Category: Perennial Ryegrass

The Start of Spring

We have hit the “it’s a good day to go get a tractor stuck” weather! Woo hoo!!! For those of you who don’t farm that means the sun has come out and every farmer is rushing around thinking now is the time to get all the things done. Meanwhile Mother Nature has dumped quite a bit of moisture which is sitting in the soil just waiting for you to give her a go so she can laugh.

I would bet we could queue up a few buried or at least stuck-in-the-mud tractor pictures this coming weekend. I’m hoping we aren’t one of them because we’ve all been there. We do have some radish we would love to get planted in this beautiful window of weather; but like I said, sometimes we get a little excited and things don’t go our way and it’s just not time and the soil isn’t ready.

So until then we can still get lots done in this sunshine. This week we took the kids out to pull wheat out of some grass seed fields. I told them it would take 5 minutes…and an hour later we were back home. So they are slowly getting the language of all farmers engrained in their young minds. Always bring a lunch folks.

I’m sure if you’re in any sort of farming area here in the Willamette Valley you’ll see a lot of activity in the coming days. Keep an eye out on the roads for SMV’s (slow moving vehicles) and please be patient, we are as excited as the rest of you for this spring sunshine to hit; our vehicles just drive a little slower.

The start, the middle, or the end of harvest?

Harvest has been happening for awhile around here. It snuck right up on us after a long winter and the idea of you were following plant stage and growing degree days that we would start harvest late. I stupidly started making early July plans that seems so attainable with a mid July start. However I quickly started canceling things when we looked out the window one day and Matt said, “maybe we should look at the clover, it looks really brown!” And after a quick look at the field later that day, “Hey it’s Brenda, so that camping trip I said maybe we could do…..how does your November look for timing?”

We have finished up clover harvest. And my gosh what a surprise, after so much drama with that darn stuff it actually produced a very nice sized seed crop.

Grass seed harvest started near the end of June with swathing or cutting the grass.

Combining or separating the seed from the straw started quickly after our good old St. Paul rodeo on the 6th of July. We have about 4 or 5 more days until we finish up that crop.

Hoot also found out that he’s heavy enough to weigh down the seat of the John Deere by himself and got some good driving time in.

Our green beans are just about ready to be harvested, probably next week sometime.

And finally the filbert crop is looking great. The price not so much, but that’s probably a whole other blog post that we don’t have time for today.

So all in all we are at the just the start with some crops, right in the middle of others and at the very end of a long harvest season. Meanwhile we are of course taking soil samples, mowing old crop stubble and starting to work ground for fall planting.

Hoot is also our field chauffeur after learning to drive the four wheeler.

Life in the fields has become the norm around here for the past month and a half. Some of us are ready for a little less dust in our dinner, but I also know we will look forward to it all again next year.

Oregon Grass Seed Research Roundtable

I often think in the back of my head that as farmers we really are never doing things the way that we have always done them, mostly because I’m constantly reminded when I talk to non-farmers that is what they assume. I’ve written before about how farmers are always “Doing what we’ve always done – NOPE!”. Last week I had the privilege of attending a grass seed research roundtable at Oregon State University. This is the first year that one has been held here in Oregon specific to grass seed. The room was full with over 30 stakeholders and another dozen or so logged in through zoom. Another reminder to me about how forward thinking and solution oriented this industry here in Oregon continues to be; which I love!

If we’re honest I think we can agree that research isn’t the most riveting topic most time, but the set up of this roundtable allowed us all to hear a summary from the researchers, limited to 10 minutes; enough time to summarize but not get too deep in the weeds of research which can put even the most nerdy farmer asleep (no offense to those in research). Which was followed up by 5 minutes for questions from producers, seed dealers, field-men, and other researchers.

Topics included many of the pests that we are constantly battling in the field and other challenges that we face as producers and as an industry as a whole. Voles, billbugs, symphylans (research to help off set the gap in control that the Lorsban/chlorpyrifos ban left us with), DNA testing for seed, field residue and pre-emergent sprays, optical seed sorting, weed management and smart sprayers, crop stand longevity, straw management and what that means for our soil and carbon sequestration, nitrogen leaching potential, and on and on.

They say that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. It’s no different in the farming world. Sitting there last week was a continuous reminder that our industry is always changing, adapting and finding solutions. As a solution oriented person both in my personal life and in my farming life, this was all very exciting to me.

Now comes the tough part of ranking them all for funding; research doesn’t come free but the knowledge that we will gain from these trials will pay time and time again for this industry here in Oregon. Last week was just another reason I’m proud to be a grass seed producer here in Oregon.