Blog | Field 2 Field

August 11, 2021August 11, 2021

Drought has Utah farmer in “survival mode”

Drought to an average person likely means “it’s dry.” And that’s fair. However, what you may not realize is drought, to a farmer, might mean “we’re struggling to stay in business because of something we literally have no control over.” It’s understandably a situation that non-farm folks have a hard time relating to.

The National Association of Farm Broadcasting’s News Service and the American Farm Bureau Federation undertook a project this month to put a human face on the challenges of drought, especially in the Western United States. That area of the country has been clobbered by a long and intense spell of dry weather.

Tyson Roberts is a farmer from Layton, Utah, who’s seen the challenge firsthand because he’s living it right now. I jumped on the phone with him on Tuesday of this week for an interview about what it’s like to face a drought of this magnitude. While drought is a big topic of conversation in 2021, he said the dry spell stretches back to 2021.

“We got started with this last year,” he recalled while on the phone from his Utah farm. “A lot of people may not realize that.”

It wasn’t quite as bad last year as it is in 2021. The water available for Roberts’ crops was below normal levels in 2020, but they still grew “pretty much” all of the crops that they would in a normal year. This year has been markedly different.

“We are a vegetable operation here,” he said, “and we grow fresh market vegetables for farmer’s markets.

“When you think about a tradition row crop farm, the producer plants in the spring and harvests in the fall,” Roberts says. “We work a little differently: we’ll start planting different vegetables in the spring and continue through most of the summer and into August.”

Their typical planting schedule came to a sudden stop. Roberts, the sixth generation of the Roberts family to work the farm in Davis County, Utah, got to the middle of June and figured out they wouldn’t have enough water to sustain the crops they have growing and grow the additional crops they’d be planting through the month of July.

“We ended up putting all of our planters away around the first of July,” he recalled. “About 20 percent of our property remained unplanted. We fallowed it because there just isn’t enough water to grow the amount of produce we normally plant in a given year.”

Drought is making the lives of farmers miserable in 2021, especially in the Western United States. (Photo from foxnews.com)

As someone who doesn’t live on a farm, imagine having to give up 20 percent of your income due to circumstances you had no control over. I don’t know about you, but a 20 percent drop in income would likely throw me out of my house and into the street.

The drought hasn’t forced Roberts to destroy any crops, but it has forced him to leave some crops in the field because they’re not harvestable quality, which amounts to the same thing. He offered up his sweet corn crop as an example.

“About 2/3 of the top part of our fields are pretty good quality and should get us good yields,” he said. “However, on the bottom end, we haven’t had enough water for all of the other plants. I guess you’d say we couldn’t get the water all the way to the end of the row.

“We’ve lost a lot of yield and in quality,” Roberts added. “In addition to the unplanted ground, there’s also a portion of the planted crops that are unmarketable.”

Crop farmers get paid when they harvest crops. Can you imagine knowing ahead of time that the one check you get for harvesting your crops won’t pay your bills? That’s what farmers face every year. These are the people that grow our food. It’s a rough way to earn a living.

He sums up the situation on his farm rather succinctly: “We’re in survival mode right now,” he said grimly. “With the unplanted acres and the loss of yield, we’re just trying to stay afloat. And I think that’s fair to say for a lot of farmers around us and across the state, as well as throughout the Western U.S.”

So how do farmers like him find a way to keep moving forward and get through this?

“I serve on the Utah Farm Bureau Board of Directors, and we met last week to discuss how we can help keep our farmers in business,” he said. “Every state has received a fair amount of COVID assistance, which is some help. We’re looking at the best ways to help the livestock farmers, the crop farmers, and get them the help they need.

“We’re looking into government programs to help them stay in business,” Roberts added. “I hate to say it, but sometimes a company or a farm may need a little help staying afloat when they face the challenges that we have for nearly two years.”

Roberts and his wife, Danna, have six children who each help on the farm, and Tyson’s parents, Dix and Ruth, also operate the farm with him.

