Not that long ago, around this time of year, friends and family would gather in celebration of the harvest. There was a little hard work, but it was followed by lots of fun and fellowship.

I remember shucking ear after ear of corn with my aunts, as they prepared to freeze a particularly large bumper crop one year. All winter, as we enjoyed our "hard work corn" (as my mom would call it), we remembered the fun that went into preserving it. What are your favorite memories of the harvest? Do you still attend harvest parties today?

Photo by iStockphoto/Thomas Perkins

Many thanks to Kubota for their continued efforts to educate farmers about safety. One farming-related, preventable accident is too many — see below for more information from Kubota, including their “Ten Commandments of Tractor Safety.” 

Tractor Safety as Fundamental as a Parachute on a Plane

After a recent tractor rollover accident, a farmer likened not having a tractor rollover protection structure, or ROPS, to falling out of an airplane without a parachute – a safety precaution not often thought about until the plane is about to crash.  In this particular incident, when the tractor he was driving was rear-ended by a truck and rolled over, he was able to walk away with only minor injuries because his tractor was equipped with a ROPS and his seatbelt was fastened. This example – just one among many – confirms the belief that while tractor accidents are not predictable, following recommended safety precautions for operating equipment can go a long way toward reducing injuries or death.  

Agriculture has inherent dangers, with 28.7 deaths per 100,000 adult workers, according to the National Safety Council (NSC). As this year’s busy fall harvest season gets underway, Kubota is encouraging all tractor and equipment users to heed these statistics and renew their emphasis on safety in observance of the NSC’s National Farm Safety and Health Week, September 20-26, 2009. 

“For Kubota, safety is a year-round priority,” says Greg Embury, vice president of sales and marketing, Kubota Tractor Corporation. “The start of harvest season is a good time to remind everyone who operates tractors and heavy equipment – farmers, ranchers and their families – about tractor safety. A small amount of time committed to following safe equipment operation now can be your ‘parachute’ to help prevent serious injury or fatality due to an unfortunate accident in the future.” 

Make sure your tractor – old and new – has a fully operational Rollover Protective Structure or ROPS. The operation of a tractor equipped with ROPS and a fastened seatbelt, is considered to be highly effective in preventing serious injury and death due to tractor rollovers because the ROPS and fastened seatbelt provide a protective zone around the operator. According to the NSC, if all tractors were equipped with a ROPS and a safety belt, about 350 lives would be saved each year. 

Kubota’s “Ten Commandments of Tractor Safety” for review this harvest season:

1.) Know your tractor, its implements and how they work.
Please read and understand the Operator's Manual(s) before operating the equipment. Also, keep your equipment in good condition.

2.) Use ROPS and seatbelt whenever and wherever applicable.
If your tractor has a foldable ROPS, fold it down only when absolutely necessary and fold it up and lock it again as soon as possible. Do not wear the seatbelt when the ROPS is folded. Most tractor fatalities are caused by overturns.

3.) Be familiar with your terrain and work area – walk the area first to be sure and drive safely.
Use special caution on slopes, slow down for all turns and stay off the highway whenever possible.

4.) Never start an engine in a closed shed or garage.
Exhaust gas contains carbon monoxide, which is colorless, odorless – and deadly.

5.) Always keep your PTO properly shielded.
Make it a habit to walk around your tractor and PTO driven implement – never walk over, through or between the tractor and implement, particularly if either is running.  The PTO rotates with enough speed and strength to kill you.

6.) Keep your hitches low and always on the drawbar.
Otherwise, your tractor might flip over backwards.

7.) Never get off a moving tractor or leave it with its engine running.
Shut it down before leaving the seat. A runaway tractor can be extremely dangerous.

8.) Never refuel while the engine is running or hot. 
Additionally, do not add coolant to the radiator while the engine is hot; hot coolant can erupt and scald.

9.) Keep all children off and away from your tractor and its implements at all times.
Children are generally attracted to tractors and the work they do. However, a tractor's work is not child's play. Remember, a child's disappointment is fleeting, while your memory of his or her injury or death resulting from riding the tractor with you, or being too close, will last a lifetime.

10.) Never be in a hurry or take chances about anything you do with your tractor. 
Think safety first, then take your time and do it right. 

Safety Education Important at a Young Age

When it comes to protecting our kids, farm safety education is critical. The National Education Center for Agriculture Safety estimates there are more than 100 farm-related deaths to children each year and that most die in incidents involving tractors and other heavy equipment. As a sponsor of the Progressive Agriculture Safety Day educational program, Kubota is part of an effort designed to make safety education and training available for children year-round.  Now in its 15^th year, the program will conclude more than 350 Safety Day events in 2009, spanning 35 states, six Canadian provinces, the U.S. Virgin Islands and American Samoa.  In 2008, the programs reached more than 84,000 children and adults in rural communities, and to date has touched the lives of more than 740,000 participants. 

