“We do so many different things here on our farm, I always tell people that even though I’m nearing 50 years in this field I still learn something new every day.”

— Jim Hershey, No-Tiller & President, Pennsylvania No-Till Alliance, Elizabethtown, Pa. 

In today’s episode of the podcast, come along on the road with Cover Crop Strategies Associate Editor, Mackane Vogel, as he travels to parts of Maryland and Pennsylvania to visit 3 different farmers who are working with cover crops in unique ways. The first stop in part 1 of this journey took listeners 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 heading out into the field.    

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Full Transcript

Welcome to the Cover Crop Strategies Podcast. I'm Mackane Vogel, Associate Editor of Cover Crop Strategies. 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?

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, "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 a picture where as far as you could see, it was green, and that just feels really good. And I feel that I probably had some part to do with that.

Do they ask you questions or come for advice?

Yep, yep. In fact, the neighbor just across the road called this morning, he bought 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, "Will you 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, and so... But he kept on doing the heavy multi-species cover crop in the fall. He likes the fact that it keeps the weeds down. And it... Yeah. So I felt that that was encouraging to see.

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?

Oh, so we do a lot of upon request, going to schools. There was several of us at our local school here at Elizabeth Town 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 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, "Till 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 then the 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... The raised garden beds for backyard gardeners is... We've introduced the concept here 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 is 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 Oregon 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.

We are... You ever hear of Blake Vince from Ontario Canada? 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. I think three of us are original founding members of that. And back then it was founded or the... The 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 an 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 yous are doing there. You've reached a lot of people.

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

No. Well, we like to refer to Milton as Uncle Milt.

Okay.

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.

Figured, yeah.

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 less fortunate kids. And they still do that today, mostly.

Yeah. Yeah. I had to ask because I grew up going to Hershey Park and going to Hershey Bear hockey games and all that.

Are you still a Hershey Bears fan?

Yeah, what I root for the Capitals and the Hershey Bears are their farm teams.

Right. Right.

I still cheer for them.

Good for you.

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

Run around a little bit?

Yeah, sounds good.

Okay.

All right.

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, 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... Pull some of this off a little bit. We will actually just clear a little spot and put our plants in here like our tomatoes, our lettuce, cabbage peppers, whatever. So someone else, Jay Howes, our 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 this, typically, you wouldn't plant these cover crops in the spring, you would plant something in the fall. So it's somewhat... But this is what I think is cool. This here was on disturbed 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, that's not... I mean, to the whole story there, you likely are going to have to either keep the cover crops trimmed down or lay newspaper down, but it's still better than pulling weeds.

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 Blazure, which is... She's one of our advisors, she was on the board, but she's presently advisor to the No-Till Alliance. She said, "I've been doing this in my garden." She says, "Why don't we simulate a raised garden bed and do something like this?"

Yeah, that's cool.

That's one way we can communicate to the public.

Yeah.

Something a little bit different than just farming.

Right. Yeah, that's fun.

Big scale. And so this... So we have two planters. We have a 12 row Case-IH and 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 [inaudible 00:16:10]. 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 can take a hit if it's not managed properly. But there is a little bit of scab. I'd seen some here. 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 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 [inaudible 00:18:12] and I'll show you around a little bit.

All right.

Got any farm dogs or farm cats around here?

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

Always want to have a shovel with you, right?

And you always need one of these to 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.

Yep. That's handy.

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

Nice wall prop. Oh, there you go.

[inaudible 00:19:53].

Nice.

Show you this here drill. This isn't the type of drill that we use, but I'm renting that to my... We're going to be having a cover crop plots at the field day and so 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.

Very cool.

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 roof 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 00:21:17] that's in that house there... Take you over there. And we have an area cleared in that field there where we want to plant the... Or where we want to do the soil probe. And we mowed it off yesterday or two days ago. Wanted to plan, but it's just... [inaudible 00:21:54] going to get out, I just brought the shovel along, I just wanted to see what the soil was like, if it's drying out at all. So we're actually going to have...

The tent is 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 Sodam sorghum to try and get some green cover and we're going to do a live planting demo, the day of the event. Still looks little... No, I think that would plan on top. Huh? You might have to consider that here. Hey. It is plenty moist enough, but I think for just shallow no-till, I wouldn't want to plant all my crop in that wet of the soil. But I think too, that's... I like that. Yeah, plenty of 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. That needs enough to get some planting done here in this area for the soil pit.

