Oats

Hello from Graze-N-Grow. The beautiful weather the second week in April saw a lot of field activity, not only planting and working ground for planting, but harvesting all the debris from the three storms preceding.

Hello from Graze-N-Grow. It was a lot warmer March 1 getting the clover frost seeded this year, but that weather has disappeared lately.

Classifying Holstein cows gives dairymen an unbiased evaluation of the phenotype of their cows. “That information is used in two ways,” said Maureen DeBruin, classifier for Holstein Association USA.

Hello from Graze-N-Grow. We will be sending the last of our pastured hogs to the locker, so one less winter chore. We take orders in the spring from our regular customers and add a few more for new customers and buy our Berkshires from Ralph by East Peoria.

Hello from Graze-N-Grow. I keep looking at the 10-day weather forecast for a return of fall, but so far it looks more like winter to me. Harvest is now over for us and thanks to my neighbor’s drill we have 75 acres of wheat that’s looking good.

Hello from Graze-N-Grow! Our harvesting crew, Ken and Richard, are yet to arrive. Since I planted one 12-acre pasture to beans two weeks after the main crop was planted, I did not want them to have to make the long detour around the as-yet-blocked I-80 overpass twice.

Hello from Graze-N-Grow. As I write this, we’ve had about 3 inches of rain and the high temp today and tomorrow is 60 degrees. It’s a kind of a preview for upcoming attractions. With 80-degree temps yet ahead, there’s still some summer left, but harvest is soon here.

My flock is eating the 36-day-old wheat stubble weeds, as in forbs, and red clover right now and should have them eaten to the ground in eight days. I ordered a 10-species forage cover crop mix that I’ll plant into the eaten-down wheat stubble after they get it all eaten.

After hearing about some of the extreme rain events in Illinois and elsewhere the past few weeks, I am very grateful to have been spared those deluges. Here at home the pastures and row crops are faring well so far. And with the cooler temps the animals and I are thankful.

Lincoln Slagel enjoys doing research and when his college roommate introduced him to craft beer, he looked deeper into it.

Multiple events have been scheduled for the University of Illinois’ Agronomy Days. The Department of Crop Sciences, College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences and U of I Extension will host a series of events all season long.

A team of Illinois State University researchers are evaluating the impact of cover crops on carbon sequestration and organic matter.

With the last five or so days of July-type weather most all the crops got planted in a hurry and much has emerged looking great. Here, though, our organic corn and soybean seed is still in the bag.

Building soil organic matter is important to farmers for several reasons, including sequestering carbon and increasing crop yields.

Hello from Graze-N-Grow. Well, still no oats in and not a lot of growth in the pastures. Not even the rye is tall enough to start grazing yet. I’m predicting a late spring.