By Don Niles, board president
Hello again. Hopefully everyone is having an opportunity to catch their breath occasionally through what is shaping up to be an ideal autumn harvest. The wet conditions of two to three years ago are fading from memory, but not so much that we take our current weather for granted.
We have nearly ideal conditions for establishing cover crops, buffers around sink holes and split applications of nitrogen among many other practices, without having Mother Nature throw curve balls into our plans.
I hope that you have been able to take part in some of the PPF meeting opportunities this year. The monthly Conservation Conversations continue to be very well attended, with lots of great discussion. We try to make sure to plan the events in different areas of Door and Kewaunee counties so we keep in contact with all our members.
We recently had a tremendously successful field day at Deer Run Dairy. The featured speaker was Rick Clark, and he did not disappoint! He gave a great presentation on his advanced program that is designed to make incredible progress in soil health. Rick has remarkably deep knowledge and passion for his practices. He was willing to share all the things he does as well as a few more that he is thinking of doing. There was a great Q&A session afterward as well.
Clark’s presentation was followed by a rain simulator demonstration along with one of Jamie Patton’s soil pit presentations. It is worth noting that at both events, the field day and the Conservation Conversations, we are seeing more and more non-members. Several of the non-members attending have had a relatively negative attitude toward agricultural practices in the past and are intrigued with what we are doing and why we are doing it.
In addition to the PPF field day at Deer Run, we were able to coordinate with another organization, Kewaunee County Dairy Promotion. This group puts on Breakfast on the Farm and has been running an annual Farm-to-Fork Dinner among other events for the last several years.
The idea of Farm-to-Fork is to invite people from outside of agriculture to share a table with a farm couple. The event always features great food and drinks and is an excellent opportunity to have good conversations while on an actively running farm. The event includes a farm tour and featured speaker. This year the event was once again at Deer Run and was tied together. They had Rick Clack speak there and had the soil pit available so we could show non-agriculture-related community members hands-on examples of what we are doing and why. It was a great way to reach a huge number of people. Thanks again to the Deer Run team for all they do for and with us!
-Don