As I’m writing this column on the first day of December, it’s about three weeks until days start lengthening in the northern hemisphere. Recently, most of the Northeast had been gathering just a few occasional snowflakes. But that changed the day after Thanksgiving, when the Mohawk Valley got about ...

As I wrote this column, the actual holiday was three days away. The happening should be considered more a season, not just a single square on a calendar page displaying the fourth Thursday of each November. A look at early colonial history in Massachusetts supports my reasoning. The first Thanksgivi...

An article titled “Attack of the Superweeds” was written by H. Claire Brown in the New York Times four years ago. The sub-heading read “Herbicides are losing the war…and agriculture might never be the same again.” Brown began by explaining the concept of superweeds: “Weeds that have evolved characte...

Scientists define hydrology as “the scientific study of the movement, distribution and management of water on Earth, including the water cycle, water resources and drainage basin sustainability.” A common misconception is that drought’s impacts on society are limited to semi-arid regions, but drough...

Northeast corn silage growers are currently about three-quarters done with chopping. Corn grain growers are about one-quarter done with combining. This is a good time to conduct a small experiment while the person doing the chopping or combining waits for an empty forage wagon or gravity wagon to be...

Northeast corn silage growers are currently about three-quarters done with chopping. Corn grain growers are about one-quarter done with combining. This is a good time to conduct a small experiment while the person doing the chopping or combining waits for an empty forage wagon or gravity wagon to be...

On Sept. 8, much of Central New York received light frosts. Fearing that such might take place, I had covered my frost-sensitive crops with tarps. Doing so proved to be a wise idea, since, come dawn, the hood of our car showed a very thin layer of ice crystals. When those melted away, I removed the ...

The last few days of September, I saw early plantings of winter rye sprouting nicely in some Central New York counties. Happily, I see more corn growers planting autumn cover crops. The more productive title for these late season plantings is “winter forage,” a mindset which acknowledges that someth...

On Sept. 18, Jim, an organic dairy farmer, called me to discuss possible corn silage toxicity issues that worried him. He milks about 70 cows in Genesee County (NY), and his farm is “regular” organic (not grass-fed). I’ve been advising him on his crop program for several years. He grows corn for sil...

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 clap of thunder was seven or eight seconds. With the speed of sound at approximately 1,000 feet/second, this meant that the first lightning bolt stru...

In mid-August, Pecos Bill (aka Wild Bill), a fellow Cornell ag graduate, sought my advice for a particular cropping situation on his Chenango County dairy farm. He said they usually harvest two cuttings of sorghum, in mid-July and late August. But this year, starting wet, then turning dry most of su...

Over the last 15 years, I have become a super believer in winter forages. Winter forages – small grains planted during late summer or early autumn – have been selectively bred to go dormant over winter, then spring to life as soon as prolonged cold weather loosens its icy grip in March or April. Wha...

Despite many historians believing that clovers have truly changed the world, these crops are surprisingly modest creeping herbs, rarely reaching knee-height. According to my textbook “ Around the World in 80 Plants ” (Jonathan Drori, Lawrence King Publishing), there are two common cultivated species...

Three growing seasons ago, during the middle of summer, I took a few soil samples on a southern Herkimer County dairy farm. One of the fields sampled that I found particularly interesting had been planted to a mix of forage soybeans and brown midrib sorghum two weeks earlier. There appeared to be mo...

Turn back time a half century, to my Cooperative Extension career as a dairy and field crops agent. I tried to get farmers to mentally break down their businesses into three parts: cows, heifers and crops. Perhaps an oversimplification, but this approach helped them home in on possible “weak links” ...