Additional safety information, including Kubota’s “Ten Commandments of Tractor Safety” brochure, Kubota’s “Hazard Hunt” game, and a tractor safety coloring book, can be found at www.kubota.com.  Owners of older model Kubota tractors can also utilize a ROPS and Seatbelt Installation function on the Kubota.com safety pages that allows owners to submit their tractor’s model and serial number for eligible models to obtain retrofit pricing from their local Kubota dealer. Contact your local dealer for more information on ROPS retrofits for older tractor models. Major tractor manufacturers have special programs where a ROPS can be obtained for most tractors manufactured since 1970. To date, Kubota dealers throughout the country have installed more than 10,000 retrofits.    

I’ve been telling people for quite a while: Real environmentalists eat white chicken eggs. That’s because white-egg layers are almost always more feed efficient: Hens that lay white eggs are lighter weight and eat less feed to produce the same amount of eggs as brown-egg layers. So, brown chicken eggs require more resources to produce.

Here’s an Example

Hy-Line is a large poultry genetics corporation. Their website says that Hy-Line W-36 hens (the “world’s most efficient egg layer,” according to the site) consume 1.82 pounds of feed to produce a pound of eggs (white eggs). Hy-Line Brown hens eat 2.02 pounds of feed to produce a pound of eggs (brown eggs).

For reference, a dozen large eggs weighs about a pound and a half. So if your family eats 50 dozen eggs a year, it would take 15 pounds less feed to produce the same amount of white chicken eggs as brown chicken eggs. (See calculations below.) Multiply that by all the families that eat brown eggs, and we could produce much less grain to produce the same amount of chicken eggs.

Then, I watched this video:

Whether we eat conventional, industrial brown chicken eggs or conventional, industrial white chicken eggs, the male chicks of these egg-laying strains are destroyed at the hatchery because they’re not good meat-producing birds — they’re inefficient at converting feed to meat.

I’m not prepared to become a vegan, for a bunch of reasons I won’t mention here. So, what’s a meat-eating environmentalist to do? Buy eggs from a farmer who raises dual-purpose heritage breeds. Heritage breeds aren’t as specialized as commercial breeds of egg-layers. They’re pretty good at producing eggs and pretty good at producing meat, so raising the males for meat and the females to produce eggs makes sense — without discarding half the chicks.

Some of these heritage breeds lay white eggs and some lay brown eggs, but the biggest factor is management. It’s time to start telling people that egg color doesn’t matter. Real (omnivorous) environmentalists eat pastured poultry from heritage-breed, free-range production systems.

Using pasture farming methods, giving the birds room to roam, access to sunshine and all the bugs and seeds they can eat (in addition to necessary supplemental feed), produces the most healthful eggs and meat. And, if heritage chicken breeds are involved, you can enjoy the eggs knowing that half the birds weren’t simply discarded.

For more information on egg labels and the benefits of pasture farming methods, read Free Range vs. Pastured: Chicken and Eggs and The Amazing Benefits of Grass-fed Meat.

Calculations

50 dozen eggs x 1.5 pounds = 75 pounds of eggs

75 pounds of eggs x 2.02 pounds of feed = 151.5 pounds of feed to produce brown chicken eggs for your family for a year

75 pounds of eggs x 1.82 pounds of feed = 136.5 pounds of feed to produce white chicken eggs for your family for a year

151.5 – 136.5 = 15 pounds of feed saved

An experienced pasture-raised poultry expert, Robert Plamondon, shares his thoughts on the best methods of keeping free-range chickens.

I have found that the best way of containing free-range chickens and pastured broilers is with electric fences. Electric fencing keeps the chickens in and the predators out.

Predator control is especially important to me, because I have been almost put out of business by predation several times. If it weren't for the techniques described here, I wouldn't have any chickens today.

Electric fences are also much less expensive and easier to set up than alternative methods of confining them.

Here is an introduction to the topic.

1. Simple one-wire and two-wire electric fences.

2. Electric Poultry Netting.

3. Adding hot wires to your existing fences.

4. Choosing an electric fence energizer.

Farming is a noble profession, but it can sometimes be a dangerous one as well. According to a 1990 report from the National Safety Council, farm accidents and other work-related health problems claim as many as 1,300 lives and cause 120,000 injuries a year. Have you ever been injured on the farm? Please share your experience in the interest of promoting farm safety — perhaps you can keep it from happening to someone else. 

Photo by iStockphoto/ Alistair Scott 

After a refreshingly cool, wet summer (for Kansas), many people are speculating about what winter will bring. Will it also be cooler than normal, with more snow? Will the weather continue to be mild?

You can try your grandma’s best folklore forecast, but picking up the 2010 Farmers’ Almanac will give you lots of other valuable information in addition to the long-term forecast. For example, do you know the answer to these questions?

