Modern Farmer 9/27/20 Jacksonville Journal-Courier

MODERN FARMER

Family pulls together to share place ‘to chill’ with others...Page 2 A special section of the Journal-Courier | Sunday, September 27, 2020 | $1

2 • Sunday, September 27, 2020 • Modern Farmer

MODERN FARMER September 27, 2020

On the cover: Addie Meyer (from left), Corinne Dorsey, Charlie Six, Genny Six, Joseph Six, Kenzie Meyer and Anna Six stand outside a log cabin at Market Six Pumpkin Patch in Chapin.

4

Rochelle Eiselt | Journal-Courier

Fall brings chance to reap rewards

5

Illinois farmers helped by Chinese sales

6

‘Perilous Bounty’ argues farmlands in peril

7 Rochelle Eiselt | Journal-Courier

Addie Meyer carries a pumpkin with Charlie Six following.

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By Rochelle Eiselt

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Every fall, families look for fun activities to spend time together.

For Genny Six and her husband, Ben Six, they don’t have to look any farther than the back yard.

The couple own Market Six — a pumpkin patch at 2101 Hefner Hills Road in Chapin. This is their second year.

Genny said it was a longtime dream of hers to do the pumpkin patch.

See PUMPKINS | page 2

Survey finds soybean increase in 2021 8 Planting native perennials in fall 9 Farm safety must be constant 10 USDA plans $14B for farmers 11 Research drones spot invasive species 12 Farmers’ market adapts and grows 14 Turkey ‘backpacks’ may explain declines 15 Hog farmers weather pandemic 18 Rural America faces worries with postal crisis 22 Select the right tree for fall planting 23 Pandemic brings hardship for farmers 24 Enjoy those vegetables, but save seeds 26 In wistful age, farmers find fans online 28 USDA program prepping for phase three

Modern Farmer • Sunday, September 27, 2020 • 3

Pumpkins From page 1

“I love entertaining on the farm and helping people understand a little more about agriculture,” she said.

Last year, they had mums and pumpkins for sale and every year they plan to add more. This year, Six said, they added a sandpit, hay bales, more swings on the trees and picnic tables so families can enjoy the time.

“We learned a lot last year. Every year, we hope to add a few things,” Six said.

It was designed to help families unwind.

“It’s all about people just enjoying a slower pace in the country,” Six said.

“Letting people relax as a family and enjoy the pretty countryside, that’s what we really hope people take time to do.”

The pumpkin patch first opened on Labor Day weekend and will be open through the end of October. Hours are Friday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Saturday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. and Sunday from 1 to 5 p.m.

Some of the activities at Market Six include many different games like duck races, a corn pit, sandpit, pedal go-karts and visits with plenty of animals. Market Six also has home decor, concessions and a mum patch.

The kids helped her plant during the spring.

“It’s a really good family project,” Six said.

When first entering the pumpkin patch, there are signs pointing the way to various activities.

Pumpkins at the patch come in many sizes from mini to small, medium and large.

One of the benefits of the patch is that it’s not that crowded, Six said. Social distancing is encouraged.

Being entrepreneurs, Six said a big part of starting the pumpkin patch was that they really wanted to pass on an entrepreneurial spirit to their kids.

Each of the kids has a project around the farm. They help with picking the pumpkins and moving the mums from the patch, for example. The kids are also learning how to make change.

“We’re trying to teach our kids business and this is a hands-on way for them to learn,” she said.

Sharing a part of their lifestyle is important, too.

“I think that having guests at our home and share with them part of our lifestyle of living on a farm is really special and it’s really fun for us to see families getting to have quality time here,” Six said.

It’s a time to unplug and go around some hay bails, play in the sandbox, dig with corn, ride the go-karts around, she added.

The patch is fun, especially for young families.

At the beginning of October, Six said

Joseph Six puts a pumpkin in a wagon.

they plan to have a harvest festival where they do things like pumpkin painting.

Another week, they will have scarecrow making.

“It’s fun to do something different with

Rochelle Eiselt | Journal-Courier

the family,” she said. Adding that they hope to add pig racing as another activity for fun to do.

“It’s really about taking time to chill and being with family,” Six said.

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Kenzie Meyer pulls a wagon to the field to pick out pumpkins.

Rochelle Eiselt | Journal-Courier

4 • Sunday, September 27, 2020 • Modern Farmer

Fall brings chance to reap rewards of hard work

By Rochelle Eiselt

rochelle.eiselt@myjournalcourier.com

Preparing for harvest season is what most farmers do this time of year.

For Shane Gray, a farmer from Waverly, it means getting the equipment ready. He also puts together a plan throughout the growing season as far as what levels of moisture you’re willing to cut at.

Gray also works in the shop and makes sure everything is tuned up and ready to go. He farms soybeans and corn. He does some cover cropping starting this year, he said, and right now is the busy time to get crops out.

This season hasn’t been any trouble preparing either. It’s been pretty much the same as it has been, Gray said.

The middle of September through the

end of October is when it’s usually most busy, he said. Once you get into late October and November, that is when farmers do their fieldwork.

With the work, sometimes there can be struggles.

“I think every year there are struggles. I think that maybe the struggles we’re facing right now in agriculture is maybe just the prices,” he said.

The markets are not near where he said they would like them to be. That’s the biggest struggle they have, he said.

Hoping they get a good crop and something for it. Now that is harvest time, the prices have come up and markets have been in his favor, Gray said.

The coronavirus pandemic, as far as the farming operation goes, didn’t have a whole impact on Gray, he said.

However, they own a grain trucking

business — S and J Gray Trucking — which did have an effect. The grain loads that they normally ran were not there mainly due to guys who haul livestock and cattle wasn’t moving and there were a lot more people to drive trucks then there was to supply it.

As a result, that had an effect on Gray’s farming business — S and J Gray Farms — but he said he got through it. He said others were in the same boat.

Almost all of the acres that Gray farms are family owned and his three children help out too while his wife manages the finances. His son helps drive the truck and farm.

“It’s been family for as long as I can remember,” Gray said.

“Harvest is absolutely my favorite time of year,” he said.

One of the reasons harvest is his favorite time of year is the weather and seeing how well he’s done throughout the growing season.

“You get to kind of reap the reward of what’s happened throughout the year,” he said.

“Anyone that’s involved in agricul-

ture, this is the time of the year that you look forward to. Even if it’s a lot of hours and work, it doesn’t seem that way because it’s something that you love to do and enjoy doing it, so you’re anxious to get out there and see what your yields are going to make. It’s one of those things, you enjoy all of it.”

So far, Gray said his yields have been good. It fluctuates from place to place.

Sometimes he had yields where he said they were a little disappointed.

Rain helped the season.

“We were pretty fortunate in this area that we were getting a pretty steady rain, half-inch to three-quarters of an inch about every 10 days,” Gray said.

Gray farms 1,200 acres.

There was a stretch in June in which it was dry, he said, and if there was any disappointment in the yield it would probably be during that time.

Gray said the season finished strong as far as moisture, which was a big plus.

Last year, Gray said, there was wind damage in some of the fields. A couple hundred acres were “elbowed,” laying out flat, which resulted in no yield.

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Brady Gray puts some of his crops into a truck.