May 3, 2021May 3, 2021

Anoka State Mental Hospital Coming Back to Life

Here’s a complete look at the main campus as it stands today.

“Anoka State Mental Hospital” – It’s been abandoned since 1999. Just saying the name evokes memories of every single scary movie you’ve watched in recent history, such as those Friday the 13^th movies we used to watch as kids. However, like many other abandoned places in the Twin Cities of Minnesota, it seems to be coming back to life.

Here’s the link to the photo album on Facebook

Some of the buildings are still in rough shape, and those are easy to pick out by the plywood in all the windows. Others are in the process of being renovated, and a couple are used now as veterans’ homes. The first thing that jumped out at me was how BIG the campus is. Lots of large brick buildings got built in the shape of a half-circle. It’s enormous!

The brick buildings have every right to look like they’ve been through a lot: they have. A minnpost.com article says the fourth Minnesota state hospital for the insane opened in 1900. The place was quite different from the other three institutions; the Anoka State Mental Hospital was the first to be built in Minnesota according to the cottage plan. The goal was to reduce the institutional feel of the place for its chronic patients.

It was a bright and sunny day when I walked the grounds of the Anoka State Hospital grounds. (Photo by Chad Smith)

They say overcrowding was a big problem at Minnesota’s mental health institutions operating in Rochester, Fergus Falls, and St. Peter. To help alleviate the overcrowding problems, the planning commission chose 650 acres right near the scenic Rum River in Anoka for a fourth site.

Building the hospital got started in June of 1899, and the first 100 patients (all men) were transferred to the facility on March 14, 1900. The facility began to expand in 1905, adding several cottages, as well as farm and service buildings. By 1917, ten cottages, an auditorium, and a new administration formed in a semicircle at the completed facility.

However, like many mental institutions across the country, history wasn’t always a good thing for the facility. A dramatic series of articles exposed some horrible conditions at the hospital in the mid-1900s. State officials became determined to do something about the problem.

Still some work to do at the Anoka State Hospital. (Photo by Chad Smith)

The atlasobscura.com website says, on Halloween night in 1949, they held a bonfire on the grounds of the Anoka State Mental Hospital. It must have been a big fire as around 359 straitjackets, 196 cuffs, and 91 straps, all different forms of restraints used on the patients, were destroyed. Governor Luther Youngdahl and other officials used the event to show the world that the facility was moving toward more humane forms of treatment.

Conditions did improve for the patients, thanks to the development of new drugs and institutional reforms. Some unfortunate incidents that compromised community safety around the hospital took place here and there over the next several decades. The Anoka State Mental Hospital closed in 1999, and the patients got moved to a nearby facility.

April 5, 2021April 5, 2021

Rescue dogs and the U.S. livestock industry

Rescue dogs and foreign animal diseases are not something I ever expected would combine in the same story. However, a recent assignment for the National Association of Farm Broadcasting brought the two previously unrelated issues face-to-face. The National Pork Producers Council is alarmed at the number of rescue dogs coming into the U.S. from countries currently battling a serious Foreign Animal Disease outbreak.

The potential is there for some of those FADs to ride along with the dogs, either on the coats or equipment like dog crates as the animals enter the country. Liz Wagstrom is the Chief Veterinarian for the NPPC, and she says they’re especially concerned about animals coming in from Asia.

“Rescue dogs are being brought into the U.S. from Asia after being rescued out of wet markets or the meat trade,” Wagstrom said. “They could be contaminated with blood, urine, or manure, which could carry something like African Swine Fever, Foot-and-Mouth Disease, or Classic Swine Fever.”

The dogs themselves aren’t susceptible to those diseases. However, Wagstrom says they could carry contamination on their coats, in their bedding, or even dog dishes and toys they came into the country with could get contaminated.

