Dr. Karla Jenkins took the time out of their busy schedules to show our group the exciting research they are conducting at the University of Nebraska research farm. I really appreciate all the hard work Cody and Karla do to help agricultural producers in our region. I also want to thank them again for taking our group for a...
I would like to thank everyone involved in making last week’s Panhandle No-till Partnership’s field days a success. I would like to especially thank Mark Betson, Mark and Pat Ernest, Bob Gifford, and Jack Revelle for hosting these field days on their farms. I would also like to thank the University of Nebraska Panhandle Research and Extension Center, and specifically Dr. Cody Creech and Dr. Karla Jenkins, for hosting our tour group at the UNL High Plains Ag Lab. I’m always amazed when I drive...
