So good to see another video. Looking for ward to how the rest of they year went
@millardhayes1884
3 жыл бұрын
I like this video. Mainly because it's warming my soul being we have 5 inches of snow right now in Union City, Tn.🤪
@dietrevich
3 жыл бұрын
I agree with cover crops being a long term game. You don't see natural fields of pigweed growing anywhere unless it's a cultivated field. Weeds have a purpose and its to sprout as soon as soil is disturbed and fill that niche. I made a small experiment on an area that had pigweed in it, and I just crimped it together with the other weeds and planted corn by hand just by making a small hole for the seed. Next year did the same thing and pigweed was only about 20 % of the weed in the plot. As long as you don't disturb the soil, weeds that are opportunistic will show up less and less.
@derekmagnusson3246
2 жыл бұрын
When your field ends on hay ground, would it be more cost effective to terminate your rows at the hay ground rather than having headlands in those areas? Just curious because I've seen irritated ground where they do not plant headland due to how the pivot can effectivly reach
@ravenviewfarm
2 жыл бұрын
Hey Derek. It very well might be. The issue with headlands - at least in my mind - is always compaction. I honestly don't know if it would be better to compact the hay ground than the field dedicated to the grain crop. And I suppose when we're spraying and side dressing and interseeding cover crops in the middle of summer and during the haying season, we might end up driving down some good standing hay when we do our turn-arounds. It's an interesting thought though. I might bring it up with Dad just to see what he says. He's the wizened old sage when it comes to these things.
@cjjack-qk9qp
3 жыл бұрын
good luck with all the weed seeds they dont go away you will fight them for years have fun.
@ravenviewfarm
3 жыл бұрын
Possibly. But I've been fighting them for years anyway, and now half of them are resistant to glyphosate. By switching to no-till, we don't plant nearly as many of those weed seeds. When they're left on the surface, along with the crop residue, those seeds are subject to environmental degradation (bacterial & fungal rot, freezing etc), and in a healthy ecosystem they are also consumed by a whole host of predators. A single cricket can eat up to 200 weed seeds a day. Certain ground beetles have similar appetites. Mice, birds, and other small mammals take their toll as well, and in some cases the weed seed bank can be depleted by 90% by the time spring rolls around. That's the kind of system we're attempting to foster. Some of that last 10-20% I can choke out with cover crops. Our weed pressure in 2020 was about half that of 2019. I'm looking forward to 2021 and seeing if the trend continues.
@johnhall1614
2 жыл бұрын
Good looking corn. Go Vikings!!! I'm from NC, but have been a Vikings fan since 1978.
@ravenviewfarm
2 жыл бұрын
Nice! I've never been able to get into football myself, but Dad is a die hard Vikes fan. He never (and I mean NEVER) misses a game.
@johnhall1614
2 жыл бұрын
@@ravenviewfarm yes, they have broke my heart and his I'm sure for over 40 years.
@danaseifert7205
3 жыл бұрын
Interseeding = playing the long game for weed suppression. Nice!
@Budd56
3 жыл бұрын
Very interesting information. Someone has to be the guinea pig and experiment. Thank you for sharing with us on your journey. On a side note with what your doing it seems to really slow the growth on your crop🤔🤔🤔. I mean here it is mid February and your corn is not even waist high 😂😂😂😂. Can't wait until the picking starts👍👍. Again thanks for sharing 👍👍✌️
@ravenviewfarm
3 жыл бұрын
LOL! That's a valid observation Budd! I got so behind on my editing, I'm really trying to get caught up. Just a couple more mid-summer videos and I'll be into the harvest footage. That's my favorite stuff too, but I feel like I'm not painting the whole picture if I don't include the crop-walks.
@Budd56
3 жыл бұрын
@@ravenviewfarm I agree with painting the whole picture.
@justgawkin2418
3 жыл бұрын
Have you looked into a third cash crop for rotation purposes along with the corn and beans? Really enjoy your work/vids.
