Churchtown Dairy in Columbia Co., NY, hosted an all-day Real Organic Project (ROP) Conference on Oct. 14. Approximately 250 people attended. The booklet passed out to conference attendees explained a little about each speaker, as well as ROP’s mission. The mission statement says, “The Real Organic P...

The first few days of October, I saw winter rye sprouting nicely while I was driving through some Central New York counties. This encouraged me, since it appears that more and more corn growers are planting fall cover crops. The more productive title for these late season plantings is “winter forage...

Minutes before midnight on March 31, my peaceful sleep was interrupted by loud, rolling thunder. The next clap of thunder was preceded by lightning, with a flash-to-bang time (FTB) of two to three seconds. With speed of sound at approximately 1,000 feet/second, this meant that the lightning from one...

The fertilizer industry is flush with good news (as far as farmer customers are concerned). The supply/demand scenario has morphed into a different ball game compared to 12 months ago. Before delving into numbers, let’s review. Some fertilizer synthesis chemistry, addressing nitrogen, first. Ammonia...

When I studied high school biology five decades ago, scientists only talked about three life form groups (called kingdoms): animals, plants and fungi. Halfway through that half-century, another kingdom was added, called protists. Protist life forms are universal, almost all of them microscopic – tin...

For decades, Paul Harvey, renowned radio news journalist, aired a daily news commentary titled “The Rest of the Story.” He would open with a fairly well-known headline, then explain to listeners some of the nitty-gritty lesser-known details that added dimension to it. A bigger splash headline appear...

Before long, most corn growers will be combining and/or row-chopping their crop. This will be a good time to conduct a small experiment while the person doing the chopping (or combining) waits for an empty wagon to be returned. Pull up two or three randomly selected still-standing plants. This simpl...

Winter forages are something in which I have become a super believer in during the last dozen years. (Reminder: they are small grains planted during late summer or early autumn; they have been selectively bred to go dormant over winter, then spring to life as soon as prolonged cold weather loosens i...

On Aug. 18, Ken from Chenango County emailed me, seeking my advice for the following scenario: “We usually harvest two cuttings of sorghum, in July and August. This year, being dry and then wet all summer, our sorghum and Japanese millet didn’t do as well. We have about six acres of sorghum and thre...

Appearing in a recent issue of the Guardian online newspaper was an article, “Planting Trees to Fight Climate Change Is Great. Then Again, So Is Eating,” written by Fiona Harvey. Harvey wrote that governments and businesses hoping to plant trees and restore forests in order to reach net-zero carbon ...

There are at least a couple options for planting forages that really put to good use the cooler conditions that surround Indian Summer in the Northeast. The best time to plant these “packages,” seldom just a single species, is the middle 10 days of August. The question then is where to plant these. ...

Mid-spring 1977, in my role as agronomy cooperative extension agent for Otsego County, I attended a field crop demonstration at one of Cornell’s off-campus research facilities. Several agronomy professors were stationed at their own demonstration sites. These educators would explain the details of t...

The Veterans Administration Medical Service is very concerned about the physical (as well as mental) well being of former Armed Forces personnel. As a member of this distinguished group, I qualify for many medical benefits. One such benefit is the counseling service of a licensed dietician. The VA b...

This past February, Edward contacted me for help resolving some cropping issues — hopefully before the next growing season started. He runs an organic cash grain operation in western New York. His main crops are corn and soybeans. His biggest complaint was that the straight buckwheat stand he plante...

While visiting the Cornell Valatie (Field Crops) Research Farm (Columbia County, NY), during late July 2012, I learned something interesting about alfalfa ( Medicago sativa ). Namely that some of the higher protein test values in early cut — properly managed — M. sativa hay crops fell in the categor...