Rochelle Eiselt | Journal-Courier

Modern Farmer • Sunday, September 27, 2020 • 5

Illinois farmers encouraged by sales to China

By Zeta Cross

The Center Square

For the past two months, China has been buying U.S. soybeans at a faster pace, according to reports.

That is the news farmers in Illinois have been hoping for since the signing of the Phase One Trade Agreement with China in February.

The agreement was a relief for Illinois farmers, who were anxious to resume major trading with their largest customer after the damage that the soybean market has suffered in the past two years due to the U.S. tariff battle with China.

In the Phase One agreement, the sales promised are aspirational rather than guaranteed, analyst Jonathan Coppess, of the University of Illinois, cautioned.

The Phase One agreement “left some real flexibility for China to make purchases or not, depending on market conditions and prices and so forth,” Coppess said.

Reports of China making aggressive purchases in the past few weeks are a positive sign, Coppess said, but he is waiting for year-end numbers before evaluating what the

recent sales mean.

Andrew Larson, of the Illinois Soybean Association, said he has been hearing anecdotal reports of increased Chinese purchases from Illinois farmers, which he takes as a good sign for fall sales.

Larson said China has made “tremendous bookings” for the shipping capacity of soybeans in recent weeks.

Scott Olson | Getty Images Bookings are indicaMichael Kuster unloads soybeans at a Ruff Bros. Grain elevator in Blackstone. tors of intent to purchase, Larsen said, noting that it can be canceled, and they are not the same thing as purchased cargos of soybeans.

Larson agreed with Coppess that it is too early to tell if the vast Chinese purchases promised in the Phase One agreement will materialize by the end of the year.

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6 • Sunday, September 27, 2020 • Modern Farmer

‘Perilous Bounty’ argues farmlands in peril

By Jeff Rowe Associated Press

Americans long have taken abundant and cheap food for granted, blessed as we are by millions of acres of fertile farmland, particularly in the central states.

Those farmlands, and our food supply, are tipping toward grave risk unless we modify our farming habits, author Tom Philpott says in “Perilous Bounty: The Looming Collapse of American Farming and How We Can Prevent It.” He makes a solid case that intensive, industrial farm practices are drain-

ly will be catastrophic, he writes.

Some arithmetic: — Between December 2004 and November 2013, the Colorado River basin lost almost 53 million acre feet of underground water.

— Iowa farmland in losing topsoil to runoff faster than it can be replenished.

— The water table in many parts of California’s vast and productive central valley has sunken to 100 feet.

— 200 million pounds of pesticides are used annually in California alone.

The book acknowledges a body of news reporting on this issue but deftly pulls together the whole

he knows the language of agriculture.

“Perilous Bounty” presents several farmers who have figured out how to grow crops profitably without either draining the aquifers or allowing annual top soil runoff, but fellow farmers tend to see these growers are curiosities at best.

Moreover, the book cites university researchers who have shown that we can maintain high-crop yields while reducing fertilizer use by restoring biodiversity; for example, planting oats, alfalfa or clover rather than leaving bare Iowa soil open in winter to rainwater runoff.

controlled by a few giant corporations and the flow of billions of dollars in government programs that keep central states’ farmers locked into corn and soybean-producing programs year after year.

Meantime, the evidence Philpott and others before him present is clear: Not only must we significantly alter our farming practices but we also must address the causes of climate change if we are to avoid ruining our farm land and turning from a nation of vast agricultural bounty to a land unable to produce enough food for its people.

Will we have the political will to demand a revolution in American agriculture to systems that will preserve aquifers and topsoil?

Don’t bet on it. As Philpott points out, agribusiness interests spend $100 million each two-year federal election cycle.

For the Journal-Courier

The book “Perilous Bounty: The Looming Collapse of American Farming and How We Can Prevent It” contends central states’ farmers are locked into corn and soybean-producing programs year after year.

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Modern Farmer • Sunday, September 27, 2020 • 7

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Farm Futures shows a large soybean acre increase and slightly lower corn acreage for 2021 in its most recent planting intentions survey.

Survey finds soybean increase in 2021

By Jacqueline Holland Farm Futures

An August survey by the Farm Futures team found farmers across the country are eager to plant more soybeans in 2021.

Survey respondents reported a slight decline in corn acreage in favor of soybeans for next year’s crop as a recent uptick in soybean demand sparked a rally.

Farm Futures respondents indicated planting 0.3% fewer corn acres in 2021-22 after demand destruction eroded 440 million bushels from the 2019-20 demand pipeline. While 2020-21 corn planting progress was largely under way when the pandemic caused corn demand to evaporate, farmers now have over six months of pandemic experience under

their belts.

While ethanol and livestock demand have struggled to break through pandemic plateaus, farmers are predicted to plant 91.8 million acres of corn next spring. Given favorable planting and growing conditions, 2021 could be a chance for farmers to sow record-setting corn yields and volumes as demand continues to recover amid the pandemic.

The recent run-up in soybean prices has made U.S. soy acreage a hot prospect in the commodity markets. Farm Futures respondents projected planting nearly 4.1 million more acres of soybeans in 2021 compared to 2020, totaling 87.9 million acres. If realized, 2021 soybean acreage will be the third highest planted soy acre-

age on record.

Price ratio favors beans Market incentives justify this move. The current new crop soybean – corn price ratio strongly favored soy acreage over corn throughout this summer. Chinese soy demand soared higher in late May as the world’s second largest economy began booking orders for new crop soybeans.

Since June 1, China has booked 294.8 million

bushels of 2020-21 soybeans.

With Brazilian exportable supplies heavily depleted as soybean harvest approaches in the U.S., soybeans may find enough favor in international channels this winter to justify a nearly 5% increase in soybean acreage next year.

Contrary to recent trends in falling wheat acreage, Farm Futures survey respondents indicated a shift from spring

wheat acreage to winter wheat in the August survey. If realized, a higher 2021 winter wheat acreage would reverse seven consecutive years of shrinking winter wheat acres. Excluding durum acres due to a statistically insignificant response rate, other spring and winter wheat acreage is predicted to total 42.7 million acres in 2021, up 0.3% from 2020.

A lower dollar and increased consumer

demand for pasta amid the coronavirus pandemic reignited both domestic and international attention to U.S. wheat.

As international wheat movement increases in the wake of the pandemic, export demand will be critical to supporting wheat prices and by extension, wheat acreage.

Farm Futures surveyed 1,044 respondents on July 14-27 via an email questionnaire.

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8T • Sunday, September 27, 2020 • Jacksonville Journal-Courier

Plant native perennials in fall for healthy spring growth Journal-Courier

Retailer shortages of the most popular native perennial plants were common this spring as there was an unprecedented run on supplies. But fall is another great opportunity to plant, says Austin Little, University of Illinois Extension horticulture educator.

Herbaceous natives like butterfly milkweed or echinacea from transplants can be planted in the spring. However, Little says planting in fall has a few more benefits, such as improved establishment and flowering in the following spring, better vigor, and greater weed suppression..

Native plants are a critical part of our ecosystems and contribute to beneficial insects, birds, wildlife and important microorganisms living in and on soils.

In the fall, soils hold onto heat longer even as above-ground temperatures are dropping, which is ideal for new root structures to grow. The root systems need time to establish new micro or feeder roots which helps the transplant to acclimate, then gradually go into dormancy as colder winter temperatures arrive.