@ravenviewfarm
3 жыл бұрын
Indeed! We experimented with a field of teff grass last year. It's technically an Ethiopian small grain, but we grew it for horse hay purposes - the reason being that we're set up pretty well for making and marketing hay, but not for harvesting, storing, and marketing small grains. It was a way of "kinda" getting a small grain crop into the rotation. The teff was hard to establish though, it makes slippery, explosive bales, and at first I had a hard time marketing it. Naturally, about the time we resolved to skip it in 2021, several customers who tried out the teff reported back to us that they love it, and want to buy it again! LOL! So we may establish another small field of it. This year we're taking the leap and putting in a field of oats. After the oats we'll do alfalfa for two years, then corn, then beans for a five year rotation on that field. That should help break the weed cycles and supply enough nitrogen for a good corn crop with minimal inputs. Alfalfa, corn, and beans have all proven to be profitable. The oats may not be, but I'm hoping to clean, bag, and direct market them for horse feed or wildlife feed. That will bring the profit margin up considerably.
@justgawkin2418
3 жыл бұрын
Too cool. I'll keep watching. We used to plant oats in late season rain washouts. Just to hold the dirt down. But that was before minimal till or no till or any other kind of preservation methods. Weed control was via herbicides and walking beans to cut out weeds. We even pulled by hand a few years to try and get them by the root. That was a whole lot of fun; NOT! BTW I grew up just north of Urbana Illinois. Stay safe and I'm ready for spring uploads. @@ravenviewfarm
@samtalley791
3 жыл бұрын
I think the idea is neat but for somebody that needs good yields,weather, etc it would be really hard to adapt to this. Most of us can’t afford to “experiment” without $ reward. However I’m here because I’m interested. Controlling those weeds in corn would be easy without cover crops. I spray for a living, I know it’s possible. I hope your trial works out. I’ll be here watching.
@ravenviewfarm
3 жыл бұрын
I understand completely Sam. It's never been my goal to force any of this on anyone. I just felt the need to do something different, to see if there's a better way. Every farmer needs to exercise what they feel is a proper amount of risk management if they're going to change their operating methods. We dove into this on 100% of our acres in 2018, and guess what: It bit us in the ass in 2019. We had a horrible year and really questioned whether anything we were doing would work. It was a combination of difficult weather, and the fact that our soil was still behaving like tilled soil even though we had switched to no-till and covers. We got through that, and in 2020 things started to turn around. Regarding your statement of "most of us can't afford to experiment without a $ reward," I can tell you that 2020 was our most profitable year in a long time on our little old farm. Future videos will show it, but we grew 175 bu/ac corn using only 135lbs of nitrogen per acre, cut back on our spray costs, and used a fraction of the fuel we burned when doing full tillage. Our beans were less impressive at about 40 bu/ac, but we're still figuring those out. One field performed great, the others were sub-par, but that taught us a few things for next year. Our hay crops were also particularly good, and tend to have a higher profit margin than the grain crops. All that to say that while ecological considerations rank pretty high for us, it's still the dollar that matters most. Dollars keep us farming tomorrow and the next day, so they have to be paramount. I wouldn't be doing this if there wasn't an economic advantage - I simply couldn't afford to at our scale. I appreciate your viewership, and taking the time to comment!
@salvadorruizarroyo2786
3 жыл бұрын
Hi, in small experiments l wd try different things like leguminous crops, high density between the corn rows l think it will cover the ground faster and compit with any weed.
@salvadorruizarroyo2786
3 жыл бұрын
I just saw your page looking for corn grain, for hydroponics, to grow it like pasture for small animals.
@GeigerFarm
3 жыл бұрын
Corn looked good 👍🏻. The drill inter seeding looks great 🙂
@somethingabouttractors241
3 жыл бұрын
Good looking corn, that soil is gonna be some nice stuff.
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