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Lancaster FarmingAn edition of the Intelligencer Journal/ Lancaster

New Era and Lancaster Newspapers, Inc.

Vol. 58 No. 23 To subscribe:(717)721-4412 or jbetz.eph@lnpnews.com

Southern editionServing virginia, W. virginia,

Maryland, delaWare

Saturday, March 16, 2013Five Sections

Shannon Sollinger

Virginia Correspondent

WINCHESTER, Va. — Farmers, in addition to toiling from dawn till dusk about 11 months of the year, need to work smarter, not just hard-er, to succeed.

For the ninth year in a row, the Forum For Rural Innovation, held March 8 in Winchester, Va., put to-gether a program that offers some of those “work smarter” ideas to farmers and rural entrepreneurs in northern Virginia and eastern West Virginia.

Keep the land profitable, the theo-ry goes, and it will stay open and ru-ral and not succumb to the regional rush to grow condos and townhous-

es, in the words of 2013 Innovation Award winner Rick Brossman.

The forum is a cooperative edu-cational effort by the offices of Agricultural Economic Develop-ment and Cooperative Extension in Clarke, Loudoun and Fauquier counties in Virginia, Berkeley and Jefferson counties in West Virgin-

ia, the Town of Berryville and the Small Business Development Cen-ter for the Eastern Panhandle.

Ideas on the agenda for 2013 included putting in a hops yard to meet the growing demand from craft breweries; growing up not out; and expanding production of eth-nic crops to put on the plates of the country’s growing — and hungry for home — immigrant population.

A panel of finance experts with ideas for getting started and/or get-ting bigger rounded out the day.

Putting in a hops yard can’t be done on the cheap, said New York state hops specialist Steve Miller. But it can, with proper manage-

From Hops to Hydroponics: Grow Where Demand Is

Eastern Dairy ReporterSection E

Published monthly by Lancaster Farming • Saturday, March 16, 2013 • Section E

INSIDE: Dairy Heifer Conference - E4 DHIA - E8 Pa. Jr. Holstein - E25

Cabhi FarmsFamily Transition

page E3

“...quality, con�dent, cost-effective management...We rely on it.”

“Udder ComfortTM is the quality product I have con�dence in. It’s partof our protocol. We check fresh cows, before the volume of milkincreases (2 or 3 days post-calving), so we can �nd subclinical casesand address them early with less wasted milk,” explains Indianadairy producer and veterinarian Dr. Tom Troxel. The Troxel familymilks 130 cows near Hanna, Indiana, where Tom also has his bovineveterinary practice. Herd production averages 24,000 pounds withSCC at 110 to 120,000.

“Udder Comfort is easy to use and provides an excellent uddermanagement tool for the dairy. That’s why we rely on it,” says Dr.Doug Evans. The Evans family milks 45 registered Ayrshires at SunnyAcres Farm, Georgetown, New York; home to a top herd with RHAof 22,000 pounds and SCC at 120,000. The farm is also homebasefor Doug’s bovine veterinary practice. “We love Udder Comfort forrelieving fresh edema. We coat udders of the prefresh heifers abouttwo weeks before calving, spraying it on every day (twice a day) whenwe bring them in for feeding. We have seen how it works on SCC.”

“We use Udder Comfort on all fresh cows and heifers. It gets rid ofswelling, and the udders really soften up, so we don’t over-milk them.With Udder Comfort, heifers take off better after calving and are lesslikely to develop mastitis,” says Dr. Donna Mertz. She keeps Ayrshiresand is herd vet at Daltondale Farm, Hartland, Wisconsin. “UdderComfort is effective, easy to use, and there’s no need to withholdmilk. It �ts our approach to support the general health of the cow tomilk better, naturally, and to reduce treatment costs.”

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Dr. Doug Evans, SUNNY ACRES FARM, Georgetown, NYDr. Donna Mertz, DALTONDALE FARM, Hartland, WIDr. Tom Troxel, TROXEL DAIRY FARM, Hanna, IN

Ag OutlookA7

MarketsA30

Flavors of MexicoB2Inside:

Md. Holstein Breeders Celebrate Their Own

laurie Savage

Maryland Correspondent

WESTMINSTER, Md. — Hol-stein cows may have started out polled and may eventually return to their polled status, according to well-known Holstein breeder Dave Burket.

“We’ve always been rebels. We did it our way, and that’s what made the difference,” said Dave’s son, John Burket of Burket Falls Farm in East Freedom, Pa.

Featured speaker John Burket shared how his family found suc-cess a different way, through polled and red genetics, with attendees at the Maryland Holstein Conven-tion Friday, March 8, at the Carroll County Agriculture Center.

Of the 110 registered cows on the Burkets’ farm, 80 percent are natu-rally polled, and 75 percent are red or red carriers. The first polled calf was born on the farm in 1960.

Dave Burket bought a group of registered cattle from Wisconsin, which included a cow they did not realize was polled, named Princess. She was the first polled cow on the farm and traced 21 generations back to Holland.

Princess’ son, Burket Falls ABC-P, was the first bull in the artificial insemination industry from the Burket farm that was polled and possibly the first in A.I. in the early 1970s. His son, Burket Falls Gran-dee-P-RC, was probably the fam-ily’s best bull in A.I.