Fall transplants have better root structure and more time to acclimate to the local

Fall is a good time to plant native perennials as they will be in full bloom the following year.

environment.

Herbaceous native perennials transplants or seeds can be ordered online or from a local nursery. Plugs are easier to plant and establish quicker. They need to be planted about six weeks before the first frost of fall, historically in the last

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two weeks of October.

“If direct seeding, wait until the first hard frost to apply the seed to a weedfree bed with open soil so the seedlings do not germinate prematurely,” Little says. “Most native herbaceous perennials have very small seeds and need only a thin layer of soil and mulch to undergo the chilling process known as stratification.”

Transplants need to be thoroughly watered when they are installed. To encourage deeper root growth, it’s better to water less often but more deeply, once or twice a week for about 30 minutes depending on rain and temperature.

When it’s getting close to the average first frost date, Little says it’s a good idea to back off on the water.

“Even if it warms up a bit in late fall, it’s best to hold off on watering to avoid interrupting the hardening off process,” he says.

Fertilizing in the fall is not recommended. Many native herbaceous plants are adapted to lean and low fertility soils.

Heather Willis

Adding nitrogen and other nutrients in the fall may cause the transplant to put energy into new vegetative growth that will be damaged by winter conditions and suppress the establishment of roots.

Hold off on fertilizing until early spring, Little recommends Do add a 2- to 3-inch layer of mulch or compost around the base of plants, making sure to leave some open space around the stems to avoid harboring unwanted pests and moisture build up. Fall plants don’t need to be mulched immediately after planting and can benefit from the sun warming the soil. Mulching can wait until night-time temperatures are in the 32°F range. By adding mulch, such as straw or finely shredded hardwood wood, and making sure plants are well anchored in the soil, frost heaving can be avoided.

Adding fall compost around any new plants is also recommended. By spring, most of the compost will be broken down and ready to be taken up by plants with root structures that have a head start on spring transplants.

Modern Farmer • Sunday, September 27, 2020 • 9

Farm safety must be constant, especially with children, experts say

By Rochelle Eiselt

that the number of folks that would be struggling is likely much higher, Cuthbertson said.

September brings a focus on farm “Mental health is a concern because safety and health, but the issues raised are it can at times lead to premature death important every day, agricultural experts through deaths of suicide,” she said. say.

Farmers who experience depression Courtney Cuthbertson, assistant profes- may engage in fewer safety-related behavsor and extension specialist at the Uniiors and risks of accidents is higher as well versity of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, on the farm according to research shown, has done work for the area on farm stress she said. and mental health for about the past four Some of the farm stressors that can be years. areas of concern are harsh work condiIt’s an area of increasing concern over tions, long hours, and include uncertainty the past several years. The research avail- of the weather, not knowing if the weather able shows that agricultural producers will leave a flood in the field, for example. experience greater psychological stress Farmers may worry about how the weathand depression than the general populaer will impact crop growth, animal health. tion, Cuthbertson said.

Other mental health stressors can be One in five adults in the U.S. face men- financially related. tal health issue at any given time. With There is help available out there for more than 2 million people engaged in farmers and asking for support is advised. farming in the U.S., nearly half a million “Reach out and ask for health and knowproducers would be experiencing a mental ing you don’t have to be in a crisis to ask health difficulty in general. for support,” Cuthbertson said.

Agriculture is already a stressful indusSome of the resources for help include try and farmers and producers tend to Farm Aid Hotline at 800-327-6243 and the have worse mental health. That means National Suicide Prevention rochelle.eiselt@myjournalcourier.com

Lifeline at 800-273-8255.

Other important areas of safety to be concerned about in farming is related to youths, who can get into accidents on the farm and fall off tractors, for example.

There are 33 younger people hurt every day in the U.S., said Amy Rademaker, Carle Hospital rural health and farm safety coordinator, who does a lot of work with children.

“Our goal is prevention by education,” Rademaker said.

Safe play areas are an effort to try to make youth set boundaries for a designated play area. That means not just playing on the equipment in the yard where the farming equipment might be.

Safe place structures, fenced-in area, and proper supervision are suggested.

Prevention can be hard to measure, she said. Focus should be on four main areas.

“Tractor safety is our leading one because it is our number one killer in the state of Illinois and throughout the U.S.,” she said.

Most important, safety groups focus on preventing tractor overturns. Riding ATVs and UTVs can also be dangerous for youths.

The biggest concern is among those in fourth through sixth grades. It’s a time in which they can retain a lot of information and do more things independently.

“One bad decision can affect a family for a lifetime,” she said. “We’re trying to make sure that our safe behaviors are shown to our youth. Be a good role model.”

10 • Sunday, September 27, 2020 • Modern Farmer

USDA plans $14B for farmers reeling from virus

By David Pitt

the aid in a speech in Wisconsin, a presidential battleground state that is The federal government considered vital for his said that it will give farm- chances to win a second ers an additional $14 bilterm. lion to compensate them The additional payfor the difficulties they ments illustrate the have experienced selling importance of farmers as their crops, milk and meat a voting block to Trump’s because of the coronavirus reelection. He addressed pandemic. them in Wisconsin directThe U.S. Department ly, saying “you gotta love of Agriculture said its Trump” and promising plan will provide “finanfavorable trade and regulacial assistance that gives tory changes, as well as producers the ability to tax cuts. absorb increased market“Now we have to get ing costs associated with four more years to cement the COVID-19 pandemic.” it, and to do additional President Donald things,” he said.

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demic has created several problems for farmers.

Lowered availability of labor has reduced crop and livestock production as well as processing capacity in meatpacking plants and other facilities. These problems have pushed prices that farmers receive for commodities lower. They’ve also seen a drop in demand for some products as fewer people have been eating out. Farm households also have suffered from loss of income from off-farm jobs that they use to fund farm production needs, household living expenses and payments on farm busi-

Nati Harnik | AP

The federal government said it will give farmers an additional $14 billion to compensate them for the difficulties they’ve experienced selling their crops, milk and meat because of the coronavirus pandemic.

ness debt.

Agriculture groups applauded the additional

money, much of which will come in direct payments for crops that meet a specified threshold of price decline. They include corn, soybeans, wheat and some cotton.

Chicken, eggs, milk, beef cattle, pigs and lambs also will be covered, as will tobacco, wool, alfalfa, oats, peanuts, rice and hemp.

Farmer began signing up for the money this week.

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unless at least 75% or more of their income is derived from farming, ranching or forestry-related activities.

In April the administration rolled out a $19 billion program, most of which was in the form of direct farm payments.

That followed $28 billion the federal government gave farmers to compensate for two years of disruptions caused by Trump’s tariff battles with trading partners.

Some crop and livestock groups have criticized the way previous aid was divided, and National Farmers Union President Rob Larew made it clear in a statement that farmers want the money distributed fairly.

“The first round of funding, though greatly appreciated, was not without its flaws,” Larew said. “Not only did it favor large farms over smaller ones, it also sent millions See USDA | page 30

Modern Farmer • Sunday, September 27, 2020 • 11

Research drones spot invasive species

By Emily Steele

University of Illinois Extension

The forests of Illinois have a new friend in the fight against invasive species.

