What Happens on a Farm: A 4th Grade Field Day Tour

0:00 Welcome everyone. What we're going to do is show you a little bit about what goes on here at the farm. I've got some pictures that we'll look at, I've got some demonstrations that we're going to do here, and then we'll get back on the buses, we'll go out to the field and we'll do some digging in the dirt because once you're at a field trip to the farm, if you don't get a little dirty, right? So we're going to go out and we'll dig in the dirt a little bit, see what we can find, and then we'll come back here and if we have time we'll do a little tour of some of the things that we do with the cover crop seed here. And then we'll have a lunch and if there's time, everybody may get a chance to bottle feed a calf too. So we'll see how much time we have for that. So we're going to go ahead and get started here.

0:52 You can shut these lights off please. I'm just going to take you through some pictures of different things that we do on the farm throughout the year just so you kind of have a little bit of an idea.

1:03 March and April, the year kind of starts out. The cows are having calves. Now we don't have that many cows—we've only got about 30 cows and most of them have had their calves in March and April. And so right now they're out grazing some cover crops and we'll be taking them out to pasture like this later on. But we do have one bottle calf. We had a cow that had a set of twins and so a lot of times when they have twins, the cow is not able to feed both of them, so one of them usually gets taken off and we feed it with a bottle. So I think the guys are going to bring him up and his name is what's his name this year? Buzby. Buzby.

1:47 April and May, the time that we're in right now, you probably seen people out in the field fertilizing, planting corn, doing things like that. This is just

1:58 One of the pictures of our tractors. I'm not using this particular setup anymore but the year that I had this, this was kind of fun to go down the road with this is 100 ft long from the front of the tractor to the back of this tank, so it was like pulling a train down the road. When I came down the road with that thing, people pulled over and got out of my way because that looked like a lot of stuff coming down the road.

2:24 I'll be planting soybeans with this here this week. The seed goes in these tanks up here. There's a big fan that blows the seat back and it unfolds and it comes out the edges here or off of each one of these. Planting corn is kind of the same way. This is one of our tractors and it has tracks on it, which is a little bit different. You don't see a lot of them this way instead of tires, and the reason for that is it doesn't compact the soil quite as much.

2:52 Here's a picture of our corn planter. The seed goes up here and then a big fan blows it through all these hoses. There's lots and lots of hoses and wires and cables on a lot of this equipment. This is 40 ft long. There are 32 rows across here, and so we can plant things every 15 in and it's all computer controlled. It's pretty complicated and it's great when everything works, but there's so many wires and hoses and tubes that it's rare that we go through a day when everything works. A lot of times we have to stop and fix something. So when you're a farmer, you also have to be a pretty good repair man because there's always going to be something that's breaking or not working.

3:38 I told you that it was computer controlled and the way that works is on the tractor. There's GPS receivers and radios and they're sending signals up. This just shows you what they're doing. It's bouncing off satellites and the satellite basically will tell us where.

3:57 We're at in the field and it tells us how fast we're going and it will actually steer the tractor straight. So we've got a little computer screen in the tractor it tells us how fast we're going, how much if we're doing seed or fertilizer it tells us how much we're putting on. I can adjust the rates here if I want to put more seed or less seed on, we can do that, or I can even make a map on a computer and this map will tell the planter where I want to have more seed and where I want to have less seed and it tells it when to turn on, when to shut off, and when to plant more and when to do less, so it's all pretty much computer controlled.

4:35 In a new and this isn't even this tractor here is probably close to 15 years old, but a new tractor today probably has at least six to eight computers that run it, and then when you put a planner on there, maybe two or three more computers that run all that. So to be a farmer you have to have a pretty good understanding of electronics and computers and all that kind of stuff.

5:01 Go back here, this is a closeup of the planter and what this little thing is right here, this is called an air clutch, but what that does is it can turn on or turn off every single row unit. And so when we're planting and we're coming up on a field that's not straight, see like you can see here, these rows go this way and notice how these rows each stop right here, there's nothing planted in between there, so there's no double planted things. And the way that works is the computer in the GPS is drawing a map of what's been planted and when these rows come up and the computer says this is already been planted, boom, it shuts that off, so it prevents it from planting any seed because if I have one bag of seed corn, anybody want to guess what one bag of seed corn can cost? Just like a 40 lb bag of corn, $100, that's a good guess, any other.

6:03 Guesses $50. Man, I wish. You got something to tell me—one bag of corn can cost as much as $350 to $400. Okay, so we don't want to waste that because that's a lot of money. So this type of technology where each of these rows will shut off when it's already come up on an area that's planted can save us a lot of money. So these maps are drawn out to help us do that and it helps not grow, not double plant anything. Like this in the old days before we had this, and Mr. Pela can attest to this probably—these rows they go all the way through here because there's no way shutting it off because you have to keep driving to get these rows planted when you're on something that's not straight like this. So on the crooked fields it works really nice.