“Our concern is those rescue dogs could enter the United States, be adopted by someone on a farm, and be carrying a virus,” she said. “The crates they ride in, or other items like dishes and toys could be contaminated. That could lead to disaster.”

Dr. Liz Wagstrom is the Chief Veterinarian for the National Pork Producers Council. (Photo from Twitter.com)

Not only are domestic herds at risk, but if crates or other items aren’t properly disposed of and feral pigs get into or near them, that will also spread disease quickly. “We feel that if these animals are coming in, we need rules in place to do it safely,” she said.

Which government agency has jurisdiction over this is a “confusing issue.” The vast majority of dogs come into the country with their owners, and those dogs fall under the authority of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Hagstrom, a long-time veterinarian, says the CDC is “basically looking to see if those dogs have a rabies vaccination.”

Dogs that come in for resale fall under the U.S. Department of Agriculture authority. However, she points out that most of that authority focuses on animal welfare. A very small number of dogs coming into the country get evaluated as a possible risk to livestock.

“That would be herding dogs from certain areas that get evaluated for tapeworms,” she says. “It might also include dogs from the new areas of the world infected by screwworms. We think the USDA definitely has the authority to expand their oversight of the dogs that come in either for sale or adoption.

“A Foreign Animal Disease outbreak in the U.S. will immediately shut down all trade,” Wagstrom said while on the phone from Arizona, “which means we’d have a lot of extra animals on hand.

“Even if it was African Swine Fever that only impacted hogs, we have trading partners that may question milk, meat, and poultry exports,” she added. “The depressed prices for pork will likely put downward pressure on the price of beef, poultry, and dairy products.”

That means a Foreign Animal Disease of any kind will be a multi-billion-dollar hit to U.S. livestock, but it might not stop there. There’s a potential hit to the soybean industry because pork is a big part of its market. “It could have a devastating impact on U.S. agriculture as a whole,” Hagstrom says.

She says NPPC has studied the Animal Protection Act, which gives USDA authority over animals, their conveyances, bedding, and animal feed if they could potentially harm the livestock industry. If the agency was concerned about just dog diseases, then USDA doesn’t have the authority.

“However, because we’re talking about the health of the livestock industry, we believe they have the authority to write rules on how to safely bring the dogs into the country,” she says. “We do understand they’re being rescued from some horrific conditions in many cases. If they’re coming in to be rescued, let’s make sure they’re coming safely.

“Let’s get them quarantined and make sure they get washed,” Hagstrom says. “We also need to make sure their crates, bedding, and anything else that came into the country are properly disposed of. That will make it a win-win for both the dogs and U.S. livestock.”

To give ourselves the best chance of keeping the livestock industry safe, NPPC says we need more agricultural inspectors at ports of entry into the U.S. Last year, the government authorized over 700 new ag inspectors and 60 K-9 teams. However, the Coronavirus put a damper on those plans.

“Those new positions were funded by user fees on international airline tickets and international cargo,” she said. “Those fees went away because of the 95 percent decrease in international travel brought on by COVID-19 in 2020. That meant we had to work through the appropriations process to keep those inspectors funded at the current level.”

NPPC and other organizations are back at the appropriations table and asking for additional funding to continue to increase the number of agricultural inspectors as travel hopefully gets back to normal levels.

February 27, 2021February 27, 2021

Minneapolis and the Basilica of St. Mary’s

Here’s a quick video of what the outside of the basilica looks like. It was a beautiful day in Minneapolis to be outside.

Here’s the link to my complete photo album: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?vanity=chad.smith.75685&set=a.3902583753135365

Minneapolis is one of my favorite places to explore. It’s nice to see the city trying to get back on its feet after drawing national attention due to the days of rioting that hit the downtown area hard. Driving down 394 East and heading into the city regularly, I kept passing this giant structure that really got my blood pumping.

That giant structure is the Basilica of St. Mary’s. Anyone who knows me or follows my explorations, knows I love architecture. It’s one of my favorite things to photograph, especially in the big city where styles can vary widely, sometimes from block to block. St. Mary’s is considered one of the finest examples of Beaux Architecture in the nation.

