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Notes From the Field
A few small additions and repairs were completed this year around the LSI farm. This included repairing two suck holes in field 2. We repaired a cut that was beginning to deepen in the grassed border of field 5 and a rock chute was added to handle the flow of water coming from the farm field. In addition, several grassed waterways and filter strips were reseeded with the district's new multi-purpose seeder.
Rock Chute Construction
Pat Eckerle checking soybean planting depth.
Sorghum Sudan competition in a soybean field.
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On May 5th, Pat Eckerle planted soybeans green into the standing cover of Cereal Rye and Crimson Clover. The cereal rye was the only cover crop planted in the Fall of 22. The crimson clover grew from seed that volunteered from the 2022 summer clover mix. This was Pat's first time planting the LSI fields. A HUGE thank you should be given to Duane Hopf for sharing his digital planting files with Pat and for Duane's planting of the corn and soybeans over the last 10 years of the project. And thank you to Pat for taking on this new aspect of the LSI project.
Some challenges arose this year from the 2022 summer cover crop. In a few sparse patches in the fields, Sorghum Sudan grass and Sunn Hemp reseeded itself and began competing with the soybeans. A quick herbicide pass took care of the issue. In addition, Callery Pear trees had become an issue in the WASCOB series in field 2. These trees were terminated with herbicide and later mowed down. On a positive note, the crop acres achieved the highest yield to date of beans, averaging 69 bushels to the acre. Currently, the fields are growing with Barley and Balansa Clover in anticipation of the 2024 crop.
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Education and Demonstration |
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A spring field day "Getting to the Root of Cover Crops" was held at Jack Welp's farm in Birdseye. Both Jack and Aaron Krueger (Gibson County farmer) shared their experiences with a variety of cover crops. They shared cover crop mixes they find work on their operations and showed what the plants they had growing at the time looked like. Participants explored how deep cover crop roots could potentially grow. The first 6 cover crop "Root Banners" were borrowed from CCSI and premiered at this event.
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Picture of Jack Welp's clover cover crop as it was in March.
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Melissa Ruschau showing a student how deep cover crop roots have the potential to grow.
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Resource Specialist, Melissa Ruschau hosted a soil health booth at the FFA job fair held at VUJC this fall. She borrowed the "Root Banners" from CCSI again this time with the full set of 12. She also demonstrated soil health for students with the slake and slump tests using soil samples gathered from the farm.
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LSI was excited to host 30 high school students freshman from around the county for the Tour of Opportunities Day held in October. The students were exposed to a variety of aspects of agriculture in the morning at Precision Farming Solutions. After lunch, they toured LSI and saw conservation practices on the ground and learned how to calculate yield estimates. They also tested the soybeans for moisture content.
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An explanation of the function of a rock chute at the end of a grassed waterway in LSI field 7.
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In the Fall a "Data Driven Decisions" workshop was held at LSI. Joel Reddick, a regenerative ag farmer from Kentucky, and Purdue Extension Educator, Adam Shanks, both spoke. Joel shared how data gathered from his farm has influenced his decisions on his own farm. Adam explained some of the cutting-edge technologies available to farmers and how to decide what to add to benefit their operation.
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