The University of Illinois Extension forestry program has taken to the skies to see if drones can be used to survey for evidence of the invasive shrub amur bush honeysuckle.

“This is an exciting time for technological advances in natural resource conservation,” says Kevin Rohling, Illinois Extension forestry research technician.

“Drone technology is a game changer. It has the potential to drastically increase our ability to quickly detect and assess issues in Illinois forests without allocating a lot of resources.”

Invasive insect, animal, plant and aquatic species threaten native populations, disrupt ecosystems, and cost the U.S. billions of dollars to manage. The most effective way to control invasive species is through a strategy of early detection and rapid response, says Nick Seaton, who collaborated with the drone research in his role as project coordinator for the River to River Cooperative Weed Management Area. But manual surveys to find plants are time consuming and expensive, and invasives move fast.

The forestry team is determining if images captured by drones can quickly identify invasive

infested areas. Extension foresters can then deliver advice and training to private landowners, managers, businesses, and non-profits on how to treat and efficiently control further spread.

The research project took place in Southern Illinois, a unique and biodiverse area. The region’s patchwork of protected state and federal natural areas is home to 107 state threatened and endangered species that are jeopardized by invasive species.

“Invasive plants do not recognize political boundaries,” Rohling says. “So private areas near the Shawnee National Forest managed with the aid of this technology will reduce seed sources that would otherwise contribute to the spread of bush honeysuckle.”

Starting in 2018, the team organized more than 40 flights during spring and fall when the forest canopy was clear of leaves, but when the greenery of bush honeysuckle was still visible in the understory.

The forestry team collaborated with the River to River Cooperative Weed Management Area on the research, and funding was provided by the USDA Forest Service Northeastern Area State and Private Forestry.

The forestry team identifies its target site and sets up automated flights to take high-resolution photos. The images are combined into a mosaic of the forest canopy that

A drone flies through a cultivated area.

is loaded into the mapping program ESRI ArcGIS for analysis.

Early results show that the drone surveys provide access to remote areas while saving time and

resources, but there are limitations. The foresters were able to identify mature plants, but small or fire-damaged plants escaped detection, Rohling says. Aerial surveys

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took less time than walking surveys, only two hours compared to more than 11; however, there is a narrow window of time to get photos.

“Timing is absolutely critical,” Rohling says.

“We’re still working on improving that component.”

Early fall flights photographed canopies still full of leaves, but invasive species had browned out in later flights. In the spring, early buds and leaves blocked the understory. And, the drones can only fly when the weather cooperates.

Looking ahead, the team expects they can

use drones to survey for other invasive plant species, but the potential for maintaining forest health doesn’t stop there. They plan to find blooming chestnut trees and propagate them in other areas for agroforestry purposes. A student is also using the aerial images to identify new habitats for rare plant species.

“We’re only now scratching the surface with drone technology,” Rohling says. “For example, future projects could include very targeted herbicide applications that would save money as well as reduce environmental impacts.”

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12 • Sunday, September 27, 2020 • Modern Farmer

Farmers’ market adapts and grows

By Rochelle Eiselt

rochelle.eiselt@myjournalcourier.com

Necessity is the mother of invention.

Those taking part in Jacksonville’s twice-weekly farmers’ market understand the saying well.

With pandemic restrictions hitting just before the annual springtime opening, there were adjustments to be made.

But other than the presence of more masks and people keeping a little more distance, there is not a lot of visible change to

Vendor Shirley Gregory serves a customer.

See MARKET | page 13

Photos by Rochelle Eiselt | Journal-Courier

ABOVE: Vendor Linda Mueller packages vegetables for a customer. BELOW: Customers wear masks and practice social distancing at the Jacksonville farmers’ market.

Rochelle Eiselt | Journal-Courier

Modern Farmer • Sunday, September 27, 2020 • 13

Market From page 12

Photos by Rochelle Eiselt | Journal-Courier

ABOVE: A variety of fall produce is offered at a Jacksonville farmers’ market stand. BELOW Fall brings a selection of flowers along with the usual farmers’ market fare.

the market, which takes place from 7 a.m. to noon every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday through October at Lincoln Square on West Morton Avenue.

Shirley Gregory said everyone knew the rules since there was a sign posted near the entrance to the market and adjusted to the changes, like having to stay 6 feet apart.

“They seem to be accepting the situation,” she said.

At the beginning of the season in May, vendors were unable to give change because of guidelines put into place against the transmission of germs.

Customers understood, Gregory said, and some made sure to have exact change.

Linda Mueller of Mueller Family Farm said this season has gone well.

She said they went by the guidelines set by the health department and posted the proper signs for everyone to follow. Some vendors needed to make adjustments — “For us, we had to find ways to offer our produce,” Mueller said — but they were easy to adapt.

Mueller said they opened a site where people could preorder and have their order packaged and ready for pick up.

“Our customers have been very cooperative,” she said.

Even though there have been lines, Mueller said customers have spaced themselves.

“All in all, I think it’s been a very good season,” she said.

The busiest time for the farmers’ market typically is between Memorial Day and the middle of August. Things pick up again this time of year as vendors bring out their fall flowers and produce.

“I think most of us here love what we do and like to see things grow,” Mueller said.

14 • Sunday, September 27, 2020 • Modern Farmer

Researchers hope turkey ‘backpacks’ can explain declines

By Bryce Gray

this problem,” said Mitch Weegman, one of the University of Missouri Officials and university professors conducting the researchers, worried Mis- study. “We really don’t souri’s wild turkey popu- know why.” lation is on the edge of Turkey numbers appear calamity, are embarking to be crashing in other on an extensive study of states, too — Illinois, the fowl, even preparing South Carolina and New to track the birds with York, for instance. But GPS “backpacks.”

Missouri was on the Missouri turkeys were front end of widespread once a species on the turkey restoration efforts rebound. But over the in the middle of the 20th last several years sciencentury, which makes tists have seen signs of conservationists here a pronounced decline: keenly interested in this They’re counting fewer decline. And the state has young turkeys in the an outsized population state’s forests and fields. of turkey hunters, state And that tally, nosediving officials said: More than toward record lows, is 133,000 hunted in this falling faster than experts spring’s turkey season, predict, sagging inexharvesting 41,000 birds. plicably short of official “The turkey hunting forecasts that had proven culture in Missouri is reliable for decades. monstrous compared to “Only in the last five to other states,” said Weegseven years have we seen man. “There’s a masSt. Louis Post-Dispatch (TNS)

brood sizes were not as strong as expected.

Reina Tyl, a resource scientist with the Missouri Department of Conservation, called the recent numbers “mindboggling.”

“There’s something going on here that we’re not understanding and that we’re not accounting for,” said Tyl, who is also a board member for the state chapter of the National Wild Turkey Federation.

The department of conservation, which issued the $1.3 million grant, will assist the university’s research.

Wolfgang Kaehler | LightRocket “It’s something the Male turkeys display (show mating behavior). agency understands is sive number of people state relies on staff, hunt- hen in the field. The state a problem,” said Tyl. concerned about these ers and volunteers to cal- then uses those ratios to “We’re willing to invest a birds.” culate another key indica- forecast turkey breeding decent amount of money There are too many tur- tor: the number of young success each year, plan to find out what’s going keys in Missouri to count turkeys — called poults hunting season and guide on.” individually. Instead, the — seen with each mother wildlife management.