The big structure was built between 1907 and 1915. They laid the cornerstone of the building was laid at the intersection of 16th Street and Hennepin Avenue. While I don’t pretend to understand exactly what this means, the building was elevated to the rank of minor basilica by Pope Pius XI in 1926. The basilica was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1975.

Church leaders have done a lot of restoration work as time went by, a costly task because of the structure’s enormous size. By the 1980s, water had begun to leak through dome and into the roof after each snowfall or rainfall. By the mid 1980s, repairs were obviously needed as copper blew off the dome during a storm and plaster chunks fell into the rectory.

St. Mary’s Basilica in Minneapolis. How long did it take for the craftsmen to do something that intricate? (Photo by Chad Smith)

The copper dome and roof were replaced from 1991-1992. The church also restored the paintings and the plasterwork in the dome’s interior.

One of the other highlights of the restoration projects over the years included Christmas Eve in 1998. New church bells forged in the Royal Eijsbouts Foundry in the Netherlands. Christmas Eve was likely the perfect time for those bells to ring out over the city for the first time. I managed to capture a little bit of the bells at the beginning of the video.

My only disappointment with the Basilica had nothing to do with the church itself. I couldn’t get inside and do justice to the interior renovations because of COVID, of course. But I’ll get in there and show it to you someday.

The front doors at the Basilica of St. Mary’s in Minneapolis. (Photo by Chad Smith)

February 4, 2021February 4, 2021

Chicken Wings and the Super Bowl – we love them both

Chicken wings and the Super Bowl go together like Abbot and Costello, socks and shoes, and w(h)ine and cheese (that last one is mostly for Packer fans – but I digress). The National Chicken Council says when Americans get together to watch the Tampa Bay Buccaneers play the Kansas City Chiefs on Sunday, February 7, a lot of us will chow down on chicken wings. The good news is there will be plenty of wings available for everyone.

Tom Super is the Senior Vice President of Communications for the NCC, a 16-year-veteran of the position. He says America’s obsession with chicken wings and the Super Bowl has grown a lot in recent years. They are projecting Americans will scarf down a record 1.42 billion chicken wings to celebrate this year’s Big Game.

“That’s up two percent from last year,” he says, “and that’s despite the complications brought on by COVID-19. When we put together our recent chicken wing report for the Super Bowl, I thought for sure we’d see a decline in the number of wings Americans will eat.

“COVID has been very hard on restaurants,” Super said. “When talking to folks in the industry, when looking at the demand numbers, and when looking at the price of wings and all the other factors involved in consumption, they’ve never been a hotter product.”

Chicken wings had an advantage over a lot of other foods served at your local restaurants. Super points out that restaurants like wing joints and pizza places were built around takeout and delivery. When indoor dining was limited or shut down, those places didn’t have to change their business model as much as other establishments. They kept right on going with carryout and delivery orders while other restaurants completely shut down.

“Wings travel well, and they hold up during delivery conditions,” he said. “They also align with consumer desires for comfort food during COVID-19.”

Chicken farmers did a great job maintaining their production through 2020, and Super says there wasn’t much of a production drop-off compared to the previous year. There should be an adequate supply level to accommodate Super Bowl fans across the country.

So, let’s put some perspective on how many chicken wings make up that estimated 1.42 billion wings that we’ll eat on Super Bowl Sunday. In simple terms, that’s a lot of chicken.

“If you were to line them up end-to-end, it would circle the entire circumference of the Earth three times,” Super says. “If you laid them end-to-end from Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City to Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, Florida, they’d stretch back-and-forth 19 times.

“Let’s look at it another way,” he added. “Let’s assume that Kansas City Chiefs coach Andy Reid could eat three wings in a minute – and yes, the actual number is probably higher – but if he ate three every minute, it would take him more than 900 years to eat 1.42 billion chicken wings.”