“For us, he put it all together,”

Forum Brings Conservation

Nonprofits to ValleyField Trips Showcase Farm-ers’ Perspectives on BMPs

andreW Jenner

Virginia Correspondent

WEYERS CAVE, Va. — On a damp, chilly morn-ing March 5, just hours before two feet of snow started falling on the Shenandoah Valley, about two dozen representatives of conservation groups and public agencies visited Cave View Farms for a hay-ride and nutrient management discussion.

During the tour, Cave View Farms owner Gerald Garber showed visitors the various projects he’s completed over the years to keep nutrients cycling on his farm and through his 525 dairy cows, rather than escaping down the Shenandoah River and into the Chesapeake Bay.

Garber discussed his experience with cost-share programs he’s used for some, but not all, of the best management practices on the farm, including manure storage, stream fencing, rotational grazing, grass-covered waterways to drain fields and numer-ous others.

Garber told the group that one of his nutrient man-agement strategies is to have enough manure storage capacity to allow his spreading to be dictated by his needs and good weather, not lack of space

“You have to have dialogue,” said Garber, who hosts about five or six such tours of his farm each year, in the hope of improving communication and understanding between farmers and conservation organizations that work on agricultural issues. “We can’t afford to look bad, and we certainly can’t af-ford to look bad if it’s over a misunderstanding.”

The field trip was part of an annual Chesapeake Bay Agriculture Networking Forum hosted by the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, or NFWF. About 120 people from around 60 nonprofits and state agencies that receive grant funding from NFWF attended this year’s forum in Staunton, Va.;

AP/Daily News-Record photo by Nikki FoxSilos serve as a towering backdrop as clothes dry outside at a farm on Cooks Creek Road in Rockingham County, Va., Monday.

High and Dry

“For some consumers, ethnic produce is not only a source of food and fiber,

but also a source of cultural values.”

Yao Afantchao

Forum for Rural Innovation Flush With Ideas

Photo by Shannon SollingerPaul Mock’s West Virginia-grown greenhouse lettuces and herbs wel-come visitors to the exhibit room of the Forum For Rural Innovation.

More HOLSTEIN, page A2 More FORUM, page A3

More INNOVATION, page A15

www.lancasterfarming.com LancasterFarming,SouthernEdition,Saturday,March16,2013-A3

the event rotates each year between Pennsyl-vania, Maryland and Virginia.

In recent years, NFWF has awarded grants totaling between $8 million and $12 million for conservation in the Chesapeake Bay wa-tershed, with about one-third of that total de-voted to agricultural conservation programs, according to Amanda Bassow, director of NFWF’s Chesapeake program.

After the visit to Garber’s farm, the field trip made a second stop to discuss nutrient man-agement at North Point Farm in New Hope, Va. There, Kevin Phillips, one of four brothers that owns and operates the farm, and NRCS agronomist Richard Fitzgerald discussed the value of maximizing yield to allow for high rates of nutrient application and nutrient re-moval.

Fitzgerald reviewed Phillips’ nutrient man-agement plan with the group, and noted the importance of thinking about whole-farm nutrient cycling rather than simply looking at nutrient application rates.

As an example, Fitzgerald pointed out that the relatively high rate of total nitrogen ap-plication for corn on one of Phillips’ farms —

ForumContinuedfromA1

Photos by Andrew JennerGerald Garber, center background, owner of Cave View Farms in Weyers Cave, Va., leads a guided hay wagon tour of his dairy operation for attendees of the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation’s Chesapeake Bay Agriculture Networking Forum. Garber used the visit to describe nutrient management techniques on his 525-cow dairy.

Kevin Phillips, an owner/operator of North Point Farm near New Hope, Va., discusses intensive nutrient management on a section of his farm surrounded on three sides by the Middle River. With 900 dairy cows on three separate farms, North Point Farm is one of the biggest dairies in the state.

228 pounds per acre, including dairy slurry, starter and sidedress fertilizer — was offset by a yield of 35 tons of corn silage per acre that removed 333 pounds of nitrogen.

Fitzgerald emphasized that when taken alone, Phillips’ rate of nutrient application could raise red flags, but when considered in context of nutrient cycling on the whole farm, it represents one component of a profitable and environmentally conscious management program.

“Part of what we were trying to do this year was to have farmers be a little more front and center,” said Jim Baird, mid-Atlantic director for the American Farmland Trust, and one of the leaders of the field trip to Garber’s and Phillips’ farms. “An (important thing) is for organizations to understand BMPs from the farmer’s point of view.”

Simultaneous field trips took other agri-culture networking forum attendees to val-ley farms to learn about manure-to-energy systems and stream fencing. Later in the day, the forum hosted a panel discussion that gave several farmers an opportunity to discuss balancing conservation and profit, and field questions from an audience mostly made up of nonfarmers who work to promote eco-nomic and environmentally beneficial farm practices.

“We’re particularly interested in how to make conservation practical for farm-ers, and to hear directly from them about issues that are barriers to adopt-ing these conservation programs is valuable,” said Bassow, the NWFW Chesapeake programs director.

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COW SALE FOLLOWED BY BULLSFOLLOWED BY HEIFERS

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COMPLETE EASTER SALEFriday, March 22, 2013

Rabbits - Poultry - Eggs Sale 9:00 a.m.Receiving 7:00 a.m. - 9 a.m. (Hen House)

Graded Pig Sale Sale 12:30 p.m.Receiving 7:00 a.m. - 9 a.m. (Rear Docks only)

Goats, Lambs & Sheep Sale: After PigsReceiving 7:00 a.m. - 12:30 p.m. (Front Docks only)

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