6:56 This is just a picture of corn growing. This is what we want our fields to look like, and I'm going to talk a lot about how we farm that maybe is a little different than some of the farms that you may be familiar with. This is what we like to see—we don't like to see our soil. We like to always have it covered, and so this is wheat from a previous year along with radishes and other types of cover crops. We'll be talking a lot more about that later. Here's another picture of corn growing. This is in June. This is a field of corn from last year. You can see all of the stocks and the residue, and we don't go in and disc that down. We just leave that because this helps block the wind, it helps shade the soil, it helps catch more rain, and that's what some of these demonstrations will show you here. So we like to see all this residue from last year in the field.

7:44 Another picture. Anybody know what these things are? Yes, that kind of looks like potatoes, but it's not potatoes. Any other guesses? Yes, old corn. No, not old corn. This is an old corn stock right here, but these things look that—here that look.

8:03 Like little bloated dead animals or something. May you got to guess what those are. Yes, what's that? Manure, manure, that's a good guess. These are old radishes and I'll show you some pictures of these radishes when they were growing and this is what they look like the next year.

8:25 We raised rye tray instead of wheat because we can sell that as cover crop seed and the field that we're going to go look at is going to have rye growing in it. So you kind of see it looks a lot like wheat but it gets about 5 feet tall. So if you guys came back in like late June you can walk out through these rye fields and it would be way over your head, which would be kind of fun. We'll see how many we actually got out of there.

8:52 And then spray. We, you know, from now through a lot of the summer we do spray to control weeds. And I want to just show you I've got a little video here that hopefully will work. It's we have a red sprayer like this but the video is about a John Deere sprayer but it's just going to show you the same technology that turns on and off each row on the planter. We also have that on the sprayers.

9:39 So as the sprayer is going through the field you can see over here what the computer shows and then over here it's turning it on and off. And as he comes up to an area where he doesn't want it sprayed, it's turning each nozzle off one at a time. And so that's the type of map that it's going to show. And so this area right here the farmer has drawn this on a map and said I don't want to spray that because that's an area of grass. So as the sprayer comes across there it shuts off those nozzles. Here again it shuts those nozzles off so we don't get any spray in these areas.

10:16 Automatically shuts it off at the end and so this is exactly what it would look like inside the cab. This is what a farmer would look at a lot of times. You know, you may think it kind of looks like a video game or something, but I guess in some ways it sort of is. But the computers and the technology are preventing us from spraying things where they shouldn't go and it prevents it from double spraying and it just shuts things off where it's needed and lets it run where it should.

10:51 Okay, so you've all seen center pivots running. But we'll, through July through September, we'll be putting a lot of water on. In fact, we're running some pivots right now because we've got some corn growing and it needs a drink, so we're actually running them now. Harvesting in July, we'll harvest the wheat. And this particular year we are harvesting wheat. This is called the stripper head, which is different than a lot of heads. Actually cutting the wheat off inside this, right here inside this thing right here, are a whole bunch of fingers that are spinning really fast. And those fingers are just coming up and it's stripping the grain out and it's sucking it up into here. So this here has already been harvested, but it's exactly the same height as this because I want to leave my straw standing because that's going to help save my soil later on.

11:49 And then we're planting soybeans the same day that we're harvesting the wheat. In this particular picture, there's another picture you can see that on the left it's been harvested and over here, clear up in the right-hand corner, it hasn't been harvested. But there's no difference in the height. And again, that's so my straw will last longer. And then we're right back in behind there planting the same day. We want to keep things growing as much as possible. That's what the soybeans look like later on, then coming up right through that.

12:20 Steve, you can't always do that but there's certain times that we can, usually under a pivot. And then throughout the summer and part of the fall we'll plant cover crops. And basically what a cover crop is, you know, corn and soybeans and wheat, those things we harvest and we sell to the elevator and get money for. The cover crops we plant them but we don't harvest them. We're just planting it to help build up the soil and we're feeding all of the animals that are in the soil. You guys know there's animals in the soil, okay?

12:56 Good stuff. That's how I'm excited. So of course there's worms and we'll go out and see if we can find some worms. But there's lots of things. If I was to take just this piece of soil right here, anybody want to guess how many living organisms are in this clot of soil?

13:20 Two million? A lot, a lot. He's the closest. Yes, one hundred? There's there are more living organisms in this soil right here than all the people that are alive on the planet today. There's over ten billion living organisms right here. Well, they may not be living anymore. I had it in the oven because they're drying it out. But when we go out and we look at the soil and we dig that up, you're going to be able to see the worms. But there's billions and billions of organisms, bacteria and fungi and nematodes and all sorts of things in here that you can't see, but they're absolutely essential for plants to grow.

14:07 So it'll be kind of fun. We'll go out and see what we can find. Here's the picture. Here's the radishes you know I showed you those that had kind of dried up before. That's what these look like when they're growing. And there's this, my daughter when she was eighteen months old, and that's my radish when.

16:31 Were so the green is better than the yellow and the red is not very good at all. So anywhere where we have these red areas we got to say what was the problem there, how comes we didn't have very good fields. And so these maps will help us make decisions then for the next year as to how we should farm that field.