The team begins this Missouri’s highest month testing strategies statewide poult-to-hen for attaching the monitorratio, at least since the ing devices to captive species’ rebound, was turkeys. One technique observed in 1971, when will glue small, one-gram each hen had an average devices to poults, so as of 4.6 poults. By the late not to interfere with their 1980s, though, a longgrowth or development. term decline had begun.

Another will stitch the 1987 was the last year devices on. when the state saw more Larger “backpack” verthan three poults per sions will strap around hen, and 2001 was the the wings of adult turlast time the numbers keys. exceeded two. In 2016, Researchers will also poult ratios reached their set up weather stations lowest level in 56 years and wildlife cameras.

— less than one per hen Together, the stations, — and have remained cameras and backpacks near record lows since. will allow researchers to Also troubling, the cross-reference turkey state’s breeding forecasts locations with weather have failed to accurately events, temperature and predict the extent of the common turkey predacollapse. Even in recent tors. years, when conditions seemed favorable, turkey See TURKEYS | page 30

Modern Farmer • Sunday, September 27, 2020 • 15

Hog farmers weather pandemic downtown

By Rochelle Eiselt

rochelle.eiselt@myjournalcourier.com

Like most everything, the pandemic has presented unique challenges to hogfarming operations.

Josh Flint, director of communication for The Maschhoffs LLC, said there’s been a lot going on with the family owned business that has a regional headquarters in Pittsfield.

After COVID-19 hit in March, a lot of things happened in the country economically. For the hog market, what really affected it was restaurants shutting down and demand going down significantly, Flint said.

Restaurants generally take a lot of pork products, bellies that are used to produce bacon. That was a huge hit and then there were packing plants that went through problems. The challenge was for them to keep operating but they have people in close proximity, which resulted in outbreaks.

It was difficult to get people to come to work and harvest animals and turn them into pork. Restaurant demand shifted to where a lot of packing plants that were producing products for the restaurant market now needed to produce for grocery stores.

Restaurant products went into the grocery store market for consumer use, Flint said. They went through a period this summer where packing plants were operating at a lot lower capacity

then they normally do. It was primarily due to factory workers getting sick.

They had to implement social distancing and put new safeguards in place.

The effect of that was a lot of packing plants were not harvesting as many animals as they used to.

Flint said producers this summer went through a time period where some had to make tough decisions on whether they keep feeding the animals or euthanize them because keeping a pig on feed costed money and that also gets them bigger and bigger, not getting to market.

The Maschhoffs did not go through with euthanizing animals, he said. The Maschhoffs put a lot of their animals on a diet early on and changed how they fed them.

Feeding them a lot less then they were used to and trying to keep their growth at a zero point.

As the market came back, The Maschhoffs were able to get those animals pushed through.

Currently in Germany, a case of African swine flu fever has been diagnosed.

Finding the disease in a country shuts exports down almost immediately because it’s extremely contagious.

Flint said what they’re seeing in the market now as far as price increases in the pig market is due to exports.

“We’re seeing a demand in U.S. pork,” he said.

Typically, the second and third quarter is better for

the pork market because there is a lot of demand for grilling. A lot of it has to be with supply and cycle of how you raise pigs.

A pig, once harvested, produces about 210 pounds of meat.

“It’s demand-driven right now,” Flint said, on the price of pork.

A lot of prices for pork have to do with international markets. Coronavirus has had a lot of impact.

“It changed how consumers eat pork,” Flint said.

“They stopped going to restaurants as much.”

As restaurants were closed during pandemic shutdowns, demand for pork and other food-related items dropped dramatically.

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Modern Farmer • Sunday, September 27, 2020 • 17

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18 • Sunday, September 27, 2020 • Jacksonville Journal-Courier

The chick’s in the mail? Rural America faces new worries with postal crisis

By Jack Healy

own words have raised alarms that the problems are part of an effort to keep Democrats from voting by Rhiannon Hampson mail, many of those being thought she would hear hurt the most live in rural a cacophony of cheeping areas that overwhelmingly when she went to her post support the president. office to fetch a delivery “This is an attack on a of newly hatched chicks. tried-and-true service that But the cardboard boxes rural America depends on,” addressed to her poultry said Chris Gibbs, a farmer farm were silent. who voted for Trump in “We could hear a few, very faint peeps,” Hampson 2016. “It pulls one more piece of stability, predictsaid. “Out of 500, there ability and reliability from were maybe 25 alive. They were staggering. It was ter- rural America. People don’t like that.” rible.”

Across the country, rural This is what happens residents already have been when the mail suddenly becomes unreliable in rural affected in several ways.

Checks and plant shiptowns and stretches of Tristan Spinski | New York Times countryside where there are ments are delayed, and Rhiannon Hampson feeds chickens on her poultry farm. tracking them down can scant FedEx or UPS delivtake hours in rural towns eries, and where people without quick,of: reliable rely on have the post a office as an Selection We huge internet. Replacement irreplaceable hub of comTractor Tires • Forkparts LiftforTires • farm machines are merce and connection. late in coming. Prescription Now, with delays raising Loader Tires • Commercial We have a huge Selection Skid of: that refills are taking a week or fears the U.S. Postal We have a huge Selection Tractor Tires • Fork Lift TiresService • more to reach mailboxes, is being hobbled by Truck Tires & More! of Tractor Tires • Fork Lift a particular threat because a combination of financial Skid Loader Tires • Commercial Tires • Skid Loader Tires • rural communities are older Truck Tires & More! problems, politicization We have a huge Selection of Tractor Tires • Fork Lift Tires • Skid Commercial Truck Tires and pandemic, farmers and than most of America.

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animals or operate sprawling hatcheries. For everyone else, the mail is how the chickens come home to roost.

Some chicks are getting lost in postal warehouses or spending days on trucks, farmers said. Others are getting smothered or crushed in the deluge of boxes created by America’s coronavirus-induced online ordering. One hatchery lost 3,000 chicks in a recent shipment.

“We just don’t have any other options,” Hampson said. “There’s nothing sadder than seeing a box of tiny little fuzzy peeps and all of them are DOA.” Farmers said they were so afraid of losing more chicks in transit that they were driving hundreds of miles to pick up shipments from hatcheries. Hampson’s parents and in-laws Pony Expressed their way to bring 15 boxes of justhatched turkey poults to their farm.

Other farms are telling customers not to expect products to come quickly.

Jenks Farmer, who ships 2-pound lily bulbs across the country, has been getting bombarded with calls from anxious customers whose flowers had not arrived. He shipped one bulb to a customer in North Carolina, and a week later, the package was still stuck in Shreveport, Louisiana.

“My business isn’t political, but it depends on the economy and political leadership,” Farmer said.

“I don’t have a leader who’s

doing anything to help my businesses thrive.”

Rural post offices have struggled for years with staffing shortages and high turnover, and rural carriers say their days can be long and perilous if they get stuck in a blizzard on some remote county road.

Unlike their city counterparts, rural carriers said they do not generally earn overtime, so when the mail is heavy or weather is bad, they say they work extra for free.

This year, elected officials and postal workers said the postal service suffered a double blow.

First came the coronavirus, which sickened workers and flooded the system with a tsunami of package orders. Then came costcutting measures ordered

by Louis DeJoy, the new postmaster general.

