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Tall fescue is an important cool-season forage in many parts of the U.S. It is high-yielding, persistent and adapted to a wide range of soil fertility conditions.
Bernie Erven, professor emeritus at Ohio State University and owner of Erven HR Services LLC, was a keynote presenter at the annual symposium hosted by the Midwest Forage Association in Wisconsin Dells, Wisconsin, earlier this year.
How can you tell if someone is listening to you? I mean truly paying attention and comprehending the words you are saying?
Being present has become a profound topic because we seem to come up with more distractions all the time.
Some days it’s easy to be a hero. I went into a farm shop looking for a hay grower, but he was not in the area that day. One of his employees was losing a battle with a little tire.
I had never worked on a diesel engine before. It was about 1969 and I was working for Charles Warnick at Pleasant Grove, Utah, while going to college. One morning, he asked me to grab my toolbox and drive over and help a neighbor.
Most of us have some piece of machinery we have held on to … sometimes too long. The reasons can be varied: It belonged to Grandpa; it is a collector’s item (if only to you) – or probably the No. 1 reason: It is too expensive to replace it.
One reason why forage-livestock production is challenging is that the value of forage is surprisingly dynamic. Forage value increases when forage growth is limited by weather, when alternative feeds are expensive or when pastures on a farm are stocked too heavily.
I’m certain that I will never be accused of being a techno-wizard, but I feel like I’ve made a valiant effort to at least remain in the same solar system as the world becomes, at once, ever smaller and more complicated every day.
Sometimes, I wonder if reacting to Mother Nature or man-made errors in judgment are not the most stressful part of choosing a career in farming. While waiting for the rain to stop is fretful enough when the hay is ready, the worry over what to do when it stops raining is even more so. One of those worries is the effect of heat stress on grazing systems.
When it comes to voles, pocket gophers and field mice, forage growers will do just about anything to get them off their property – or at least under control.
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