The 2014 Nutrient management Plan Workshops will be held
each week on Wednesdays from 10am to 2pm for 5 weeks.

Farmers can use the UVM Extension GoCrop program and workbooks to write their own NMP to meet requirements for state of Vermont permit programs and for the NRCS EQIP programs.

Middlebury
January 8, 15, 22,
February 5 and 12th

Randolph
January 9, 16, 23
February 6 and 11th

St. Johnsbury
January 8, 15, 22,
February 5 and 12th

For questions about signing up for the 2014 NMP workshops , call us.
(802) 388-4969-Middlebury
(802) 524-6501-St. Albans

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If you would like to Ask ELSIE? a question, please email her by clicking HERE.

FARM NEWS & EVENTS

Bedded Pack Manure Management Trainings

Are you interested in using a bedded pack for your winter manure management? Wondering how much bedding you'll need, what the costs will be, and how managing a pack works? Are you trying to figure out whether a bedded pack would be right for you and your farm system?

Attend one of these trainings, featuring compost specialist Brian Jerose, UVM Extension, and NRCS partners to help you understand how to build and maintain a pack to meet your needs

December 11 - St. Johnsbury
December 12 - Rutland
December 19 - Sheldoon

$25/person

Funding for the Champlain Valley Crop, Soil & Pasture Team and the programs and resources we offer is provided by the following organizations:

UVM Extension
Lake Champlain Basin Program
Great Lakes Fishery Commission
USDA-Natural Resources Conservation Service
VT Agency of Natural Resources
VT Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets
USDA-Risk Management Agency
NE-SARE Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education

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Issued in furtherance of Cooperative Extension work, Acts of May 8 and June 30, 1914, in cooperation with the United States Department of Agriculture. University of Vermont Extension, Burlington, Vermont.

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University of Vermont Extension, and U.S. Department of Agriculture, cooperating, offer education and employment to everyone without regard to race, color, national origin, gender, religion, age, disability, political beliefs, sexual orientation, and marital or familial status.

If you would no longer like to receive this newsletter, feel free to Unsubscribe by clicking the SafeUnsubscribe™ button at the bottom of this newsletter.
Although, we hope you won't!

News and Events

For Vermont Farmers in the Lake Champlain Watershed

Where do you want to be in 10 years? How will you tell YOUR story about how your farm helped clean up Lake Champlain? I like this one that combines cover crops, no-till planting, improving soil health quality and actively joining with other farmers to present new solutions that show how we increased crop yields, increased profits and takes agriculture to the place where we are the #1 reason why water quality in the lake improved. I like that much better than a story on how EPA and the state forced farms to clean up their act.

We had a Field Day at Ray Brands farm in November to look at the Winter Cover Crop Mixes we planted as part of our field research trials.
2 mixes x 2 rates x 2 dates vs Winter Rye, some with manure over the top. Take a look at the trial results we have so far in the Cover Crops section. All is not perfect in the world of planting cover crops on CLAY SOIL, but I sure see some great moves by local farmers to add cover crops after corn silage. (I was also reminded last week that IT IS A GOOD THING that there were so many more farmers who planted cover crops this fall than expected for the State Cover Crop Program.) We will follow these research trials into next year to get a better handle on the real potential for taking up and saving nutrients $$$ and improving soil for next years crop as Ray plants no-till corn in that field. He split the field so we can compare no-till corn with regular fall plow next year. We are going to measure the cover crop benefits from these 10 different treatments as they affect next year's corn crop and ultimate harvest yield. We are pulling together a pretty good conference in February about using cover crops, no-till corn planting, how to use manure in the system, and more on using GPS Precision Agriculture in your crop systems. It will be a good event, we have some dynamic speakers coming in, so I hope you can make it.

