Thanks John! I'll pass the compliment along to Dad! They're certainly having an exciting year so far. I'm reluctant to offer too much optimism for the Vikes, for fear of jinxing it all!
Deep joy seeing you back , your Dad and yourself look well and full of beans . The droughts are having an effect everywhere and you seem to be fairly fortunate . Interested to see the outcome of the soil samples . Nice bit of maintenance on your lovely tractor . Great video 👍🇬🇧
Thanks for the update. In my opinion you weren't rambling I appreciate the explanation. It's nice to hear about what your doing. Looking forward to the harvest videos.
So glad you put out a video again. Been wondering where you've been. Too bad about the 2 year drought. I guess you never know. From what I can see, your corn doesn't look to bad based on how dry it's been for you. My corn turned out pretty well here in western PA. Soybeans not as good. Looking forward to your upcoming videos.
I hear ya! I didn’t mean to be away so long. Summer and fall were so busy that I barely ever sat down at the computer. But I kept the camera rolling, so there’ll be a few videos rolling out in the near future. The corn did surprisingly well given the conditions. Beans were disappointing here as well. We did make a lot of nice hay over the summer, and it’s been selling pretty hot, so it was definitely a year when I was happy to be running a diversified operation.
@@ravenviewfarm My hay did very well, too. Haven't started marketing it yet, but I expect it to sell. Harvest is done for me for the year. I'm glad, because the weather has just turned wintry.
Hey, what a surprise! Good to see an update, and I learned about another plant I never knew existed; wooly cupgrass. Our earcorn supply is still making squirrels (and chipmunks last Summer) happy, but we’ll probably need another couple bags this Spring.
I've found tree impact in a field has roots reaching out twice the span of the visible canopy, so I'm just planting buckwheat, sunflowers, and other covers to bring in the beneficial insects and pollinators as the 'insecticide application' along trees (and along roads suffering with heavy weeds). I liked your inter-seeding timing from your old video I just watched as that is the timing for my plans this year; last year I broadcast cover soon after corn planting and the corn struggled getting ahead of it, but the rows of corn that did not get broadcast on but were next to those did great. Since you are doing rye with beans be sure to check out the presentations of Rick Clark.
Glad you found it helpful! As for Rick, he's great! He came up here and gave a presentation for our local county Soil and Water office, and I've listened to a number of interviews with him on various podcasts. Heck of a nice guy, and completely fearless when it comes to regenerative practices.
Glad to see you back on RU-vid. I am curious as to why you swathed the rye instead of direct cutting. I also would love to see the video of rye harvest
Hey David! We swathed the rye for two reasons. The main reason is that we only have a flex header for our 4400 combine (for direct cutting. We have a belt pickup for windrows). I know we can “bolt up” the flex plate and make it rigid, but I haven’t yet learned how to do that quite yet. The 55 combine had a rigid head, but would have required some other work to get it set up for a small grain crop. The other reason is that this rye was from VNS seed, so it wasn’t consistent in its maturity. Swathing it and leaving it in windrows for a few days gave the higher-moisture heads a chance to dry down. It also gave the straw and any weeds a chance to dry down nicely for better threshing and baling. I only took a very limited amount of video during the rye harvest, but I’ll see if I can make something out of it. Otherwise, there’s always next year!
I have been looking into compost extract also. Been watching young red angus’ videos about it. Not sure exactly how to apply it though without plugging.
We are using an electric diaphragm pump with nozzle bodies and orifices to do our in-furrow applications. Plugging is definitely an issue. What I'm finding is that when we brew the extract using 400 micron mesh bags, and then pass it through a 50 mesh filter on the applicator, we have to clean the filter fairly regularly in the field. Orifices with a size smaller than 40 tend to plug up more easily as well. Some larger particles also tend to make it past the filter I'm using on our applicator. What I'm thinking of doing is outfitting a large 40 mesh filter to our brewer, so the extract gets pre-filtered for large particles before going into the applicator. Then keep the 50 mesh filter on the applicator, and if necessary use tee fittings after the orifices - so that one nozzle body can service two rows if they're close together. That'll help keep the orifice sizes larger than 40. One can also dilute the mixture and apply more gallons per acre in order to up-size the orifice plates, but that requires more frequent refills, so there's a trade off. I'll have a video series coming out later this winter that will show all of this in more detail. I wanted to release any compost extract videos as a series, so we can keep all of the information together better.
Hey Chris! The short answer is that the jury is still out. We applied extract in-furrow with our corn crop this past spring, and as a separate application ahead of soybean planting. The corn showed some small improvement with the application, and the beans basically showed no result. NOW, that being said, there are a couple of caveats. Firstly, we realized a couple of months later that our spring application was WAY too light. I spoke with Dr. David Johnson, who developed the Johnson-Su bioreactor with his wife, and he gave me a couple of insightful benchmarks to help determine application rates. Secondly, we received very little rain throughout the growing season, and it's pretty hard to culture microbes without water. So I suspect we have some applied biology that just stayed dormant in the soil. This past fall, I rigged up our no-till drill with a liquid application rig, and we put down extract again with our winter rye cover crop. We applied a MUCH heavier dose of extract, but of course we'll have to wait until spring to observe the results. I recently talked with a soil biologist who noted that in cold climates like ours, fungi do better with a fall application, and bacteria, nematodes, and protozoa tend to do better with a spring application, so timing also plays a more significant role than I was previously aware (depending on which microbes one wants to emphasize). It's an ongoing learning process. We're enrolled in a two year study, but I suspect we'll keep doing it beyond the date when the study ends, and we'll continue to tinker with new ideas and methods.
Hey Aaron! I haven’t kept track exactly. I read somewhere that in our area, a person should budget for 150 bags at 50 lbs each. My gut tells me that’s about right, depending on the severity of the winter, and what setting you’re running the stove at. Maybe next year I’ll keep count. Ours is a St. Croix Auburn, and we use it as supplemental heat. We’ve reduced our natural gas bill by about 75%. Our main boiler still runs, but a lot less frequently.