What’s the gestation period of a goat?

What’s the average lifespan of a donkey?

What are the peak fall foliage dates in Ohio?

When is the Leonid meteor shower?

Can you lick your elbow? (OK, that’s probably not so useful, but it’s fun to know. There’s more to wise living, gardening and farming than simply knowing the facts.)

The Almanac is a bit of tradition mixed with lore, lots of fun facts and useful information. So, are you dying to know the answers to those questions? Scroll down.

Gestation period of a goat is 151 days.
The average lifespan of a donkey is 45 years.
Peak fall foliage dates in Ohio are October 8 through 24.
Most activity in the Leonid meteor shower will be November 17 and 18.
It’s impossible to lick your elbow.

Few experiences in life compare to the wondrous event of witnessing a baby chicken labor with instinctive determination and emerge from an egg. Being a spectator of this miraculous event is the motivation that prompts many people to attempt incubating and hatching eggs. Regardless of the reasons behind your decision, knowing what to reasonably expect when purchasing shipped hatching eggs can make your experience more pleasurable and helps to ease potential disappointment.

When discussing shipped hatching eggs with an individual, I always remind them of the risk involved when purchasing eggs and the difference between an infertile egg and a nonviable egg.

Shipped hatching eggs may travel a great distance and experience excessive variations in climate, including temperature, humidity and pressure changes that may occur with fluctuations in altitude. These conditions, coupled with the possibility of simple human carelessness when handling the package, can decrease the likelihood of a successful hatch.

Because of these factors, a fertile and viable egg can be packed into a box, shipped to you and arrive in a nonviable state. When candling the eggs, nonviable eggs appear clear, just as infertile eggs do. When cracked open upon completion of incubation, you can see by close visual inspection that these nonviable eggs were fertile and became nonviable from exposure to extreme conditions.

So, why would a person accept the risk and purchase shipped hatching eggs when they understand that there is a possibility the eggs may not hatch? There are a variety of reasons:

• The minimum order requirement for baby chicks from hatcheries is 25 chicks (too many for some people to manage).
• A particular breed may only be available from an individual breeder who doesn’t ship live chicks.
• Ordering hatching egg, instead of live chicks, may be more affordable.

Incubating eggs that have been shipped through the mail can be and is successful for countless people just like you everyday. With simple preparation and correct incubation techniques, you can successfully hatch your own chicks.

To increase your chances for success, clean and turn on your incubator a couple of days prior to the arrival of your hatching eggs. Be certain that your incubator is maintaining proper, consistent temperature and humidity for the kind of eggs you are hatching and for your type of incubator. Still air units will require a slightly different temperature than forced air units (follow the manufacturer’s instructions).

When your eggs arrive, carefully unwrap the eggs and inspect them. Discard any broken or cracked eggs and notify your supplier of the damage. If the eggs are very dirty, a light and gentle rinsing under water will not harm them. Place the eggs to be incubated pointy end down into an egg carton or egg-hatching tray at room temperature for 24 hours prior to placing them in your preheated incubator. This “resting” period can greatly increase your chances of a successful hatch by allowing the air cell within the egg to settle back into proper position. This resting period is the same if you are using a broody hen as your incubator.

Acquiring hatching eggs has never been easier. The resources are vast and hatching eggs can be found everywhere from online auction sites to websites that specialize in the sale of hatching eggs.

Incubating your own hatching eggs can be very rewarding and enjoyable. Understanding and accepting the reality that even the most experienced person has unsuccessful hatches occasionally, will help avoid the disappointment that we each have felt at times from a failed attempt at hatching shipped eggs. The successful hatches far outweigh the latter. Proper technique and perseverance will reward you with an incubator full of peeping chicks.

Julie and Michael Gabbard own and run Gabbard Farms.

There has been much press regarding the bee colony collapse disorder and its effects on agriculture. As a gardener, I also have been concerned about whether the loss of honeybees would have a direct effect on my garden production. A recent article, Successful Beekeeping with Your Own Honeybees, suggests that backyard gardeners might consider keeping a hive of bees to improve the pollination rates in their own yard and in neighboring gardens.

So, I was pleasantly surprised last week to discover a couple dozen bees noisily collecting on the flowering wild arugula that I let go to seed. I actually went to the garden to cut some zinnias for a new kitchen bouquet and had to lean over the arugula flowers to get to the zinnias. I was suddenly aware that my middle was hovering quite close to the buzzers, who seemed not at all concerned by my proximity.

As I stepped back to better view the whole scene, I discovered there were many honeybees and bumblebees on the zinnias as well as the arugula, plus a number of different kinds of butterflies. How exciting! The existence of these pollinators must be partially responsible for the abundance of cucumbers, tomatoes and green beans in my new garden this summer. I plan to start a flower garden in the backyard next spring and that surely will attract more bees, butterflies and other pollinators. 