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Champlain Valley Cover Crop and No-Till Symposium

February 19 & 20, 2014

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The idea of improving soil health, not just increasing yields is pretty interesting. We sent 9 field samples from clay farms to the Cornell Soil Health Test (CSHT) and also sent split samples (one-half of the soil) to the USDA-ARS Soil Health Lab in Texas to see what these new tests can tell us about clay soil here. I am looking at the results and a few things do show up. With the CSHT, No surprise that the chemical analysis is low Phosphorus, good pH and high Potassium. But what shows up clearly is the problems with root health ratings and the relationship with sub-surface compaction. Also interesting is that the fields we call clay are mostly a nice silty-clay or silty-clay-loam with some great capacity for high yield production. These soil health tests are far more than a regular soil test and can help guide farmers to look more closely at what may be limiting your crop potential including low water capacity, low active carbon, subsurface deep compaction and soil structure and aggregate stability. This looks like a good test to see how fields are improving as you move toward better soil health, a way to look at more than just fertility needs. The physical and biological health of you soil is what makes a good environment for better crop yields.

YOUR INVOLVEMENT in current discussions is for YOUR BENEFIT

*** Public Meetings for Water Quality by the Agency of Agriculture and Agency of Natural Resources are also coming up next week. These regulations will place a cap on the maximum amount of Phosphorus that can be allowed to enter Lake Champlain. This will impact your farm for many years to come, so this is where you can participate in the discussion about the new Phosphorus plan.

Lake Champlain Basin Phosphorus Clean Water Act TMDL Public Meetings

Burlington - Dec 10, Tuesday 2-4pm, Echo Lake Aquarium and Science Center

Middlebury - Dec 10, Tuesday 7-9pm, Middlebury Inn

Rutland - Dec 11, Wednesday 10:30-12:30am, Rutland Free Library

>>>The Champlain Valley Farmer Coalition Annual Meeting on January 8 at the Vergennes American Legion from 6:30 to 9:00 pm is for all farmers in the area. I hope you can make it, just give us a call so we can plan on food and chairs for everyone.

Jeff Carter

UVM Extension Agronomy

http://www.uvm.edu/extension/cvcrops

https://www.facebook.com/ChamplainCropSoilPasture

COVER CROP CORNER

Preliminary Results from Cover Crop Study

by Kirsten Workman

Click HERE to download the handout from the field day!

Last month we talked about our Cover Crop Diversity in No Till Systems project funded by Northeast SARE. We had a

Jeff Carter describing results from one of the cover crop plots to a group of farmers.

dynamic field day last month where we shared our preliminary results, so I thought I would share some of that information here for those of you that missed it. On a cold, but lovely November day, almost 50 folks met out at Deer Valley Farm to not only look at our plots and discuss our results, but talk about cover cropping and no-till systems on Champlain Valley clay soils. It was a great and lively discussion. Here are some of our data. Let us know what you think!

Site Statistics:

Location: Ferrisburgh, VT

Soil Type: mapped as Covington silty clay

Plot Size: 10'x 100'

Corn Planted: May 16, 2013

Cover Crop Mixes Broadcast*: August 15, 2013

Corn Harvested: September 24, 2013

Cover Crop Mixes Drilled**: September 26, 2013

*Broadcast plots seeded with hand seeders (to simulate aerial application)

**Drilled plots seeded with Haybuster No-Till Grain Drill

Our plots were randomized complete blocks. The field was planted to corn in May, we then interseeded our mixes into the standing corn, and then repeated our plantings with our no-till drill after the corn was harvested. We then collected forage samples from the interseeded plots and measured residue coverage on all plots on November 1st.

The results are below and in the attached summary from the field day.

Figure 1: Plot Layout

Figure 2: Data collected from the Deer Valley site (Ferrisburgh, VT)

Figure 3: Chart comparing yield to percent cover

Summary

Although it is too soon to make any conclusions, there is definitely some interesting information already. We will repeat our measurements in the spring right before the cover crops are terminated and corn is planted. However, we were able to get some good information. Here are some highlights:

Our control was Winter Rye seeded at 100 lbs/acre. Since this is what most folks are doing currently (and having good results), we wanted to compare our plots to that.
We measured percent residue cover of all the plots this fall and forage analysis/biomass on the earlier seeded plots. Most cover crop data has only shown these measurements from the spring.
Our higher seeding rates performed the best in terms of biomass, nutrient uptake, and percent cover for the fall. However, the cost would be prohibitive for most farms to adopt.
The lower seeding rate of our mixes performed comparably to the control (100 lbs of winter rye) for percent cover, but did better in terms of biomass production and nutrient uptake.
We chose a winter kill mix (oats/peas/radish) as half of our treatments, and we are interested to see how those plants perform in the spring. Our hopes are that this may provide a cover crop scenario for farms on heavier clay soils who may have termination issues in the spring.