Amid a bipartisan fury, including lawsuits from state attorneys general and multiple congressional investigations and calls for his resignation, DeJoy said he would delay the overtime cuts and other operational changes until after the election.

David Partenheimer, a postal service spokesman, said the agency had “experienced some temporary service disruptions in a few locations” because of the pandemic, but said “things are slowly getting back to normal.” Union members, however, said that sorting facilities were still overflowing and that the situation was chaotic.

Amid the uproar, some rural residents worried that the damage to their livelihoods and the credibility of the postal service had already been done. They wondered whether they could still trust the mail to handle their packages, ani-

Jacksonville Journal-Courier • Sunday, September 27, 2020 • 19

mals and ballots.

“I’ve always counted on the post office,” said Carrie Sparrevohn, 64, who raises merino sheep and sells wool and yarn from her ranch. “Now, I don’t know if I should be mailing anything.”

Lately, her bills have been slow to come. She said the mail collection box outside her rural post office was among many across the country that were recently locked or removed, until an angry backlash forced the postal service to stop.

Sparrevohn said that she

planned on voting absentee, but that she would drop off her ballot instead of trust it to the mail.

“I don’t know if it’s going to arrive,” she said.

Leone Cloepfil, 75, started worrying about her mail in July, when her Visa payment was not delivered and she was charged a $35.04 late fee. She had to stop driving recently after the numbness in her foot got so bad that she could no longer feel the pedals, so she said she had no choice but to trust her ballot to the mail.

“I can’t say I’m 100% sure,” she said. “It’s a mess.”

Rural residents know that sparsely populated backcountry routes and tiny post offices are not moneymakers for an agency losing tens of billions of dollars because of congressionally mandated health care payments and declines in mail volume.

But in places already isolated because of spotty internet access, people said the post office was the only institution mandated to serve them at a flat cost, no

Tristan Spinski | New York Times

The postal service is crucial to farmers and rural areas and some worry it is being dismantled.

matter the weather or how remote they were. Like a hospital, school or grocery store — all of which have closed across rural America — they said a post office anchored a town’s survival.

“If these small rural towns lose their post offices

they lose their identity,” said Gaylene Christensen, who relies on the post office to ship orders of home decor from her shop now that foot traffic has been slowed by the pandemic. “We’re the ones who are going to get hit.”

Tristan Spinski | New York Times

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22 • Sunday, September 27, 2020 • Jacksonville Journal-Courier

Select the right tree for fall planting

By Emily Steele

University of Illinois Extension

After spring, fall is the next best time to plant a tree.

When adding trees to the landscape, it’s important to research and make a suitable list of tree species. Select a proper planting location based on mature size,

preferred soil conditions, disease and pest resistance, and multi-seasonal interest, says Nancy Kreith, University of Illinois Extension horticulture educator.

“While shopping for trees at a garden center, inspect them carefully before purchasing,” Kreith says. “Look to make sure no roots are exposed. Inspect the trunk

Nancy Kreith

Container grown trees with drip irrigation at Morton Arboretum.

for damage, such as cankers.

Be sure the container or root ball is the appropriate size compared to size of tree canopy and that trees have been watered on a regular basis.”

There are many tree species that do well throughout Illinois’ zones. These trees are appropriate for fall planting and includes native and non-native species: • Kentucky coffee tree (Gymnocladus dioica): This Illinois native grows 60 to 75 feet tall and prefers full sun and moist, well-drained soils. It has fragrant, white flowers in the spring and persistent fruit pods. Pods can be messy, so consider a male cultivar. There are no serious pest problems and the Kentucky Coffee tree is

adaptable to urban conditions, tolerating drought and pollution.

• American elm ‘New Harmony’ (Ulmus americana ‘New Harmony’): Although an Illinois native, this cultivar or another resistant cultivar, should be planted due to risk of Dutch elm disease. This tree grows up to 40 feet tall and prefers full sun and moist, well-drained soil; however, it will tolerate a range in soil pH and is wind and heat tolerant. It features a picturesque vase shape and has a nice yellow fall color.

Morton Arboretum offers a list of pest resistant American elms.

• Downy serviceberry (Amelanchier arborea): This 10- to 30-foot tall Illi-

nois native requires little maintenance and is best transplanted balled and burlapped. It features smooth gray bark, excellent fall color, and slightly fragrant white flowers in mid-spring.

Best placement is in full- to part-sun and moist- to dryconditions with well-drained soil.

• Redbud (Cercis Canadensis): This Illinois native grows 15 to 30 feet in height and prefers part sun and rich, moist, welldrained soils. Pink blossoms occur in mid-spring before leaves appear. Seedpods can persist through winter. This tree is naturally short-lived.

If dieback occurs, cutting it to the ground encourages sucker growth than can become a substantially-sized

tree.

• White fir (Abies concolor): White fir grows 30 to 50 feet high. This pyramidal evergreen tree that prefers full- to part-sun and moist, well-drained, sandy soils. It is valued for its silvery green foliage and useful for screening or as a specimen tree.

It is relatively pest free and performs well in Midwest conditions.

• Limber pine (Pinus flexilis): This 30- to 50-foottall evergreen tree prefers full- to part-sun and moist, well-drained soils. This longlived species works well as a specimen tree. It is adaptable to dry soils, windy sites and is more tolerant to salt spray than most pines.

• Serbian spruce (Picea omorika): This evergreen grows 50 to 60 feet high and prefers deep, rich, moist, well drained soils.

It tolerates part-shade and urban conditions, except for pollution. It serves as an excellent specimen tree, with dark green needles and contrasting white on the underside.

Consider cultivars bred for certain characteristics.

Redbud ‘Lavender Twist’ is a weeping form that reaches 4 to 5 feet high. Serbian spruce ‘Sky Trails’ has a weeping habit, with bluegreen needles and contrasting white underneath. Kentucky coffee tree ‘Espresso’ features a vase-shape, and its male cultivar will not produce fruit.

Wait until spring to plant trees, such as hemlock, willow, river birch, white oak, bald cypress, ginkgo, sweetgum, magnolia, American hophornbeam, or hornbeam since establishment is often difficult and slow, Kreith says.

Jacksonville Journal-Courier • Sunday, September 27, 2020 • 23

Pandemic brings hard times for farmers

By Elaine Kurtenbach Associated Press

The coronavirus pandemic has brought hard times for many farmers and has imperiled food security for many millions both in the cities and the countryside.

The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization forecasts that the number of undernourished people will increase by up to 132 million in this year, while the number of acutely malnourished children will rise by 6.7 million worldwide due to the pandemic.

“We must come to terms with what is before us and recognize that the world and our region has changed,” said Jong-Jin Kim, the FAO’s assistant directorgeneral and regional representative for Asia

and the Pacific.

“We must find new ways to move forward and ensure sustainable food security in the face of these twin pandemics, as well as prepare for threats that can and will evolve in the future,” Kim said.

Disruptions due to outbreaks of the illness and restrictions on businesses and travel to control them run the gamut, from crops going unharvested by migrant workers unable to reach their jobs to transport problems to farm families selling livestock and equipment to survive. the FAO said in a report prepared ahead of the meeting.

The combined impacts of COVID-19, natural disasters such as typhoons and drought, diseases and pests such as locusts have high-

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lighted the need to build stronger capacity to “manage multiple risks to food systems,” the report said.