Have you had an abundance or a dearth of pollinators in your gardens this season? You can share your experiences in the comments section below.

*It has been suggested the phrase, “it’s the bees’ knees,” popular in the 1920s, referred to the pollen collected on the midsection of bees legs, and pollen is a good thing for bees to collect.

Photo by Heidi Hunt

(cont’d from here)

Few things are friendlier to an urban chicken farmer than the chicken tractor, a coop-on-wheels that gives you the freedom to move your chickens from one part of the yard to another. Granted, it’s an unusual name, but the tractor comes with a fenced-in run that allows your chickens to move around and exercise, helpful if your yard isn’t enclosed.

Chicken tractors come in a variety of sizes and are relatively easy to construct from raw materials, however, if you’re like me, you want the assurance that your chicken tractor coop is sturdy, well-constructed and as predator-proof as possible. Enter GardenEggs.com.

In early July, GardenEggs.com shipped the Big Egg Chicken Tractor, which came in four boxes, each labeled and ready to piece together. We spent two hours assembling the chicken tractor coop, and it was ready immediately for the chicken’s transition.

When they were about seven weeks old, I felt comfortable that the birds were large enough to transfer to the coop. Within a week, I opened the door from the chicken tractor coop to the run so the birds could fly around but were still protected (and contained). 

The chicken tractor coop has several features that are ideal for an urban setting. For instance, you can open the roof of the coop to collect eggs, the run has a gate in case you’d like to allow your chickens to move freely through your yard, and there are three roosting bars suitable for about eight hens (roosters not recommended). And, perhaps most importantly, it moves!

At 12 weeks, I clipped the pullets’ wings, opened the gate to the run and allowed my girls to caper freely during the day. They enjoy being able to skip around the yard, frequently returning to the coop when it’s too hot or the weather is too intense. They seem to have no difficulty identifying the coop as home, even as it travels around the backyard. And every night, when I make sure they have returned safely, I smile and think to myself that, quite literally, the chickens have come home to roost.

Photos by Taylor Miller

I received this action alert yesterday from The National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition. We have until September 28 to tell the USDA to base Conservation Stewardship Program application approval on environmental outcomes, not on when a conservation practice is implemented. See below:

Since the 1930s, we've been paying farmers to produce corn, wheat, rice and cotton. What if we paid farmers for producing healthier soil, cleaner water, climate change mitigation and greater bio-diversity instead? That's the "Big Idea" behind the Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP). Pay farmers to produce environmental outcomes that contribute to the public good.

Sustainable and organic farming advocates have an important, urgent opportunity to help shape the implementation of this working lands conservation program. The USDA has requested comments on the administrative rules that will govern implementation of the new CSP.  

The USDA is considering giving a higher rank to CSP applications proposing the adoption of new conservation practices vs. the maintenance of existing practices. Current rules give equal weight to existing and proposed conservation practices. Please tell the USDA that CSP applications should be ranked on the basis of environmental outcomes and not on the basis of when a conservation practice is implemented.  

The USDA has posed a specific question for comment:  Should the program give greater weight and therefore a higher rank and a higher likelihood of acceptance into the program to applications proposing new conservation practices? Or should existing and new practices be given equal weight?  

The Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) and other conservation programs pay farmers to adopt new conservation practices. The CSP, however, is unique among working lands conservation programs. The CSP rewards farmers who are already farming at a high stewardship threshold and provides an incentive to maintain those high stewardship standards.  

If a farmer has previously adopted advanced conservation measures and systems, the program is designed to reward that behavior and help pay for continued active management and maintenance of those systems and practices. Farmers should also be expected to and be rewarded for adopting new practices. But CSP ranking and payments should be keyed to environmental outcomes and not on when conservation activities are adopted.

CSP design and regulation should equally balance the benefits of both existing and new practices with the primary measure being the environmental benefits secured by the total conservation system regardless of the timing of adoption of various parts of the system. This is essential to making CSP a program that recognizes and rewards the multiple benefits of sustainable and organic farming systems.  

Comment letters can be as short or as long as you want. Put your comments in your own words, and raise the points most important to you. You can submit a comment from the National Sustainable Agriculture website, or you can email comments directly to the USDA at CSP2008@wdc.usda.gov.  
 
If you send your own email:  Be sure to identify the Docket Number at the top of your letter:  RE:  NRCS-IFR-09004. Address your comment letter to: Mr. Gregory Johnson, Director, Financial Assistance Programs, US Department of Agriculture, Natural Resources Conservation Service, 1400 Independence Avenue SW, Room 5237-S, Washington, DC 20250-2890. Be sure to identify yourself by providing your name and contact information. You may also mail your letter to this address if you prefer not to email it. The deadline is September 28.