We will have a complete synopsis of the project and more field days in the spring, so stay tuned! Next year, this work will be expanded to include 10 different cover crop mixes and three different establishment dates. If you are interested in doing cover crop research on your farm, please give us a call.

**Funding for this project provided by a Northeast SARE Partnership Project**

A special thank you to the farms participating in this project:

Deer Valley Farm, Farr Farm, Scholten Family Farm, & Elysian Fields Farm

GRAZING GREENER

Local Farmers learn about improved management for their grazing herds in Bridport, VT

Bridport Grazing Symposium Draws a Crowd

by Cheryl Cesario

We had a great grazing workshop November 14^th with our invited speakers, Troy Bishopp of Madison County, NY and Julie Smith, UVM Extension Dairy Specialist. We had two informative and entertaining sessions with Troy who walked us through the logistics and the benefits of planning out the grazing season. We learned how to take our basic recording of cow movement on pasture to the next level with planning ahead. How can we plan for time away (yes, really) and also track things such as hay harvests and rainfall to better understand our overall system? Thanks to everyone who brought along their planned grazing charts to share with the group! We had a lot of great discussion revolving around real-life examples of grazing charts kept by local farmers.

Julie Smith polled the farmers in the audience with various questions about pasture management, herd health and veterinary care. We wanted to follow up with some of the interesting responses generated that day. See where your farm might fit in with the answers below:

1. Only 4 of 25 respondents said they have done forage tests on their pastures to evaluate nutrient value.

2. All but one farmer provides water at the barn and/or in the paddock. Only one person admitted to using streams as a water source.

3. Of 25 respondents, only about half have an ongoing relationship with a veterinarian. The barriers to accessing more veterinary expertise were noted as cost, time limitations, farm size, and lack of handling facilities. Most respondents (80-85%) have not asked their vet how they can better meet their farm's needs, have not had the vet conduct an animal well-being/comfort assessment, or help identify bottlenecks on the farm.

4. Answers to how vets serve their clients ranged along the spectrum from emergency work only, to monthly pregnancy checks, to being a part of the producer's dairy management team.

5. Farmers have called the vet out the farm for the following health issues in the last year: lameness, retained placenta, mastitis, pneumonia, and Johne's disease.

Thinking ahead to future grazing workshops, producers helped us identify what are some grazing-related topics that might be of interest:

a. Vaccination protocols

b. Johne's disease and testing

c. Lungworm prevention and management

d. Prevention of pink eye in dairy heifers

e. Importance of water quality

f. How to improve pasture quality

g. Optimizing nutrition when faced with lower quality pasture

Thanks to all who attended and if we missed you this time, we hope to see you next year!

Agronomy & Conservation Assistance Program

Closing the Slot makes No-Till Corn Successful

by Rico Balzano

No-till and minimum till (min-till) corn is slowly catching on in the Champlain Valley, and the main challenge is our heavy clay soil. However, new methods and tools are continually being developed that are better dealing with cold, wet no-till soils. Planters and after-market planter attachments have come a long way in recent years, with many companies now offering a wide array of coulters, row cleaners, seed firmers, fertilizer tubes, closing wheels, etc. Finely tuned planters are essential for successful no-till (after all, it may be the only tool that touches the soil) and there are many available attachments that can help modify your planter, but the place to start may be at the back of the planter.

Conventional smooth closing wheels are really designed for tilled seedbeds and in damp conditions can overpack the furrow, causing poor emergence. In no-till soils, especially clay, smooth closing wheels may compress the top of planting slot without fully closing it, leaving it to dry, shrink, and open back up again. For every thousand plants lost per acre, yield drops by about 1.2 tons. Spiked closing wheels address many of these issues and there are many options on the market. However, they must be adjusted properly to break and crumble the sidewall without creating compaction on top of the seed slot. This helps prevent the reopening of the slot that can cause failed no-till on clay soil.

This farmer in the Winooski uses a spiked and a smooth closing wheel on his sandy no-till fields

No-till soils are in their natural state: firm and structured, not loose and fluffy like a prepared seedbed. Macropores created by earthworms and roots are not destroyed by tillage and help facilitate drainage while providing adequate moist ure and aeration for the crop to grow. A planter designed to plant in loose, fluffy soil will not do a good job on no-till soils without some modification. It's just going to take some more trial and error to find what works best.