16:49 Corn harvest, that's just a picture that Sam took from the top of the AUG. I'm going to go through these because we may get a little tour of this. We have a seed business, we sell a lot of these different seeds. So we keep about 70 different kinds of seed around. We mix it together and we ship it out. I was just looking that so far just this year, we've shipped to probably about 45 states. We've sent seed to 45 different states already this year. So maybe by the end of the year we'll get all 50. We have sold seed to Hawaii and Alaska before. I'm trying to figure out how I can personally deliver those, figure that out yet.

17:35 But why do we use cover crops? A lot of people don't use cover crops and I'm just going to talk to you a little bit about why we do it and why we're encouraging other people to do it. And it all goes back to we want to take a look at how God created plant communities and ecosystems. Have you guys studied ecosystems in science? Okay, can anybody tell me what an ecosystem is? You answered a couple right. It's like an area that a plant or an animal, okay, it's an area where a plant or an animal live. Very good. I don't know how I would answer that. Yeah, it's everything involved in where a plant or an animal live. So we want to look at how God created these plants and animals to live together. And what we see when you look at the native prairies, when you look at where we haven't disturbed it, what you see is plants are growing together. You never see just one thing all growing by itself in nature. You see wide diversity.

18:40 Hundreds of different things you'll see. Some things that will flow, some things that will grow tall, some things that will grow short, some things that grow early and some things that grow late, but it's a great amount of diversity and things all growing together. And so that's what we want to try to emulate with our cover crops.

19:00 Now it's not exactly like these native systems, but that's what we're trying to get to. We want some things that will bloom, some things that grow tall, some things that are short because that's how soil was designed and that's how plants are supposed to grow. They like growing together, and all of the animals, like this worm right there, it depends on that plant for its food. And if there's no plants, then there's not going to be all of these animals that I talked about in the soil.

19:32 This is a picture of a root, and see all those things coming out from that root? That's actually a fungus. And here, if anybody asks you or you go home and ask your folks, say, do you know what the largest living thing on the planet is?

20:00 What do you think the largest living thing on the planet is? What's that? A fungi? Really, you think fungus is the largest living thing, bigger than a tree, bigger than a whale? This guy's smart. You're right. Yeah, most people would say, you know, a redwood tree or something like that, but they measured a fungus that is hundreds of miles long. This stuff is incredible. And what this does is it will grow on the plant root, and they make a deal. The fungus comes to the plant and says, hey, I tell you what. If you give me some of the sugars that you're producing, I'll go out here in the soil and I'll bring in nutrients, I'll bring in water, I'll bring...

20:42 In nitrogen I'll bring in phosphorus and then we'll trade and that's exactly what they do. Now they may not have that conversation but that's what they do. The fungus will bring in the nutrients and in exchange the plant roots give off the sugars that the fungus lives on. It's kind of cool.

21:02 We always try to keep the soil covered. This is a picture of one of my neighbor's fields that's not very impressive. He did a lot of tillage here and after a rain you see all that shiny stuff. That's water actually still standing 24 hours after the rain. What should that water have done? It should soak down into the soil, right, because otherwise it's going to get lost. The sun's just going to evaporate it away.

21:33 This is what our fields look like. You think there's any water standing here or did it all go down? It all went down into the soil and that's what the soil's job is, to hold that water. So we always want something growing.

21:47 Here's corn growing. This is a cool picture. This is an old radish right here and we sliced right through it, put a seed right down there and this radish is growing right up from where the corn plant is growing right out of that old radish, taking all the nutrients that it had stored. Always want something growing as much as possible.

22:11 Don't worry about not being able to hear this but this is a plant root and these are the little root hairs that are extending out. So as this is magnified and then sped up greatly, these little root hairs go out and then that's where you can see the little bacteria and there'll be little funguses coming up here and as these roots are leaking out these sugars, all of this biology is going to be coming in. This is a tip of a root growing and it.

22:45 It covers itself with kind of this little mucus shield and these roots are incredibly powerful they can penetrate up to 2,000 lb per square in of pressure and you can see all the these are different biological things that are feeding on these roots and I'm not sure if these are bacteria or fungus but they they all are right around these roots and as these bacteria as they die they're releasing the nutrients that these plant rots need so it's really important that we have all this biology here you can see here's all the little rot hairs and here's all the little creatures swimming around and actually in the soil all of these animals I talked about almost all of them swim they're they're aquatic animals and so if you don't have any moisture in your soil these things can't function and they're so tiny that you don't need very much moisture but they're actually swimming in here you can see the plant root growing here so it's kind of cool it's when you study these roots and the interaction with all the different soil biology it's kind of cool how it all works together.

24:00 Okay so this is why we don't kill the soil because when you kill the soil this is what happens happens this is called erosion you guys have probably studied soil erosion that's when the water or the wind takes your soil away and we don't like that we saw these pictures already we like to have the soil covered this is I scraped this away here's the soil this is what was on top of it and so I don't want want to see my soil uncovered I always want to see stuff on top of it we we can't always accomplish that because we may have not had a good crop the year before or like this year we have a lot of bare soil because the wind blew it away it can turn the lights on with all the wind that we had we had a lot of our soil that got blown away or a lot of the residue that was on the soil was blown away so I'm going to do a couple demonstrations now.