Forage

One friend threw at curve ball at me yesterday. He said Ed, you missed a big one around here and across the country. How about the weeds that hide in forage crops? They get chopped and the farmer doesn't see the weed again.

Many farmers at Respect the Rotation talked about their cattle operations and forages but no one connected the dot between forage weeds and their contribution to resistance.

We have a few hay fields around here and a few pastures and they are a haven for weeds, especially perennial weeds but also annuals and bi annuals. There is a source and a seed bank right there.

In areas where dairy is big or lots of corn and other crops are chopped, he is right. The weeds get chopped with the crop and hopefully put right back to another crop. You never notice the weeds. All of the resistant weeds hide very nicely in these forage crops. They go to seed before harvest and the seed bank is replenished without much notice by the farmer.

Pastures are a different problem. They get overgrazed then the weeds outgrow the pasture. Most pastures get mowed once here for iron weed and other weeds. The Hefty boys at Ag PhD talk about pasture weed management more than anyone I know of and they make a great point.

The point is weeds grow everywhere. They get attention only when they get noticed. Think of all the areas that don't get noticed. It is a huge amount of land in this country. We need to address that.

Monday was such a good day I knew Tuesday couldn't equal it. It didn't. A major fitting broke on the sprayer, we broke a belt on the farm mower and you can't read the part number. You take it to the parts store to try and match it up or go to Case IH and pay double for the belt you know they have, hopefully in stock. A landlord decided to make a new waterway through my double crop soybeans without asking and tore up another quarter acre of beans or more. It just wasn't a good day.

I settled up with a neighbor farmer who trucks a lot of grain for us and it cost me $3000 to haul 30,000 bu of grain 50 miles round trip. LuAnn and I thought that was pretty good, we can't own our own for that.

It turns out his daughter married a Kiwi she met in Cincinnati in Seminary school and she lives in Christchurch where we were in February. Hugh is a no tiller like me and he and his wife are going down under for 3 weeks around Christmas. I said you have to drive down the Canterbury Plains and meet AJ Lill at Norwest Seeds and get the tour we got.

That's it for today. Don't take those weeds for granted, the sneezin' season is almost here in Ohio. Ruminate on this one for awhile.

Ed