Queue and A Part III

Once again, we have a post that features questions provided by members of Dr. Wen's Capstone class at UNI.  The prior two posts also contain questions and this farmer's thoughts.  We hope the members of that class and anyone else who reads these posts will enjoy them.

Turkeys:
The turkeys were briefly mentioned in the presentation but I would like to know more about why you chose to raise turkeys and the process that you have to go through to have them? Do you have to have a state license or anything to keep them on your property?

Every presentation comes out differently because of the people in the room and because of where I am at at the time of the presentation.  If it had been later in the month, I suspect turkeys would have been on my brain and I would have talked about them more!  I have a few good posts that will give you some of the information you might enjoy getting.  The very best post for an overview regarding turkeys on our farm (warning, includes some humor) is the one linked in this sentence above.  This post includes a video that gives you an idea of what excited turkeys sound like at our farm.  And, this post is a more recent one answering some questions about a few of our choices with respect to raising these birds.

I suspect those will give you more than enough to chew on.  But, the short answers to your questions are as follows:

• Why raise them? We think it is important to have livestock on a diversified farm.  It spreads out our income stream.  The birds provide manure for fertility.  They will eat vegetable scraps or substandard vegetables that we can't sell.  And, they are interesting.
• We purchase turkeys as chicks that are less than one week old and raise them until they are processed.  You might be surprised that we receive chicks in the mail!  We do have the option of going to the hatchery to pick them up, but mailing is often more efficient for us during that time of year.
• We do not need a license to keep turkeys on our farm.  However, we do take them to a facility that has a state inspector so we have more freedom selling the birds.

Handling Over-Spray and Drift:
First, I would like to know more about the process you have to go through to deal with over-spraying of your property. Do you think this issue is a widespread one?

I am going to use this question to point interested persons to a few other posts that will give you more details, just as I did with the turkeys.  The first post I will highlight is this one that includes links to a few more YouTube videos produced by Practical Farmers of Iowa.  You might see a familiar face in a couple of those linked there.  This post will also begin to give you an idea as to how widespread this issue has become simply by illustrating how prevalent use of agri-chemicals is in Iowa.  The video in the prior post includes some of the basics for dealing with drift when it happens.  The video that follows is actually the one I wanted to link in the prior post.  Ah, technology, it has a mind of its own sometimes!

What makes the situation worse is the fact that our current system in the United States is set up so that the burden of the process nearly entirely with those who have had chemical drift impact them.  If our farm experiences a problem, we have to identify it, we have to figure out who did the spraying, what was sprayed and how it was sprayed.  If we want speedy test results, we have take samples ourselves, send them to a lab and pay for the tests.  If we don't opt for this, we have to halt harvest in impacted areas until the slower test results from the Pesticide Bureau arrive (two months later the last time).  So, you either give up your crop waiting for results or you give up $500 per test sample to get quicker results that might still result in lost crops.  All of this results in lost income or cash outflow that may or may not be compensated at a later time.  The process is difficult with minimal 'reward' for the effort.  Not that we're looking for rewards here.  What I suspect most who have a drift/overspray problem want is not be sprayed or drifted on.

The next question should be "what can we do to change this system?"  Well, we need to be persistent.
In 2015, Iowa Farmers Union put forwards some legislation in Iowa that didn't end up going anywhere.  Our farm was one of those trying to promote some activity to work on this change.  Here is a letter we sent out to all of our customers and other interested parties.   Here is a bit more description for some of the legislation we were supporting at the time.  Unfortunately, the 2016 election results eliminated some of our best supporters in the Iowa Senate and House.  But, that doesn't mean we shouldn't still try impress upon our representatives that there is a problem here that needs to be addressed.

If you are interested in a post that lists some of my ideas for reasonable parts of a larger solution, check this one out.

Equipment
I was wondering what kinds of equipment you most commonly use and the size of the equipment. I’ve seen huge tractors, combines, etc. but I can’t imagine that you would have a machine that big on your farm. To go along with that, how often do you get new equipment or do you do most of the daily labor yourself?

This is another example as to why I was motivated to make these blog posts.  The range of thoughtful questions was absolutely impressive.  I've been seeking motivation for writing and here it is.  I wouldn't be surprised if I returned to some of these topics in the future!

Rosie, the tractor.

You are correct, our equipment is a bit smaller than most of what you see in the corn/soybean fields in Iowa.  It wouldn't be unreasonable to be seeing 400 horsepower tractors with a typical row crop operation.  We, on the other hand, work with a 45 hp tractor that includes a bucket and standard 3-point hitch attachment.  We also have a walk-behind tractor and a lawn tractor.  There is also a retired Ford 8-n tractor (from the 1840's) that doesn't see much use anymore on the farm.

The size of the tractor makes it possible for us to maneuver in our fields without sacrificing the power we need to get our work done - and that's a big deal on our farm.  Fifteen acres may sound like a lot to some people, but given everything we want to do on it, finding the correct size for our equipment is very important.

Disk harrow

We have a number of tools that we can attach to the tractor.  I'll bring up just a few examples here.  The disk harrow was actually the motivation for retiring the old tractor and getting the new one.  While the old tractor could pull this piece of equipment, it struggled mightily.

A more important tool for our farm is the flex tine harrow.  The picture in this post that shows the flex tine also shows some black attachments on it that are called "squash knives."  I can take those on and off as I need them.

The first harrow is typically used to do the initial preparation of a plot on our farm.  The flex tine is used to cultivate crops that are already planted.

Flex tine harrow

Even with the equipment, there is still a significant amount of physical labor that goes along with the process.  One of the biggest puzzles for us every season is figuring out the best combination of equipment use and physical labor for the conditions we encounter.  This is actually a surprisingly big topic and I am not sure I do it justice elsewhere on our blog.

Ever year we tell ourselves that we don't want to add another piece of equipment on the farm.  We tell ourselves we have enough.  Every year, we seem to find ourselves making an investment in something else because we become convinced that the investment is worthwhile.  Sometimes, are wrong about this, but normally, we find out that we are correct.

Our farm is a living farm, which means it continues to change and adapt.  Some of those adaptations have come in the form of equipment so we can improve the efficiency of our labor on the farm.