The FAO is urging faster deployment of high-tech tools such as drones and smartphone apps to monitor crops, pests and other farming conditions as part of a transformation of food systems to make them more resilient and reduce risks, especially for the most vulnerable small farmers in poor countries.

That includes food insecure places like Yemen, where the U.N. says more than a quarter of a million children are suffering from severe malnutrition and will die without treatment, and parts of Africa where nearly 5 million people are threatened with starva-

tion due to locust outbreaks.

But long lines at food banks even in wealthy countries like the United States attest to the struggle to keep families fed with tens of millions newly unemployed.

In countries like Thailand, where tourism helps to keep the economy afloat, closed borders and cancelled commercial flights have had a ripple effect across many industries.

The government has provided more than $5 billion in emergency aid to more than 10 million farmers, the agriculture minister Pisan Pongsapitch told the conference.

But the loss of livelihoods is a long-term crisis.

The question is how to fix a broken food system, said one partici-

pant.

The FAO report released for the conference, sponsored by Bhutan, recommended providing loans to farmers to help them avoid selling their livestock and other assets to get by.

It noted that enterprising fishing villages in southern Thailand’s Phuket have arranged barter deals with rice farmers in the northeast of the country. Some fisher folk in Indonesia unable to export their catches switched to netting more affordable fish that they can sell to local villages.

In many countries, farmers increasingly are using e-commerce and digital data to fine tune planting and other aspects of agriculture.

Chinese e-commerce platforms are helping

to match supply and demand for farm produce and other food.

On a smaller scale, FAO experts noted there were many potential home-grown

solutions, literally, like farming using sacks or hydroponics, growing crickets for food and processing camels’ milk to make cheese.

Kirsty Wigglesworth | AP

A seasonal worker trains the growing hops by winding or tying two or three shoots clockwise to each string. The coronavirus pandemic has brought hard times for many farmers and has imperiled food security for many millions both in the cities and the countryside.

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24 • Sunday, September 27, 2020 • Jacksonville Journal-Courier

Enjoy those vegetables, but save seeds

By Margaret Roach New York Times

In gardening, what looks like a mishap may be an epiphany in disguise.

“If you remembered to harvest your lettuce, great,” Ken Greene reminded me recently.

“If you forgot to harvest the lettuce, great!”

Missing a harvest window means you could be on your way to growing a crop of that plant’s seed, which is what Greene, a founder of the Hudson Valley Seed Co., would like each of us to learn to do.

He and I were catching up about how last

spring — with customers’ unprecedented demand for seed — had gone in their gardens and at his company.

Seed sellers everywhere heard from worried gardeners who were rattled to see “sold out” beside desired varieties and, worse still, “taking a pause” notices when companies halted shipping.

There will be seed for sale the next growing season, Greene is quick to offer reassurance — but you can also supply some of your own.

In the process, you could become part of that seed’s life story.

Some seeds-to-be are

in that row of lettuce that suddenly stretched way up in the heat, looking very un-lettuce-like and making tiny yellow flowers. Or inside a couple of your juicy tomatoes, and the pods of peas and beans.

“Some of the other answers for gardeners are in your drawer, in those half-used packets,” Greene said. “But you need to care for them till then. Seeds are small and powerful, and we can be small and powerful, too, just by learning how to save and share them.”

He shared how-to’s for the saving the easiest seed varieties — and

the story of the seed that got him hooked.

When gardeners faced long waits or unavailable items last spring, they thought that meant there was a seed shortage. But while some of the year’s most soughtafter varieties may be scarce, there will be seed next year.

“Small seed companies like ours met extra demand by dipping into their second- or third-year supply early,” Greene said. Not every variety is grown out every year — and because seeds are a living thing, restocking can take a year or even two, in the case of bien-

nials like onion, carrots, beets or kale.

“If we grew enough seed for two years of a particular kale, and sold twice as much as usual, that variety won’t be back right away,” he said. “But there will be other kales. Selling out doesn’t mean a variety disappears, just that it isn’t for sale now.”

It’s a good time to start saving seed yourself — and then collaborating with others to share it.

Greene believes that we need not just the commercial seed system but also a communitybased one. “Diversity is the insurance for seed

access,” he said. “And the more different ways we have for accessing seed, the better.”

It was the variety now called Hank’s X-tra Special Baking Bean that propelled him into serious seed saving and then organic seed farming. It was 2004, and Greene was a librarian at the Gardiner Library in Ulster County, New York, where he began the first seed library in a public library in the United States.

“Seed libraries find ways to share seeds through the foundation of the public library system,” Greene said.

“Models range from a

When gardeners faced long waits or unavailable items last spring, they thought that meant there was a seed shortage. But while some of the year’s most sought-after varieties may be scarce, there will be seed next year.

Jacksonville Journal-Courier • Sunday, September 27, 2020 • 25

swap box, where people leave leftover commercial seeds and take what they want, to formalized community seed grow-outs among gardeners who are seeking some form of local seed sovereignty.”

The Gardiner effort aimed to find delicious varieties with local history and adaptation to regional growing conditions, and then to cooperatively grow them to make sure the seeds, and their genetic and cultural stories, didn’t disappear from the community.

The public library’s director told him about an exceptional baking bean her father had grown. A dust-covered jar forgotten for many years was found in the cellar of the house he had lived in; some seeds were miraculously still viable.

The short version: Stock was built up, and the variety named for Hank lives on, to the delight of local chefs.

All because of neighbors sharing, and caring for, a seed.

A web search, or an inquiry to a local garden club or cooperative extension office, may yield a nearby seed library contact. Or try this: Plan a lessformal seed swap. It can be as simple as starting an email chain to see what others are growing and whether they are interested in saving and eventually sharing.

As Greene put it, “We all come from a seed-saving legacy.”

Today, the stories that compel Greene are about seed justice. He runs the nonprofit Seedshed, an organization that supports Black, Indigenous, POC and LGBTQ communities in growing toward, or restoring, their own definition of seed sovereignty.

For five years, Seedshed has been working with the Mohawk Nation community of Akwesasne, growing traditional varieties of corn, beans, squash and sunflowers in the Akwesasne Seed Rematriation Garden, in partnership with the Hudson Valley Farm Hub, in Hurley, New York, with all seed harvests rematriated to the hands of the Akwesasne people. The project is named Kanenhaká:ion Tsiakwaiénthos, which translates as “old seed … we are planting again.”

Greene recalls giving a talk a few winters ago, when a slide on the screen prompted someone in the audience to blurt out: “Oh, my God, peas

are seeds!”

“I guess I’d glossed over that in the presentation up till then,” he said, laughing. Yes, peas are seeds — but they are not viable at the fresh-eating stage.

Most of us don’t know the entire life cycle of our food crops, just their edible moments.

“For me, gardening is being part of the full life cycle of the plant,” Greene said.

For beginning seed-savers, he recommended a few easy crops, including bush beans (“they cross-pollinate less than pole beans”) and peas; cilantro and dill; lettuce; and open-pollinated (non-hybrid) tomatoes.

With peas and beans, let the pods dry completely on the plant until they rattle when shaken. Harvest, open the pods and dry the seeds in a single layer on a screen in a well-ventilated place until thoroughly dry, which can take weeks.