Some Americans are bone-in chicken wing eaters, while others prefer the boneless wings. What type of wings do the majority of football fans prefer?

America’s favorite sauce for our wings might not be what you think it is.

“We should let people know that there will not be a shortage of wings this year,” Super said. “Restaurants, food service, and retailers started pulling wings out of cold storage as far back as November to prepare for the big day.”

If there is a rush on chicken wings in the days and hours before Super Bowl Sunday, Super has this bit of advice: “Don’t wait till the last second,” he says. “That’s my advice.”

January 1, 2021January 1, 2021

The Rose Bowl at half

The Rose bowl just doesn’t look the same anymore. I freely admit the house that Jerry built looks like a great place to watch a game but it’s not the same as playing in Pasadena. Oh well. Welcome to a COVID-19 world.

Devonta Smith is a men among boys. Let’s just get that out of the way right now. 5 catches for 101 yards and a couple touchdowns is a great game for most wideouts. He has another half to play against a defense that can’t seem to stop him.

He’s making some fast people in white jerseys look really slow. They aren’t slow. I haven’t seen many Alabama games, but if the kid has played this well all year, Clemson’s Trevor Lawrence might have some competition for the Heisman Trophy.

I was hoping for better things from Notre Dame. Lots of questions after the Irish were announced as one of the four national semi finalists and they’ve done almost nothing to alleviate those doubts.

To coin a basketball phrase, the Irish’s best chance coming in was likely to “take the air out of the ball.” Get an early lead and run the heck out of the ball.. They needed to keep that Bama offense off the field because the Notre Dame D can’t do much to disrupt the Tide’s offense.

That’s out the window. What now Irish fans? Can they keep it close into the fourth quarter, let alone pull off a late Christmas miracle? Or is it time to pull a beverage out of the fridge and call it good?

October 8, 2020October 8, 2020

Organic industry looking for help against fraud

Organic farming in the U.S. is a blossoming business opportunity for farmers across the country. Overall industry sales totaled $1 billion in 1990 when the nation’s organic laws passed, and then reached a recent high of $55 billion. Unfortunately, there are some unintended loopholes in the regulations that allow non-organic products to be labeled as organic. The industry is concerned about the effect on the credibility of their label.

The Organic Trade Association is one of several groups working on closing the loopholes and making enforcement of the regulations more uniform. They’ve been working on it since 2017 when the Washington Post reported on 36 million pounds of fraudulently labeled soybeans that entered the United States.

“We started our legislative work in 2018 when the new farm bill went into effect,” said Gwendolyn Wyard, the Vice President of Regulatory and Technical Affairs. “That gave the National Organic Program the support, funding, and the authorization to do its work.”

The USDA released a proposed rule last July designed to detect and deter the kind of fraud the industry is fighting. The National Farmers Union points out that millions of dollars of non-organic products have been intentionally mislabeled and sold in the U.S. The scale of the problem is large and requires equally large solutions.

Wyard says this is the largest single piece of rule-making since the USDA organic regulations first went into effect in 2002. She calls it a complete overhaul of the rules that will strengthen the oversight and enforcement of rules governing the production and sale of products. “It will close gaps in the supply chain and strengthen regulations to prevent fraud,” Wyard added.

“We must do this, and we do it right,” she said. “Shoppers need to know that organic standards are strong. Fraud takes the value out of the supply chain and hurts producers wherever they farm. We rely entirely on consumer trust.”

Here’s the rest of the conversation.

September 26, 2020September 26, 2020

Crookston Lumber Company Remains – An Exploration

Crookston Lumber Company wasn’t actually located in Crookston, Minnesota, but in Bemidji. It was a big company that processed a lot of lumber during the boom in Minnesota during the 1900s. Crookston Sawmill #1 opened up in 1903.

Lumber barons back in the second half of the 1800s poured millions of dollars into lumber claims in northern Minnesota. Can you imagine being able to pour millions of dollars into ANYTHING back during the 1800s?

