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Mackane Vogel:

Welcome to the No-Till Farmer Podcast. I'm McCain Vogel, associate Editor of No-Till Farmer. In today's episode, come along on the road with me as I travel across parts of Maryland and Pennsylvania to visit three different farmers who are working with cover crops and no-till in unique ways.

Our first stop in part one of this journey took us to Jim Hershey's farm in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania. Let's pick up where we left off on Jim's farm, and finish that conversation before we head out into the field. And if you'd like to take a look at some of the fields Jim is describing throughout this episode, be sure to check out our recent and upcoming episodes of Conservation Ag Update, where you can find video clips of many of these fields and other experiments Jim is working on.

Are a lot of your immediate neighbors doing no-till and cover crops, or is it kind of a struggle to get people on board in this part of the country?

Jim Hershey:

I'm very proud of my neighbors, and I know it took a while for fellows. I mean, I talked to them, but it was, "Eh, it's not for me. How do I manage the cover crop?" Most of them were dabbling in the ... I would say they're maybe 10 years behind me. I have one neighbor that just started cover cropping in the last two years, and I would have probably pictures on my phone this spring where ... So we don't live here at the farm. We built a house up on the ridge on our adjacent farm. But I've got picture where, as far as you could see, it was green. And I just feels really good. And I feel that I probably had some part to do with that.

Mackane Vogel:

Do they ask you questions or come-

Jim Hershey:

Oh yeah.

Mackane Vogel:

... for advice?

Jim Hershey:

Yep, yep. In fact, the neighbor just across the road called this morning, he bought a roller, a cover crop roller last spring for the front of his tractor, and then pulls a six row corn planter. But he shares the corn planter with a cousin, and he says, "I've got this heavy cover." And he says, "My cousin isn't going to be done with this corn planter." He said we come over this afternoon and plant, so we're going over there this afternoon to plant for him. But he's been, well, we had been planting for him up until here a couple years ago, and then he decided to buy his own roller and him and his cousin bought a planter together. But he kept on doing the heavy multi-species cover crop in the fall. He likes the fact that it keeps the weeds down. Yeah, so I felt that that was encouraging to see.

Mackane Vogel:

So with PA No-Till Alliance, I know you guys have, there's an event in July that you're planning. What else is on the horizon for the group the rest of this summer?

Jim Hershey:

Oh, so we do a lot of, upon request, going to schools. There was several of us at our local school here, the Elizabethtown School District several weeks ago to demonstrate the rainfall simulator, that I'm sure you've seen. The No-Till Alliance owns one of those units, and so we were asked, it was some series, a curriculum that they were presenting about clean water, healthy soil type. And they heard that we had this rainfall simulator. So we went in, spent almost the whole day there, and showed a total of about 275 students. And the neat thing about that, I got to tell you, it was so cool. One of the parents, whom I know but don't have much contact with, called me the next morning and he said, "Jim," he said, "You don't know what that did to my daughter."

He said, "She couldn't stop talking about that that night." And he said, "Til she was done," he said, "I almost felt like I was there and experienced the whole thing." And he was just saying, "Kudos to you guys for presenting something so important to the younger generation." Typically, we're preaching to the crowd of farmers that somewhat know the importance, but don't really take it to heart quite like kids do.

And any other thing, actually next week it's a three-day event that we're going to have guys there. We're going to have a rainfall simulator, and then I'll have to show you, the raised garden beds for backyard gardeners is, we've introduced the concept here a couple of years, three years ago now, of incorporating cover crops in your garden. And we started with the raised garden. So we made raised garden beds, and we planted cover crop. We have two boxes. One of them is cover crop that we terminated by cutting it off, and then we'll be planting tomatoes, peppers, lettuce, all that good stuff in. And then we have another one that the cover crop will still be growing, and then half of that box is bare soil. And I'll take you back and show them to you. But it's quite clear that the area that does not have any cover crops on, there's weeds coming up through.

But anyway, we're going to have that demonstration there. They typically get 10 to 12,000 people there in three days. It's called Family Farm Days at Oregon Dairy. It's just north of Lancaster there. So that's a big event for us. And then a number of different conservation districts call on the alliance to come and participate. We also, in addition to the summer field day here at our farm on July 24th, we do one in the western part of the state, too. That'll be on the 22nd, two days before that. So we expect probably 500 people at the two events combined.

