Author: Nuttygrass

I'm a nut and grass farmer, EMT, Firefighter, and world traveler. I love a good laugh and a great adventure!

Faces of Farming & Ranching

Well I can finally tell you all, after holding it in for a month…I am lucky enough to be in the final 9 for US Farmers & Ranchers Alliance’s (USFRA) search for the Faces of Farming & Ranching!  This en devour stared a few months back, right in the heat of harvest.  A few folks from Oregon Farm Bureau saw that the USFRA was looking for candidates to become spokesmen & women to share their story of agriculture to consumers.

We submitted a 3 minute video which answers to questions like, “Why do you think sharing your story of agriculture is important?” or “How do you share your story already?”  Then it was cut down to 9 finalists who we got to finally meet this weekend in New York City!  Now you may be thinking…NEW YORK CITY?! Darlin’ We’re goin to have to shut you down!! Or more accurately, “wow…what a strange place to have a conversation with farmers about food.”  But indeed this turns out is just the point, bridging the gap between consumers and farmers and bringing the conversation of what is on their table right into their own backyard.

The event itself was very interesting, even or more interesting as a producer.  Lots of great conversation about how food is grown, if its portrayal in the media is harmful or positive, are antibiotics an imperative tool for livestock, do GMO’s make sense or are they dangerous to humans, etc.  I learned so much just being here for two days with these incredible people.  The finalists are all very amazing people as well. Although we didn’t participate in this specific panel for this food dialogue, I imagine it won’t be too far into the future when we will be a large part of the conversation.

So here is where you…my loyal followers come in…you can go to the website and if you register you can vote on who you think should be the Face of Farming & Ranching!  You can vote once per day from now until December 15th.  After that the votes will be tallied, our interview scores will be added up, and the winners will be announced in January!  I’m not saying you have to vote for me…but I would really appreciate your support!  Like I said, all the candidates are incredibly qualified and I’m excited to even have met them and made those connections with them!

I’m sure you will hear more on this in the weeks to come!  Again thanks for all your support, without all of you helping make my blog successful I doubt I would have ever been gutsy enough to even give this whole thing a shot!

 
***If you have a hard time logging in, they are having some technical issues & hopefully will have everything working soon!  But you can e-mail your vote to rinne@usfraonline.org for the time being and it will be tallied!  Thanks!

Please Vote in the Faces of Farming & Ranching Contest!!

Good ‘ol Days.

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This may look like some old time farming, but really it’s my dad just a few days ago…sometimes the old ways are still the best for the job!

Farming…It’s more about Slugs than Glamour

First of all I would like to thank all our service men & women!  I know I’m a day late for Veterans Day, but I would like to say “Thank You!” just the same…

Farming is dirty, it’s messy, truth be told most of the time it’s rather grimy.  But never did I think about some of the jobs being somewhat, well, very disgusting.  During the winter months we have a pest that has seems to creep up more and more as the years go by.  They start about 18 inches in the ground and slowly slime their way up when they get hungry.  Once they get to the top and see the beautiful night sky they start to eat, and eat, and eat.  They eat so much that if they happen to find themselves in a sweet tasting baby grass field, they can eat 5 acres in a night, with nothing slowing them down.

One of my more disgusting jobs on the farm…finding and killing slugs.  Now these guys aren’t your typical household banana slugs roaming around out there.  They are smaller, faster, love to reproduce type of slugs.  Not these guys…

Our slug issues look more like this…

Yes, grossly enough those are tiny little slugs, all gathered around getting a late night snack from some blue colored bait.  Thousands…we have thousands of these little guys, an they can be extremely destructive to our grass fields.  Here are a few slimy facts about the grey field slug…

1. You can have up to 1/2 million per acre!

2. In a field that is high in population they can eat several tons of organic matter per month.

3. They lay up to 500 eggs in their 2 year lifespan.

4. They hatch new eggs every 2-3 weeks.

5. They can move up to 30 feet in one night.

Here are some pictures of a field that I decided to spray with liquid bait just the other day.  I decided this because of all the slugs that I found crowded around the bait station (pictured above) and also because the field was look pretty weak in certain areas.  Below you will see what I mean by weak…

Pretty good part of the field, very green!

Still green, but more brown areas that have been eaten down.

Not sure if this part of the field will even come back for harvest this summer.

So as you can see, those slimy buggers that might just seem annoying to a homeowner with a garden or flowers, they are a huge threat and have to be monitored constantly this time of year.  Not just to save this year’s crop, but also to make sure that the numbers don’t get up to a half million per acre in the years to come.  Also one of our best defenses to this problem is tillage, a reason why no tillage or minimum tillage has become a tough thing to do in our area.

And to all of you who are going to suggest putting beer out in our fields…we don’t do it, alcohol abuse hello!! 🙂