Thomas Shevlin and Frank Hixon purchased several claims and a sawmill from lumber baron Thomas Barlow Walker, calling the operation the Crookston Lumber Company. They opened up 13 logging camps, with each housing as many as 100 lumberjacks.

The year 1903 was when the first sawmill took off. They opened up the lumber mill in a beautiful spot on the south shore of Lake Bemidji. The owners hired 450 mill workers and ran an around the clock operation that is said to have processed 40 million board feet of prime lumber during its first year in existence. Kind of impressive, isn’t it?

I was a little taken aback by how green Lake Bemidji was. Not sure what caused it? (Photo by Chad Smith)

Some competition came along in 1905 for the CLC in the form of the Bemidji Lumber Mill. The location sprang up on the southeast side of Lake Bemidji, so we’re taking very close to the CLC. It didn’t take long for CLC to annex the competition, buying the Bemidji Lumber Mill and naming it Crookston Sawmill #2. Went out on a creative limb, didn’t they?

The height of the operation peaked around 1910 as the Crookston Sawmill drew honors as the second-largest sawmill in the nation. However, the good times weren’t going to last much longer.

As the calendar turned to 1914, fortune took away her smile as Sawmill #1 burned right to the ground. The owners would go on to rebuild the structure soon after the incident. A few short years later, Sawmill #2 also burned to the ground, but the owners would choose not to rebuild the facility.

The end was in sight just a decade later when another fire destroyed about 24 million board feet of prime lumber on November 9, 1924. The retail value on the destroyed white pine was $750,000, an insane amount of money in the early 1900s. The truly-unfortunate piece to the story is 2,000 employees immediately found themselves with no jobs.

The end came in October of 1928 when the Crookston Lumber Mill shut down for good. As it turns out, most of the prime lumber in Minnesota had been harvested, so investors moved their operations out to the Pacific Coast.

This small site is all that remains of what once was the second-largest lumber mill in the United States. (Photo by Chad Smith)

The city of Bemidji sure made a nice little park out of the remains of a once-grand structure. I only wish we didn’t have people who felt the need to tag a building like that. While I usually admire good street art in the Twin Cities, it just doesn’t belong at a place like this. Plus, the fast-food wrappers and empty cigarette boxes don’t add much to the ambiance.

Nevertheless, I still recommend you go see the place.

I’ve seen vegetation grow in the strangest places, including up through a sandstone structure. (Photo by Chad Smith)

The Crookston Lumber Company site sits on the southern Shore of Lake Bemidji. (Photo by Chad Smith)

September 1, 2020September 1, 2020

Birthdays mean you’re still here

Birthdays don’t mean much after you turn 21, do they? Oh, wait. They do when you turn 50 years old. September 2 is the day I mark a half-century of existence. Do you want to know the interesting part? I didn’t expect to live this long.

I was born with what’s called Wolf-Parkinson-White Syndrome. When your heart beats, the nerve impulse from your brain travels in a circuit around your heart, which constitutes one beat. Yes, I’m oversimplifying, but that’s how it was explained to me.

So, those born with WPW have a defect that allows the nerve pathway to short-circuit itself, which plays hell with your heartbeat. The spells of irregular heartbeats could have done some serious damage, especially as I got into my teenage years. At one point, the top half of my heart was motoring along between 250-300 beats a minute, while the bottom half hit hyper speed at more than 500 beats a minute.

Birthdays — My wife describing me after 50 years worth of birthdays.

When that happens, blood clots form easily inside the heart. If that clot should get out of the heart, make a circuit around the body and hit the brain, you’re done. You drop dead on the spot. So, long story short, surgery was scheduled on June 3, 1986.

I remember the gap between making the decision to have surgery and the operation being longer than I wanted. That was hard to live with as an awkward teenager. At one point, my stress level was so high I jumped into the middle of a pickup basketball game over the lunch hour at Castlewood High School. Best basketball I’d ever played in my life.