You ever hear of Blake Vince from Ontario, Canada? He's, he's been around, but he's going to be our keynote speaker for that event. The No-Till Alliance, yeah, it's going to be celebrating 20 years. I'm proud to be one of the founding members of the organization. We have, I think, three of us are original founding members of that. And back then, cover crops was not part of that discussion 20 years ago. It was mostly no-till. And it was a retired NRCS, Joel Myers, that initiated the meeting. He said, "We need to get a farmer organization that can actually communicate with farmers," instead of having NRCS or conservation people that maybe went to college or got some sort of education. "We need farmers that do it every day to be able to take this to the next level." And so that's what happened. But when I first started the journey, I didn't know anything about No-Till Farmer. Kudos to you guys. You've done it well, and still continue to appreciate everything that you are doing there. You've reached a lot of people.

Mackane Vogel:

Thanks. Yeah, it's a fun organization to work for. Obviously Frank Lustner has put a ton of time into it, so it's fun. So I got to ask, is it the Hershey of Hershey chocolate in Pennsylvania, or is it just a coincidence, or-

Jim Hershey:

No. Well, we like to refer to Milton as Uncle Milt, but you have to go back pretty far. Although my great-great-grandfather was a cousin to Milt. So yeah, if you go back far enough, we get that question they ask a lot.

Mackane Vogel:

Figured, yeah.

Jim Hershey:

But he left a great legacy too. Man, oh man. With everything he's done back there to school, and obviously things have changed, not all to the good, but he made quite a legacy for a less fortunate kids, and they still do that today, mostly.

Mackane Vogel:

Yeah. I had to ask, because I grew up going to Hershey Park and going to Hershey Bears hockey games and all that, so-

Jim Hershey:

Are you still a Hershey Bears fan?

Mackane Vogel:

Yeah. Well, I root for the Capitals, and Hershey Bears are their farm team, so-

Jim Hershey:

Right, right.

Mackane Vogel:

... I still cheer for them.

Jim Hershey:

Good for you.

Mackane Vogel:

Yeah. All right, well that was good. What do you say we hit out and take a look at some stuff.

Jim Hershey:

Run around a little bit.

Mackane Vogel:

Yeah, sounds good.

Jim Hershey:

Okay.

Mackane Vogel:

All right.

Jim Hershey:

So as I'm telling you this here, I just mowed this off a couple days ago, but it looked just like this. So it's got oats in there. It's got buckwheat in there, it's got crimson clover. It's got oats. Yeah, the buckwheat's actually starting to flower here now. So the one over here looked, the whole bed looked like that. So what I did was I mowed it off with just a battery-operated hedge trimmer. And so what we'll do, and the reason I have the net over it ... Well, I did that when I first planted it, just because the birds would come in here and eat all the seed. But what we'll do ... I'll just pull some this off. We'll actually just clear a little spot and put our plants in here, like our tomatoes, our lettuce, cabbage, peppers, whatever.

So someone else, Jay House, our administrator, No-Till Alliance administrator, he's growing them. And so we will demonstrate how you can actually raise vegetables in your garden with the use of cover crops. Now typically you wouldn't plant these cover crops in the spring, you would plant something in the fall. But this is what I think is cool. This here was undisturbed soil, no cover crop seed planted, and look at all the weeds coming up. So you already got an issue gone here that would give you a challenge. That's why people struggle with gardens. How do I take care of the weeds? Well, that over there would help. Now, I mean, to get the whole story there, you're likely or going to have to either keep the cover crops trimmed down or lay newspaper down, but it's still better than pulling weeds.

So that's one project we got involved in, because someone at one of our events, I think it might've even been at the State Farm show, when they seen the rainfall simulator and they saw the cover crops, they said, "Well, could I do something like that in my garden?" And we said, "Yeah, you can." So Lisa Blazer, which is, she's one of our advisors, she was on the board, but she's presently advisor to the No-Till Alliance. She says, "I've been doing this in my garden." She says, "Why don't we simulate a raised garden bed and do something like that?"

Mackane Vogel:

Yeah, that's cool.

Jim Hershey:

That's one of the things, one way we can communicate to the public something a little bit different than just farming.

Mackane Vogel:

Right. Yeah, that's fun.

Jim Hershey:

Big scale. And so we have two planters. We have a 12 row Case IH, a 1240 corn planter with the rollers on, which is not here. And then we have the T500 planter drill that we've been planting our soybeans with, planting our wheat, barley, all the cover crops. So it gets a lot of acres. Many acres get covered multiple times in the same year, because we're coming then .... Our wheat field, we're pretty excited about it, but it's not in the bin yet.

But we've got what appears to be a good crop coming on. One thing you look for this time of the year is look at the flag leaf. And for all the moisture, we've had 12 inches of rain here in the month of March, we set a new record. Or in May, in May we set a new record in Pennsylvania for rainfall. And so obviously small grain is really, can take a hit if it's not managed properly.