CONSERVATION PARTNER SPOTLIGHT

Using an Aerator on Alfalfa. Can it be Done?

Jennifer Alexander- Poultney-Mettowee Natural Resources Conservation District

In 2011 PMNRCD was awarded a NE Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (NESARE) grant to look at the effects of aeration on alfalfa. There are several studies that have documented reduced nutrient runoff with the use of field aeration; however, it is unclear how aeration will affect alfalfa stands where taproots may be more susceptible to damage. Our multiple year study started in 2011, with four participating dairy farms, each with a different soil type: Windsor Loamy Sand, Tioga Fine Sandy Loam, Warwick-Quonset Complex, and a Ninigret Fine Sandy Loam.

Gen-Till Aeration strips in alfalfa field

Each farm had a set of five, 200 square foot replicated plots, consisting of three aerated and two 'control' or non-aerated plots. Initial crown counts were completed on randomly selected 3x3 foot areas within each plot. Subsequent aeration and crown counts took place in the same areas in 2012, with final crown counts completed in spring 2013. The 8 foot 9" wide GenTil aerator was set at the zero-degree setting for aeration. The farms that were selected for this trial included one liquid manure farm with a new seeding of 100% alfalfa, and three semi-solid manure farms; one with newly seeded alfalfa with fescue, one with a two year-old stand of pure alfalfa with volunteer white clover, and finally, a mature stand with timothy interseeded in 2010.

Aeration on three of the farms took place before first cut. On the fourth farm aeration took place after first cut because the alfalfa got too tall for aeration. During the 2011 growing season, there were no noticeable differences between crown health on plots that had been aerated and plots that had not been aerated.On August 28, 2011, Tropical Storm Irene came raging through our area and deposited several feet of Otter Creek silt on our liquid farm test plot, destroying it. The other farms were located out of the flood plain and were not impacted. Crown counts took place on the remaining farms as scheduled in fall, and plots were marked for winter with wooden stakes.

Slots in alfalfa field using the Gen-Till Aerator

Slots in alfalfa field using Gen-Till Aerator

In 2012, the aeration on the remaining three farms and subsequent crown counts took place in spring, all before first cut. The farmers and staff observed the growing plots throughout the summer and once again, did not notice measurable differences in the health of the alfalfa crowns.

The final crown counts, penetrometer readings, and various soil tests were conducted in spring/early summer 2013. While final data tabulation and review is not complete, observations made over two growing seasons indicate that aeration of alfalfa fields, less than 6" in height, on light soils, with the aerator set at zero-degrees, does not harm the stand.

NRCS SOIL HEALTH SPOTLIGHT

Click HERE for an NRCS story about aerial application of cover crops!!

CHAMPLAIN VALLEY FARMER COALITION

Vermont Farmers who are working together
for a clean Lake Champlain & thriving agriculture in Vermont

The directors of CVFC Inc. invite all interested farmers who would like to see action taken on a number of issues that directly affect your farm business.

Plan to attend the Annual Meeting of the Champlain Valley Farmers Coalition

January 8th, 2014 6:30 - 9:00 pm American Legion, Vergennes

For more info: CVFC ANNUAL MEETING

We will have a time to visit with other farmers over light snacks and refreshments. The program will be a panel discussion with a few key farmers from the coalition, Chuck Ross and David Mears about impending actions to meet the EPA requirements for the TMDL plan that will affect every farm in the watershed.

The annual business meeting for the Farmer Coalition will follow the discussion and you are welcome to stay for that as well.

Call us so we know how many to plan for - 388-4969

For more information about this farmer organization visit our website at:

www.champlainvalleyfarmercoaltion.com

If you know someone else who might be interested in receiving
this jeff

newsletter, please share it and encourage them to join our mailing list. Meanwhile, please call if you have an interest in helping us move forward with selecting projects that you feel are important to you. We are hearing more about how soil health is so critical to your farm profitability and will protect the lake water quality, we just need to be sure any moves toward reduced tillage and more soil cover are based on good field research data.

Jeff Carter,
Extension Agronomist
UVM Extension- Champlain Valley Crop, Soil & Pasture Team