Remember the movie “White Men Can’t Jump?” I’ve always considered that autobiographical. I am as gravity-bound as the movie described white guys. I was a whirling dervish, running up and down the court as fast as my slow-dude legs could carry me. At one point, I came up behind someone going up for a short jump shot and swatted it to the other side of the room. The only blocked shot of my life. I played that whole game wondering if it was going to kill me and I’m not making that up. Fear of death really adds zip to your game, no matter what you’re playing.

So, the surgery came and went, and lo and behold, it was successful. June 3, 1986, was a monumental day in this guy’s life. The one thing I remember the most vividly came after I was in recovery. They were making final plans to get me ready for release only three days after the operation and there was one important thing left to do.

After the surgeon sowed me up, he made two small horizontal slits right underneath the big scar. The doctor then inserted a suction tube in each slit to clear the body cavity of excess blood, preventing peritonitis, which you do NOT want. The doc says, “It’s going to be uncomfortable.” Right. Let me tell you how it felt.

It was totally worth all the birthdays, too!

Try to imagine that someone was able to pull your shoulders and collarbones down through your chest cavity and then yank them through your skin and out of your body a few inches above your belly button. The pain was unlike anything I’ve ever felt. Every nerve was on fire, my vision went white, and my mom said I was screaming bloody murder. She was being kind. I was screaming my little white butt off and thought I might be dying. I hope I never have to hurt that bad again.

So, there I was, suddenly assured of a much better chance of seeing more birthdays go by. I’m not making it up when I say at one point during those early years of heart trouble, I literally prayed to God to let me live a full life. That’s all I asked for. He answered.

So, what does the second half of my life look like? I don’t know for sure. I’d like to make an impact for the Kingdom before I leave this world. I don’t know when that will be. You see, several years ago, I had to undergo ANOTHER heart operation as I developed an irregular heartbeat problem apart from the WPW I was born with.

Make every day count. You just don’t know which of your birthdays will be your last. If you haven’t had any kind of problems that threaten your ability to keep breathing, it might be hard to truly understand.

Look at Chadwick Boseman. The world-famous actor passed away recently. What we thought was a picture of health in the Black Panther costume wasn’t the case. He had cancer for the last four years of his life and no one knew he was on borrowed time. It. Can. Happen. To. You.

I can tell you one thing for sure. The two biggest commands in the Bible are a good place to start. Jesus Himself said, “Love the Lord with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.” I think that’s a good place to start for the second half of my life, however long that may be.

July 31, 2020July 31, 2020

Nitrogen fertilizer restriction begin September 1 in MN

Nitrogen fertilizer is a valuable tool in a farmer’s soil management toolbox. Farmers need to know there are some restrictions on that tool coming soon.

The Minnesota Department of Agriculture (MDA) reminds farmers and landowners that beginning September 1, 2020, applying nitrogen fertilizer in the fall and on frozen soil will be restricted in areas vulnerable to groundwater contamination. This applies to Drinking Water Supply Management Areas (DWSMAs) with elevated nitrate levels. Vulnerable groundwater areas include coarse textured soils, karst geology, and shallow bedrock. Approximately 12 to 13 percent of Minnesota’s cropland is vulnerable to groundwater contamination. The Groundwater Protection Rule website shows vulnerable groundwater areas and a list of exceptions to the restrictions.

A short video on the fall restrictions and links for additional information are available on the MDA website. The MDA is holding a webinar on August 12, 2020, from 10:00 to 11:00 a.m. to answer questions. The video and webinar details are available online.

The nitrogen fertilizer restrictions are part of the Groundwater Protection Rule. The rule minimizes potential fertilizer sources of nitrate pollution to the state’s groundwater and works with local farmers to prevent nitrate contamination in public water supply wells.

For more information, please contact Larry Gunderson at 651-201-6168, Larry.Gunderson@state.mn.us.