But there is a little bit of scab. I've seen some here. Oh, it's not that one. Well I can't find much. I know there are, you'll see in the middle of the ... Here's one. So you see that there, the yellow grain compared to all the rest, that there's likely scab, but nothing to be alarmed at just yet. And this hot weather has actually been good for grain fill. The fact that we got water, and now we're getting lots of rain, or lots of heat. Yeah. All right, let's jump in the Kubota and show you around a little bit.

Mackane Vogel:

All right. Got any farm dogs or farm cats around here?

Jim Hershey:

Over at the other farm. We have some cats over here, but cats ... Well, we have some out at the chicken house too, but not right in here. This here I find a handy tool. Oftentimes goes with me if I'm out scouting.

Mackane Vogel:

Always want to have a shovel with you, right?

Jim Hershey:

And you always need one of these.

Mackane Vogel:

Yep.

Jim Hershey:

Check soil depth. And then this here, we're actually going to be handing out to all our members at the field day. It's a thermometer and a pH reader. You've seen them before?

Mackane Vogel:

Yep. Yeah, it's handy.

Jim Hershey:

Yeah. And we're also going to be handing out, I think we can, we'll probably be able to find one for the No-Till Farmer. You guys might have to play with [inaudible 00:19:49].

Mackane Vogel:

Oh, there you go.

Jim Hershey:

[inaudible 00:19:51].

Mackane Vogel:

Nice.

Jim Hershey:

[Inaudible 00:20:13] this here drill, this isn't the type of drill that we use, but I'm renting that to use to ... We're going to be having cover crop plots at the field day, and so I was able to find this drill. It's a five-and-a-half foot Remington no-till drill that we're going to use to plant the cover crop plots.

Mackane Vogel:

Very cool.

Jim Hershey:

And we're also going to have a soil pit as well. And the reason I have it here already is because I was wanting to plant just a small area and try and get some root development in it so that when they dig the probe, you can see how the roots move down through the soil profile. So one of our poultry [inaudible 00:21:15] there, take you over there. And we have an area cleared in that field there where we want to do the soil probe, and we mowed it off yesterday, or two days ago. We wanted to [inaudible 00:21:35]. We got to get out. I just brought the shovel along, I just wanted to see what the [inaudible 00:21:56] and it's drying out it all. So we're actually going to have, the tent's going to set right out here, parallel with the trees. And then we're going to have an area where this barley here will be harvested, probably in two weeks. And then we want to plant a Sedan sorghum to try and get some green covered. And we're going to do a live planting demo the day of the event.

Mackane Vogel:

Still, it looks cool.

Jim Hershey:

I think that would [inaudible 00:22:39]. Huh. You might have to consider that here. Hey, it's plenty moist enough. But I think for just shallow no-till, I wouldn't want to plant all my crop in that wet of soil. But I think, too, I like that. Yeah, plenty wet down lower, but I think it's enough of dry soil on top there. It crumbles well enough. But just look at the root development there, just from the barley. It goes down there three, four inches just from the barley. So that's great. I'm glad that's drying out. [inaudible 00:23:30] enough to get some planting done here in this area for the soil pit.

Mackane Vogel:

Awesome. I know they were calling for some rain this afternoon.

Jim Hershey:

Yeah. Chance of showers. Ever been around any poultry farms?

Mackane Vogel:

A couple, just for work. Same as I'm doing right now, but yeah, last year in Delaware, went to Jay Baxter's farm, and he had some there.

Jim Hershey:

Yeah, they have a lot of poultry farms down in Delaware, don't they?

Mackane Vogel:

Yeah. Yeah, we mostly do a lot of dairy in Wisconsin, obviously. But yeah, I've seen a couple of poultry operations.

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Jim Hershey:

Just planted those trees in there this spring. Of course, they have a lot of growing to do, but it's part of what the poultry industry is looking for now. They want all the conveniences that you can give humans, give them shade and water. So we typically have white birds and red birds. The red birds are more, they like the outside more than the white ones do.

Mackane Vogel:

Sure.

Jim Hershey:

But this particular breed is a [inaudible 00:25:57]. It's a high-end chicken bloodline, and it's very popular, or becoming very popular. [inaudible 00:26:16] sitting on top of [inaudible 00:26:17]. I think we'll go over and look at some of these no-till plots over here.

So we had started planting around the 20th of April this year, and we actually delayed planting, continued planting, because it was extremely dry. And then all of a sudden it started raining, and it rained, and it rained. Yesterday, we planted this field here. Now it looks like it was tilling, but it was cover crop that we burned off six weeks ago, and the cover's gone.

