About ten years ago a dairy nutritionist friend moved from Vermont to Idaho to pursue a job opportunity. He was there a few years, then moved back to the Northeast–specifically, to New York. In making this decision he said that he and his wife made a list of the advantages of living in each state. The advantages of staying in Idaho included better weather, higher crop yields, and a more vibrant dairy enterprise. The advantage of moving to New York: Closer to family. They reviewed the list and decided to make the logical choice: Family comes first, so back they came. But the key is that it was a personal decision, having nothing to do with the relative advantages or disadvantages of dairying in the two states.

I’ve spent some time in Idaho on crop consulting and visiting dairy farms, and there’s one other advantage that we have in the Northeast, something a dairy consultant might overlook: Water. Idaho crops need to be irrigated, and there’s increasing competition for available water supplies. Farmland prices are also much higher than in most of the Northeastern U.S. These are probably the only reasons why Idaho didn’t pass New York years ago in total milk production.

 Tale #1: One summer during the 1970s, when Cornell University was operating the Miner Institute dairy farm, it was so wet that they couldn’t sidedress urea to the corn. So they hired an aerial applicator from Vermont to fly the fertilizer on. But where to land and take off? The longest stretch of road that didn’t get a lot of traffic was the North Farm Road near Lake Champlain. It was long and straight, but had a large rise (actually a crossroads) right about in the middle. Cornell supplied a flagman to stop the traffic, but some of the drivers couldn’t see over the rise and wondered why the hell they were being stopped. But when the crop dusting plane came roaring over the hill and passed just over them they got the idea really fast.

Tale #2: Blackbirds have often had a field day eating Miner Institute’s corn when it’s in the milk stage. During the 1980s the problem seemed especially bad so we hired an aerial applicator to fly on a bird repellent, Avitrol. This stuff wasn’t supposed to kill the birds, but give them a tummy ache, causing them to emit distress calls and scare the whole flock away. Or at least into the neighbor’s corn fields… One of our corn fields was in what we’ve always called the “Back 40″,  a mile from the farmstead and completely surrounded by forest. The planes used by aerial applicators are wonderfully maneuverable, and can really “stand on their head” when coming to the end of the field.  Harold, an impressionably sort, was driving down the road leading to the Back 40, unaware that the applicator was flying on Avitrol. Harold drove around the corner to the entrance of the field and was met at what must have seemed at eye level by a very loud airplane coming straight at him! Harold ducked and covered his face with his arms, waiting for the fatal crash. Nothing. He waited a minute, then got out of his truck and looked. Nothing. (That was the last pass the plane was taking and by the time Harold peeked it was long-gone.) He had quite a story to tell when he came back to the farm…

Tale #3, related to me by the aerial applicator, Chuck: He was applying methyl parathion to orange groves in Florida when he had engine trouble and had to ditch his “crop duster” plane. He did, right beside a strip of homes bordering the orange grove. But in the very hard landing he severely damaged the plane and essentially took a bath in a concentrated solution of methyl parathion–and there are few pesticides more toxic than this one. Chuck wasn’t injured but knew that time was of the essence and that he: 1. had to get out of his pesticide-sodden clothes ASAP, and 2. had to get into a shower to completely wash off the chemical before it was absorbed into his skin. He picked the nearest house and started shedding wet clothing as he ran toward the back door. He burst through the back door, by this time wearing very little, and asked the understandably shocked housewife: “Quick, where’s the bathroom?” She stammered a reply, he took off for the shower, and in fact got the methyl parathion washed off so quickly that he didn’t even get sick. But wouldn’t you have loved to be there that evening when the housewive’s hubby came home and asked: “Anything exciting happen to you today, honey?”

Last year I participated in a Corn Silage Field Day near Watertown, and stood there and watched as several large SP choppers wreaked havoc on a very large corn field, gobbling up the whole shebang in an hour or two. It was a great show and hundreds of farmers turned out to participate in the field day. However, the corn crop was in the dough stage, not nearly mature enough to harvest.  I’m told that the farmer ensiled the sodden mass in a separate silo and fed it to his heifers. I wonder if he really knew how much he lost in reduced dry matter yield and grain content…

The most common excuse is that they want to get the crop ensiled before it starts to rain and they’d have to “mud it in”, or worse. This in spite of the fact that very seldom do these conditions occur. Sure, if a monsoon or early fall hurricane strikes they could be screwed. However, if they chop their corn for silage when it’s well below 30% DM they are well and truly screwed, for sure.

Maybe this year will be the year that farmers finally listen and wait until their corn crop is at least 32% DM before harvesting it. Yeah, and maybe a long-lost rich uncle will die and leave me a million bucks. Guess which is more likely to happen?

By this time Nat had some age on her, and my father had a lot of it on him, so they were a good match. Several years ago my father passed away and Natalie finally had to leave Oak Point and come live with us some 130 miles away. She tolerated it OK, toleration being something felines do pretty well when there’s no alternative, but Oak Point was always home to her. Since I retired two years ago Natalie has moved south to Virginia with us each winter, grudgingly I think, but very obviously happy every spring when we move back to Oak Point. She’d been with us for 15 years, and came to us as an adult. We have owned a dog and have had several cats own us, but Nat the Cat is by far the best pet we’ve ever had. One of her favorite places, especially during inclement weather, was curled up on my wife’s computer desk between the keyboard and monitor, making it very convenient to receive attention. Katy brushed her every night, and Nat spent every evening curled up next to her on the sofa, and at our feet every night.