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

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

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.

Yeah, they have a lot of poultry farms down in Delaware and up in-

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

We 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 birds.

Sure.

But this particular breed is a LaBelle Patrimoine. It's a high-end chicken bloodline and it's very popular or becoming very popular, and it's sitting on top of the door.

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 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 tillage 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 cornfield. You can see the effects of the damp conditions there where the corn's smaller. And 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, the 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 finishing unit there. We just totally remodeled that a year ago. The inside basically it all new. We put new [inaudible 00:27:49] tools, new slats, new fencing, feeding equipment, feeders. Just totally rewired, new computer system. So basically [inaudible 00:28:00]. It was built back in '98, so it's [inaudible 00:28:08] in 30 years.

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. Oats and something. Wheat, oats, radish, crimson clover. But basically, there was some vetch in there, but... So the wheat is pretty much gone in there. Now, we're not going to go into that part because it 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 and hopefully it'll stay there. It's still over here. And then we'll 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 sum.

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

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 drum out of it. So here, the experiment, we have a couple different pieces that we're doing here. So we're doing... That's [inaudible 00:31:19] over here. We're doing planting green versus what I call down and brown. There's no... 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 no-till.

So here are 30-inch soybeans and then you have the 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 showyer 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 than 15-inch beans, we'll go 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 things. 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 in final yields, will remain to be seen.

Deeper green doesn't always compute to higher yield, other than it's... 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 there... 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 to do with our conditions this spring. I actually brought my shovel there. This here is bare but the soil isn't tight so I'm not concerned. But that over there is... And we're telling ourselves... And we have as good as stand there is 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, 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 cropland terraces. We're pretty much at the point now where there isn't any more that we can do. But a lot of that was cautionary to NRCS, like BMPs. This here is barley over here. Meet on this side. We'll double crop. We'll put soybeans in these fields after we harvest it. And when the soybeans come off in the fall, we'll either put... Well, in the wheat fields, we'll put... After we harvest the soybeans, we'll plant some sort of cover crop, might only be a monoculture. All of the [inaudible 00:37:03] crops, seasoned soybeans, that corn all get planted on high species. Four years ago, we had a major pipeline through our farm and this pile of dirt here is because when they went through our farm, they went through numerous timelines.

This winter we had a problem with the one that became plugged up and some major, major undertaking to have them give you permission to take over top of their pipe [inaudible 00:37:49]. So I mean 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 buffer that we 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 100 feet. We have one field that's still too wet to land.

Oh yeah? Okay.

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

Is that pretty typical or is that just-

We haven't seen that in decades.

Okay.

No, it's not typical.

Yeah.

I know... I've seen that wet already but it's been such a long time since we've seen it.

Yeah. So would you say you guys, in your 30 plus years, you've dealt with too wet more often than drought?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's some of what that is to no-till and cover probably.

Yeah.

This field here was another experiment where we... We burned this off the day after we planted where you see it's green 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 looked just as pretty good now. So we're pretty happy with the beans stances here.

And our poultry manager, she lives in the South Center, and our son, he lives about three mile from here.

Okay.

[Inaudible 00:40:27]. So the big farmhouse next to the barn up here is used just... That's part of the venue. It's available to the wedding party, the day of the event. So yeah, you saw the solar panels there, the barn and then-

I saw some when I was coming in too.

Yeah. So that's a 200k kW unit there, and up until we built the last two chicken barns to harvest out the lane, we were able to generate enough of power to operate the whole farm.

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

It really... I mean, it's free energy. Your upfront cost. But yeah, we've recaptured our initial investment, so it's... Otherwise, we have a utility bill.

Yeah.

Thousands of dollars, especially in the summer months where we're running a lot of fans.

Right. Yeah.

Cleaning equipment.

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 Cover Crop Strategies Podcast. As I mentioned, next time, we will travel to a smaller farm operation in rural Maryland, so be sure to look out for the next episode to find out who we will be visiting. A reminder that the transcript of this episode and our archive of previous podcast episodes are both available at covercropstrategies.com/podcasts. And for our entire staff here at Cover Crop Strategies, I'm Mackane Vogel, thanks for listening and have a great day.