And we have a place up here in this corn field, and you can see the effects of the damp conditions there, where the corn's smaller. So I'm disappointed that the cover disappeared so quickly. But depending on who you talk to, some would say, "Well, that's a good sign of you have a lot of biological activity in your soil that's consuming it." And I like to believe that part. I don't know if there's other factors related to it or not. But we were out of the field for almost four weeks that we didn't plant a seed, because it would almost get fit to plant, and then we'd get another couple inches of rain. I should have showed you the solar panel. So we have solar panel, that's the [inaudible 00:28:19] finishing unit there. We just totally remodeled that a year ago, that took, the inside's basically all new. We put new lentils, new slats, new fencing, feeding equipment, feeders, just totally rewired to a computer system. So basically like a new part. It was built back in '98, so it's [inaudible 00:28:45] three years.

So where it's green there, we just planted that yesterday. So that would've been a multi-species cover crop. It would've been oats, crimson clover, wheat, something. Wheat, oats, radish, and crimson clover. But basically there was some vetch in there. So the wheat's much gone in there. We're not going to go into that part because that was just sprayed this morning. But this here would've been planted three and a half weeks ago, and we planted it green, just like you see there, and then sprayed it. And so there's still a lot of cover there. Hopefully it'll stay there. It's still over here [inaudible 00:30:19] walk in the field.

So this is the field I was telling you about, that we planted 30-inch beans and 15-inch beans. So even though we planted into a heavy cover here, and you can see how well the beans have come up, we're very happy with the stand of soybeans this year. Last year, we had a lot of slug pressure. This year, there's absolutely none. And we don't know, other than some of the experts would say that it was because of the, we had a really brutal winter here, and they're thinking that that might have reduced the population some.

Mackane Vogel:

Are slugs like the most common pests you guys deal with around here?

Jim Hershey:

Yeah, slugs and soybeans. Corn, not so much. I mean, there is seedcorn maggots that I think some had some trouble with this spring, and that there, the maggot actually chews the seed, and then basically takes the germ out of it. So here, the experiment, we have a couple different pieces that we're doing here. So we're doing ... [inaudible 00:32:02] over here. We're doing planting grain, versus what I call down and brown. There was cover there and we burned it off strictly for this experiment. And then we'll watch the characteristics of the crop. We'll watch, obviously, yield, weed control, the whole nine yards. So one of the things we're going to do at the field days, as I mentioned about the soil probe, we're also going to do a water infiltration demonstration to see how water infiltrates in the no-till. So here are 30-inch soybeans, and then ... Okay, 30, 30, 30, 30.

And then right beside it is 15-inch beans. So basically you put the two rows together, you should have the same amount of beans. These look showier, because you got more plants per foot, but should be the same amount of plants per acre. So some say there isn't any difference in 30-inch beans to 15-inch beans. We'll go and try and find out for ourselves. Sometimes you have less disease than 30-inch soybeans, because air and sunlight can get into the plant. That'll be one of our experiments. So we did several different replications out across here to see what the end result's going to be. And then back of us is a corn plot. And you can see from here that there's some light green and there's some dark green. And then there's a reason for that. So let's walk over there. Whether or not it's going to make a difference in final yields will remain to be seen.

Deeper green doesn't always compute to higher yield, other than it's a lot of bragging rights in the coffee shop, I guess. So you see the lighter green is where there was heavy cover, and where the darker green, actually, you can almost see right where the cover starts there, where ... This would've been sprayed off early. And again, this was heavy like that, but just in four or five weeks time, it went from looking like that to this. This is too much bare ground for me, but I think it has something do with our conditions this spring. I should have brought my shovel there. This here is, it's bare, but the soil isn't tight, so I'm not concerned. But that over there is ... And we have as good a stand there as what we do here. That there is probably, well, I know, because our crop consultant just told us this week that that's one collar where the cover crop is, and one collar behind where there isn't any cover. So growth stage, we're a little bit behind, but we'll be watching it.

So over the years, we've done a lot of, put in a lot of waterways and [inaudible 00:36:42] terraces. We're pretty much at the point now where there isn't any more of that we can build. But a lot of that was [inaudible 00:36:51] too [inaudible 00:36:57]. [inaudible 00:37:03]. This here is barley, over here on this side. We'll double crop with soybeans in these fields after we harvest it. And when the soybeans come off in the fall, we'll either put [inaudible 00:37:22] in the wheat fields, we'll put it, after we harvest the soybeans, we'll ... some sort of cover crop, might only be a monoculture. With all of the early earth crops, season soybeans, that [inaudible 00:37:55]. Four years ago we had a major [inaudible 00:38:00] go through our farm. This pile of dirt here is because when they went through our farm, they went through numerous [inaudible 00:38:12], and this winter we had a problem with the one that became plugged up. And it's a major, major undertaking to have them give you permission to dig over top of their pipeline.