Nat had lost quite a bit of weight in the past few weeks, and we were going to take her to the veterinarian yesterday for blood tests. My daughter-in-law is a small animal vet and sight unseen gave potential diagnoses of worms, kidney disease, diabetes or cancer. Since we don’t think it was worms, and all of the other most likely causes have very grim prognoses, perhaps it’s best that Nat decided to take matters into her own hands. Or paws. Whatever. What I think happened, and (since it’s been almost to days) at this point hope happened, is that she found a comfortable place in the shade and went to sleep for the last time.  I tell myself that this is a better outcome for all of us, Nat and Katy and me, since the alternatives were suffering or euthanasia. This is all true, but it still hurts.

I worry about this short-term since where are farmers going to get unbiased technical advice? Ask a chemical company rep what herbicide you should use and he/she will certainly mention one of that company’s products. Ask a fertilizer salesman if you can cut starter fertilizer rates to the bone in high-fertility fields and you might get a slightly different answer than you would from an Extension agronomist. But I also worry about this long-term, since capable people will be less likely to choose a profession with such crummy job security. And even if they start out in Extension, seeing what’s happening around them would seem to make job offers from agribusiness a lot more attractive. Just when they’re starting to accumulate the experience that only comes with time, they leave for greener pastures, so to speak.

This last issue is one that really troubles me, because in agriculture–as in many other fields–there’s tremendous value in the experience gained simply from sticking around year after year, watching and learning from others as well as (especially for agronomists) noting the effects of weather conditions on field and forage crops.

Last winter at a farmer meeting where we were guest speakers, the University of Wisconsin’s Extension Agronomist Dan Undersander and I were commiserating about the state of our industry. Dan is an immensely popular speaker on a wide variety of forage topics, has been for a generation or more. (In fact, I think it’s been at least that long since he’s needed a comb!) He’s an invited speaker at forage meetings near and far, as am I. Since he’s been on many regional and national Extension and State University-related committees and “knows the players”, to coin a phrase, I asked Dan: “How many are there of folks like you and me, who speak on a wide range of field and forage topics?”  He thought  for no more than a few seconds and said: “Well, there’s you and there’s me. That’s about it.” I don’t know if that’s completely true, but if not it’s probably close, because while I’m “mostly retired” I still speak at two dozen or so farm meetings per year, both in the Northeast and just about anywhere else in North America where they have dairy cows and grow corn or alfalfa. At dairy meetings I’m usually the only crop-oriented speaker, while at meetings with a forage focus the other speakers (almost all university faculty) are very capable in their area of specialization but don’t ask the “weed guy” about alfalfa weevils or corn hybrids or the proper time to harvest second cut alfalfa.

I know, I know…perhaps I’m just an old f….. uh, fellow, longing for the past and worrying about the future. But as Hobbes once said (Calvin and Hobbes): The problem with the future is that it keeps turning into the present.

The truck was an old stake-body with no protection from the wind. Oh, well, at least the birds would get some fresh air. Upon arriving at the “crate place”, I was surprised that there were a whole pile of crates! Boy, these kids must have ordered a lot of capons. I arrived at the chicken place and started loading capons, quite a few birds to a crate. The only way I could fit all the crates onto the truck was to stack them several deep, solid from front to back and side to side. Then I left for the fairgrounds, which was quite a long drive. By this time of the day the temperature was in the 90s, with the humidity pretty close to that. I figured faster was better and lit out, leaving a stream of white feathers in my wake. 

The capons apparently did not enjoy the trip (neither did I), and by the time I got to the fairgrounds some of them were in sorry shape since the crates on top had airflow to the max while the ones in the middle didn’t have much of any. In fact, it looked like some of the capons didn’t survive their ordeal, with a few crates of birds worse than the others. Therefore, some sorting was necessary to ensure that there wasn’t more than one bird per crate that had expired, or nearly so. (A 4-Her is fair, even in the face of adversity.) This  situation was distressing, but there wasn’t much I could do about it.

Being completely ignorant about bird physiology I thought they that chickens were like fish; their eyes would stay open regardless of whether they were alive or dead, and the kids wouldn’t be able to tell the difference until after they got home. But I soon got a shock: Chickens got eyelids! And when they go to that great Chicken Coop in the Sky, they do so with closed eyelids. My response to a couple of the 4-Hers, noting a prone capon with closed eyelids: “Maybe it’s sleeping.” What the heck, maybe it was…

I’ve been a serious though minimally skilled golfer for over 50 years, during which time I’ve always had either a fade (when things were going well) or a banana-shaped slice (when they weren’t). Prior to surgery I kiddingly asked the orthopedic surgeon that since he was going to have to reconstruct the bones in my wrist, could he perhaps position the titanium plate so that I’d have a draw instead of a slice?

