I’m writing this column 11 days after spring officially started. Five days prior to that (March 15), the New York State Environmental Conservation Department ordered a mandatory outdoor burning ban. Such remains in effect at least until June 15. The compulsory ban is based on average early spring co...

One week into Daylight Savings Time, as the sun was starting to set, the sky in our part of Central New York got dark. That darkness soon framed lightning bolts which hit every few minutes for about an hour. The first flash-to-bang time was seven or eight seconds. With speed of sound at approximatel...

Country Folks classifieds for March 19 lists 28 hay for sale ads. In addition to that section are three more hay ads on the “farmer-to-farmer” page. None of those ads mentions forage analysis. Almost without exception, any farmer I’ve talked to who has purchased out-of-region hay has been provided f...

I have monitored colony collapse disorder (CCD) since it was first identified by entomologists over a quarter-century ago. CCD occurs when vast majorities of bees in any given colony – generally worker bees – die unexpectedly. Because queen bees need the nectar these workers provide to nurse new bee...

According to plant geneticists, male sterility means that crops in question will not translocate nutrients for grain or seed production. Almost all of the nutrients remain in the leaves and vegetative plant tissue, producing high-quality forage. With male-sterile sorghums, no grain is produced unles...

The American Meteorological Society defines “spring snow” as being coarse, granular, wet snow, resembling finely chopped melted ice. Foresters worry that this kind of snow can seriously harm trees. When such heavy snow piles up on branches, the stress can be too much, resulting in fractures. Such br...

It’s time to take another look at current soil nutrient commodity prices. These numbers come from research compiled by Jeff Cassim, general manager of Liquid Products in Seneca Falls. Cassim extracts his data from fertilizer industry periodicals – not just commodity prices, but geopolitical facts im...

My classic 1959 copy of “Morrison’s Feeds and Feeding” (22nd edition) comes in quite handy in balancing livestock rations. That hardcover book was a relatively new text when I took basic livestock nutrition at Cornell under Professor Richard Warner in 1966. Dietary energy need was expressed in TDN (...

According to the Weather Channel, before a huge crowd filled with excitement and anticipation, and bundled up against temperatures in the 20s, a groundhog named Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow on Feb. 2 in Gobbler’s Notch, western Pennsylvania. Phil seeing his shadow means humans should expect to s...

Two years ago, in Central New York, Ken, a “grass-fed” organic dairy farmer, asked me two cropping questions as he was planning his growing season. He was considering no-till seeding Japanese millet into land where he had planted rye cover crop the previous two autumns. He asked me how would millet ...

My cyber-sleuthing led me to a site for Sarah Bauder, Cooperative Extension forage field specialist with South Dakota State University. She wrote that winterkill and general stand loss of alfalfa caused great concern in many parts of South Dakota in recent years. She observed that alfalfa winterkill...

Colony collapse disorder (CCD) is something I’ve been monitoring since it was first identified by entomologists over two decades ago. CCD occurs when the vast majority of bees in any given colony – generally worker bees – die unexpectedly. Because the queen bee needs the nectar provided by these wor...

In a paper titled “Nature’s GM sweet potato and the rock from space,” English investigative science writer Claire Robinson tackles the intentions of British biotech entrepreneur Jonathan Jones. Jones hoped to dismantle safety testing and assessment for genetically modified (GM) foods. He justified h...

On the morning of Dec. 23, our remote-sensing thermometer had just climbed up to 0º, having plunged to -7º a few hours earlier under a half-moon in a clear sky. There’s a good chance that night would prove to be the coldest one in 2024. In the preceding 48 hours, downtown Hartwick accrued about five...

Several months ago, my friend Corey called me with a cattle feeding question. He oversees a small biodynamic dairy in Columbia County, NY. He had just gotten the bulk tank results back from the lab. They told him that milk urea nitrogen (MUN) was running 25 milligrams per deciliter (mg/dl). MUN is a...