Mackane Vogel:

I believe it, yup.

Jim Hershey:

So they paid for the repair because it was something they disturbed. But they were here monitoring that with everything. So here you get a better look at some of the tree buffers that we put in, they got put in four years ago. So we buffered at least 50 feet on either side of the stream. I'd say a minimum of 50. Then there was places where it was 75 or a hundred feet. We have one field that's still too wet to plant.

Mackane Vogel:

Oh yeah, okay.

Jim Hershey:

We have to wait another week probably for that to dry up.

Mackane Vogel:

Is that pretty typical, or is that just-

Jim Hershey:

We haven't seen that in decades.

Mackane Vogel:

Okay.

Jim Hershey:

No, it's not typical. I know I've seen that wet already, but it's been such a long time since I've seen it.

Mackane Vogel:

Yeah. So would you say you guys in your thirty-plus years, you've dealt with too wet more often than drought?

Jim Hershey:

Yeah, yeah. And I think that's some of what led us to no-till and cover cropping. This field here was another experiment, where we burned this off the day after we planted where you see a stream down there. We decided to let some go, and that was only sprayed like a week ago, week and a half ago. And the beans look just as pretty in there.

So we're pretty happy with the bean stands this year. And our second poultry manager, she lives in this house here. And our son, he lives in, about three mile from here [inaudible 00:41:09] nice [inaudible 00:41:12]. So the big farmhouse next to the barn up here is used just, that's part of the venue, so it's available to the wedding party [inaudible 00:41:33]. So yeah, you saw the solar panels over the [inaudible 00:41:42] and then-

Mackane Vogel:

I saw someone when I was coming in, too.

Jim Hershey:

So that's a 200k KW unit there. And up until we built the last two chicken barns and [inaudible 00:41:58], we were able to generate enough power to operate the whole farm.

Mackane Vogel:

Wow, that's awesome. Yeah, it seems like more and more bigger operations are kind of going that way.

Jim Hershey:

Really, I mean it's free energy after your upfront costs. But yeah, we've recaptured our initial investment. Otherwise we'd have a utility bill, thousands of dollars. Especially in the summer months where we're running a lot of [inaudible 00:42:39]-

Mackane Vogel:

Right. Yeah.

Jim Hershey:

... cleaning equipment.

Mackane Vogel:

Think the ROI makes a lot of sense, for sure.

All right, well that is a wrap on my first farm visit of this East Coast farm trip. Thanks to Jim Hershey. That was a great visit. He is an excellent tour guide. Always enjoy getting to hop in the four-wheeler and drive around, check out different farms. It never fails to be extremely interesting. We ended up with some good weather. It was hot, little sticky. That's just the East Coast humidity for you. So glad we got after it in the earlier part of the day, I think it's only getting worse. And now they are calling for rain. You heard Jim talk about how they've gotten a lot of rain this year. He told me that in his 30 plus years, he's dealt with too wet conditions way more often than he deals with drought.

So even still, I think there was one field he said they still haven't gotten into plant yet, and I asked him if that's typical and he said he would not use the word typical to describe the amount of rain they've had this year. So more rain to come later, it sounds like, in these parts.

Another thing to note, I just had some delicious barbecue, had to get a bite to eat on my way out of town here on my way back to Baltimore. So shout out to Rocky's Barbecue in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania, if you're ever in the area. Great prices, great portions, really good food, nice pulled pork platter with some mac and cheese and baked beans. So with that, please stay tuned for, I've got two more visits next week in the East Coast still and they're sure to be very exciting. I can't wait for those. And if you're listening and you're hoping to have an editor from No-Till Farmer or Cover Crop Strategies come out to your farm, don't be shy, please reach out to us. You can reach me at M as in Mary, Vogel, V-O-G-E-L, mvogel@lessitermedia.com. All right, well I'm going to sign off for now and we will talk to you very soon.

That's all for this episode of the No-Till Farmer Podcast. As I mentioned, next time we will travel to a smaller farm operation in rural Maryland. So be sure to check out our next episode to find out who we'll be visiting. A reminder that a transcript of this episode and our archive of previous podcast episodes are both available at notillfarmer.com/podcasts. And from our entire staff here at No-Till Farmer, I'm McCain Vogel. Thanks for listening. Keep on no-tilling and have a great day.