Crop Comments
Posted on July 9, 2025
There’s general concern among doctors that as we age, our bodies become less efficient at regulating temperature. This puts such people at greater risk of heat illness. To avoid such problems, health professionals recommend that aging folks in hot weather drink plenty of water before going outside –...
Crop Comments
jkarkwren 
Posted on July 2, 2025
That’s the title of Tom Kilcer’s June 2025 monthly newsletter, available at advancedagsys.com . Kilcer is a Certified Crop Advisor who served for 28 years as a field crops agent working for the Extension service in Columbia County, NY. He then managed the Cornell agronomy research farm in Valatie, N...
Crop Comments
jkarkwren 
Posted on June 25, 2025
That’s title of the article written by Heidi Roth that appeared June 16 on the Offrange website . The introductory paragraph reads, “In the Pacific Northwest, a region of the country known for abundant rainfall, decades of droughts and resource battles are forcing farmers to learn about ‘dry farming...
Crop Comments
jkarkwren 
Posted on June 18, 2025
According to the New Orleans Times-Picayune ( nola.com ), “A large Saharan dust plume will soon blanket Gulf Coast.” That was the headline on June 6. The brown haze over the central and western Caribbean is a Saharan dust outbreak that left the African coast on May 21 and was forecast to reach the G...
Crop Comments
jkarkwren 
Posted on June 11, 2025
We just hit the two-year anniversary of the runaway Canadian wildfire smoke epidemic, the one engulfing America’s northern states in early June 2023. At that time, ABC Online news headlined “Canadian wildfire smoke live updates: Air quality alerts issued for 13 states.” Canadian officials said firef...
Crop Comments
jkarkwren 
Posted on June 4, 2025
During Memorial Day weekend, my wife and I spent a half day with my son Peter’s family in Columbia County. I can’t drive anywhere without looking at other people’s crops. After crossing the Hudson River, I was hoping to see distinctly formed green rows of nicely emerged corn seedlings compared to th...
Crop Comments
jkarkwren 
Posted on May 28, 2025
Before delving into the big four fertilizer macro-nutrients – nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), potassium (K) and sulfur (S) – I’ll address a trace element that often gets under-publicized: zinc. In his “Eco-farm,” Charles Walters wrote, “Zinc is only now [1996] joining the crowd of elements required fo...
Crop Comments
jkarkwren 
Posted on May 21, 2025
The first wild plant in the Northeast welcoming winter’s demise is marsh marigold, also called cowslip. Part of the buttercup family, this plant isn’t related to garden variety marigolds. Marsh marigolds are commonly found in very damp soils – even upland marshes – hence their name. They grow up to ...
Crop Comments
jkarkwren 
Posted on May 14, 2025
With all the political confusion presently surrounding agriculture, domestically and globally, there’s at least one ray of common sense that shines through – the fact that the ag lime price in the U.S. has increased very little, and its availability has remained very constant. Being an almost exclus...
Crop Comments
jkarkwren 
Posted on May 7, 2025
During 63 months as an agronomy/livestock Extension agent in Central New York, I learned the “correct” term for winter small grains planted in early autumn: cover crops. After leaving Extension for a career in ag sales in 1978, I continued referring to such crops as cover crops. Then I began resurre...
Crop Comments
jkarkwren 
Posted on April 30, 2025
According to Katelyn Miller, Western New York field crops and forage specialist, a relatively new disease threatens NY corn production – tar spot. This plant disease originated in Central America and was first reported in the U.S. in 2015. The first significant yield-reducing tar spot event was obse...
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News
Sonja Heyck-Merlin 
September 24, 2025
According to Tim Terry, farm strategic planning specialist with Cornell University’s PRO-DAIRY , the calf hutch is still the gold standard for raising...
News
Sonja Heyck-Merlin 
September 24, 2025
The Asian longhorn tick (ALHT), native to eastern Asia, was first found in the U.S. in 2017. In less than a decade, ALHT populations are thriving. Est...
Crop Comments
jkarkwren 
September 24, 2025
On the evening of March 15, 2025, a fairly serious electric storm hit central New York and much of the Northeast. The flash-to-bang time for the first...
News
Karl H. Kazaks 
October 1, 2025
LOWESVILLE, VA – Deer Creek Farm is a registered Simmental and SimAngus operation owned by Mark and Dana Campbell. Located in western Nelson County wi...