Well, as the saying goes Be careful what you wish for. Because whether he did screw the plate in on an angle or if something else changed drastically, ever since I started playing again after a 3-month recovery period, damned if I haven’t traded a slice for a draw!  A draw at best; far too often, a banana-shaped hook. The result is that I’m still playing far too many second shots “from the shade”, as they say, except that now I’m in the woods to the left of the fairway, not the right. I’m now seeing parts of courses I never knew existed, including interesting rock formations, previously undiscovered (by me, at least) bodies of water, and in one woodsy expedition resulting from a towering hook, the place Where Elephants Go to Die . The only upside is that the several other members of my golfing family are also hookers (remember we’re talking golf here), so I get to spend more quality time with them between tee and green. However, “quality time” is perhaps too generous a term when the whole group is poking around in the underbrush searching for their errant shots.

Is this the new reality of climate change and global warming? I think not. What has changed a bit is seed corn’s tolerance to cool spring soil conditions, not the least of which is due to much better seed treatments. The old planterbox treatments are not a good match with plateless and air planters, and it might not be a stretch to say that especially with air planters the pour-on powders are all but useless. I wish I could find that old research report done in the midwest where ag engineers determined that only about 25% of planterbox treatments remained on seed corn by the time the seed was planted by a finger pickup planter. For air planters it was even worse–a whopping 8%. I lost the report but well remember the numbers because they’re so shocking.

Plant breeders also have played a part; for instance, one of Cornell University’s corn breeders’ efforts have been to develop inbreds that are more cold-tolerant. Judging from how well much of this extra-early corn has done, their efforts have been successful.

But in the end much of the reason for earlier and earlier corn planting is simply that farmers have become more aggressive in their planting time decisions. Maybe I’m an old fogey–correct that; I am an old fogey–but I get concerned when a farmer 15 miles south of the Canadian border in Northern NY has 500 or more acres of corn planted, much of it in clay loam soils, by April 20th. Too many of our decisions are influenced by the previous year’s results. Plant a bit of corn in mid-April and it does real well? Let’s plant a lot more in mid-April this year! It’s been a while since most areas of the Northeast have had a long stretch of cold, wet weather in late April/early May. Sooner or later this will happen, though–we all know it will. Then we’ll find out just how good these super-seed treatments and cold-tolerant corn hybrids are.

Speaking of which: The other day I had a follow-up visit with my dermatologist to check on some skin lesions that he froze off last year. After he determined that all was OK, I heard him say: “Would you like me to give you a genital checkup?” Well, he hadn’t done anything like this the first time he saw me and it sounded a bit strange, so I hesitated, thinking that if skin cancer is caused by excessive exposure to the sun, that’s one body part where, as they say, The Sun Never Shines. Sensing my indecision, he said ”That’s perfectly OK, you can refuse the exam and I’ll just note that on your chart.” The rest of the conversation went like this:

“Well, I guess it’s OK if you check my genitals.”

“GENITALS? I said I wanted to give you a GENERAL checkup. I’ll have to be more careful about saying that word.”

“No, it’s OK, doc…I just had a complete physical exam by my GP and she was all over me, so be my guest.”

“No, I don’t need you to….Oh. Well, everything seems to be fine. You can pull up your pants now. “

A USDA’s effort of many years ago was to pay farmers to trim herd size without necessarily eliminating herds. The idea was to cull the bottom of the herd, and if a farm reduced milk sales by at least a certain amount the farm would get a payment from USDA. Sounded good, and many herds did so. But a year or so later there were all those empty tie stalls (or underpopulated free stalls) and a bunch of springing heifers ready to fill them. Which do you think would produce more milk: A cow at the bottom of the herd or a fresh heifer? And of course the heifer is is almost always genetically superior to the cow the farmer culled. Therefore, this attempt at curtailing production was a dismal failure, and the USDA’s next attempt, a few years later, was more draconian:

Namely, the Dairy Termination Program (AKA “The Buyout”). This one eliminated whole herds of cows, preventing both their sale to other U.S. dairy farms and the farmer from restarting a dairy on the same farm, at least not anytime soon. (Farmers could sell their herds for dairy purposes to farmers in other countries. In Northern N.Y. this meant Canada, of course, and that’s what some Buyout  farmers did.) Farmers accepted into this program, based on competitive bids, would be paid so much per hundredweight of milk for “permanently” exiting the dairy business. Sounded good, especially to farmers nearing retirement who were going to sell out in a few years anyway! Therefore, the list of participating farms looked much like an AARP mailing list. (In Clinton County, for instance, where I knew just about all the farms accepted into the program, about 90% of them were in this category.) And for some of the farmers who didn’t retire, “permanent” turned out not be not so permanent after all. They grew and sold crops until the program’s restrictions permitted them to go back into dairying. The immediate effects on milk production were more significant than for the previous program, but transitory—as all such programs are destined to be.

Is the solution Canadian-style supply management? Hmmm. This is looking better to a lot of nearly destitute dairy farmers, but would represent a huge change for the U.S. dairy industry, and not one that would easily be undone. But it might be the only one that dairy farmers can’t doom to failure by the simple act of trying to maximize economical production on their own farms.