How to tell they’re done? Whack one seed with a hammer. If it cracks, it’s ready. If it mashes, it’s not.

Likewise with dill and cilantro: Collect the nearly dry heads before they scatter their seeds and put them in a paper bag to finish drying.

Lettuce isn’t much harder, although the seeds have a chaff attached until they’re thoroughly dry. When the flowers start to puff out like tiny dandelions, snip them off into a paper bag. Or if you are saving a lot, cut down the seed-laden stalks and tip them upsidedown into a bag or bucket.

Tomato seed benefits from an extra step: fermentation.

Tomato seed is saved when the fruits are at the edible stage, and all the leftover parts besides the seed can be made into sauce, salsa, gazpacho — or just eaten fresh. (By comparison, a cucumber or zucchini must go long past ripeness, until soft and turning orange, for the seeds inside to be mature.)

If you have a favorite heirloom tomato and it’s a popular one, Greene advised, save its seed, in case supply is short. And again: Be sure to save from open-pollinated varieties, not hybrids, whose offspring don’t reliably resemble their parents.

You could simply squeeze the seeds out, smearing the fruit’s innards onto

a paper plate or paper towel. But the natural act of fermentation helps break down germination-inhibiting compounds like the gel sac around tomato seeds and can reduce some seed-specific diseases.

Select tomatoes from a few of the healthiest, most disease-resistant and productive plants. Pick from a couple of plants if you have multiples of a variety, and don’t choose the first fruits that form.

Halve or quarter fruits and squeeze seeds and pulp into a jar, labeled with the variety name. Add an equal amount of water, and cover with a screen or cheesecloth. Then let the mixture sit out of the sun for several days, until a smelly surface mold forms. Skim that off and discard, then rinse the seeds in a strainer.

Spread the washed seeds on a paper plate and air-dry for two to five days, or until you can crack a seed between your nails. Run a fan if the room where you’re drying seeds is humid.

For a deeper dive into seed-saving, Greene recommended Suzanne Ash-

worth’s “Seed to Seed,” or “The Seed Garden: The Art and Practice of Seed Saving” from the Seed Savers Exchange and Organic Seed Alliance.

(Seed Savers Exchange has online guides, too.)

Whether you’re working with leftover packets or homegrown seed, safe storage is key. Cool, dark and dry is the prescription, and thoroughly dry seed can be stashed in a jar or canister, perhaps in a closet on an exterior wall that stays cooler than the rest of the house.

Fluctuation in humidity, in particular, is damaging — so leaving those half-used paper packets in the garage?

Not so good.

“Seeds are alive,” Greene said. “We need to still care for them — and the stories they carry inside them — even when they are not in the ground.”

26 • Sunday, September 27, 2020 • Jacksonville Journal-Courier

In wistful age, farmers find fans online

By Ellen Barry New York Times

The sweet smell of hay rose off the earth on a recent evening as Morgan Gold strode across his farmyard in heavy boots.

He crossed the paddock, scanning for new eggs, water levels, infected peck wounds, rips in the

fence line.

But mainly — let’s be honest — he was looking for content.

Although Gold sells poultry and eggs from his duck farm, most of what he produces as a farmer is, well, entertainment.

Gold, who is short and stocky, with the good-natured ease of a

standup comedian, does his chores while carrying a digital camera in one hand and murmuring into a microphone.

Then, twice a week, like clockwork, he posts a short video on YouTube about his exploits as a neophyte farmer, often highlighting failures or pratfalls. Keeping a close

eye on analytics, he has boosted his YouTube audiences high enough to provide a steady advertising revenue of around $2,500 to $4,000 a month, about eight times what he earns from selling farm products.

Generations of small farmers have cast about for new ways to scrape

out a living: the sleigh rides, the alpacas, the therapy ponies, the pickyour-own hemp. It is a new thing, though, to make farm life into reality TV. Gold, 40, has learned the hard way — he tried to take a month off last winter — that any gap in his YouTube publication

schedule results in a steep drop-off in audience. So he keeps a running list of themes that could be fodder for future videos. It reads, in part: Should I Feed My Dog Eggs?

Don’t Trust This Duck My Homestead Is a Dumpster Fire What Does My Guard

Hilary Swift | New York Times

Morgan Gold squats down for a goose-eye view at Gold Shaw Farm for a new episode for his YouTube channel. Gold’s twice-a-week videos about his exploits as a neophyte farmer provide a steady advertising revenue of around $2,500 to $4,000 a month, about eight times what he earns from selling farm products.

Hilary Swift | New York Times

Morgan Gold, video camera in hand, records for a new episode for his YouTube channel.

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off YouTube channels is steadily climbing and now stands at around 50.

Some of them earn money through product endorsement deals, like Al Lumnah, who posts videos five days a week from his farm.

It’s a lot of work: Lumnah wakes up at 3:30 a.m. so he can edit the previous day’s footage in time to post new video at 6 a.m., which his 210,000 regular viewers, who are scattered as far as Cambodia and India, have come to expect.

“People will say, ‘It’s lunchtime here in Ukraine,’” Lumnah said.

Others, like Justin Rhodes have parlayed a giant YouTube audience into a dues-paying membership enterprise — he has 2,000 fans who pay annual fees of up to $249 for private instruction and direct communication via text message.

“We don’t sell a single farm

Jacksonville Journal-Courier • Sunday, September 27, 2020 • 27

product,” Rhodes said. “Our farm product is education and entertainment.”

Gold, who started his YouTube channel four years ago, has not reached that point.

He still has a full-time job as a marketing executive for an insurance company and so far

has refused the endorsement deals. He has built up his flocks of chicken, geese and ducks to 100 and is hoping to add cows next spring.

He’s certainly captured the interest of the farmers who surround him, said Tom Galinat, a neighbor whose family farms

Hilary Swift | New York Times

Toby accompanies Allison Ebrahimi Gold to collect eggs.

550 acres.

Farmers here struggle to eke out a living from rocky, uneven soil and a hostile climate, and they are astounded — in some cases a little jealous — to discover that Gold is internet famous, he said.

“He’s found a way to mon-

Geese wander through the yard.

etize farming with less physical labor,” Galinat said. “Some guys are like, this is silly, since he’s farming 20 ducks. But at the same time, he’s making more than other farmers who have 500 acres of land.”

But Galinat counts himself See CHORE TV | page 31

Hilary Swift | New York Times

28 • Sunday, September 27, 2020 • Modern Farmer

Food banks: Program helped, but better ways to meet need

By Scott McFetridge and Josh Funk Associated Press

Charlie Neibergall | AP

A volunteer directs traffic at a produce giveaway.

As she inched ahead in her rusty Chevy pickup, Brianna Lordz bemoaned that engine problems had prevented her from making it to the last few drive-up produce giveaways organized by a food pantry.

But Lordz managed to coax her old truck to a parking lot, where she waited

Across crops and conditions, we’re built with your harvest in mind.

behind dozens of other vehicles spread across four lanes and lined up at a semi-trailer stocked with 20-pound boxes of cabbage, onions, peppers, carrots and other veggies provided by the federal government. The giveaways are a godsend, she said, at a time when the coronavirus pandemic has caused jobs to dry up and grocery prices to soar.

“This is amazing. This is something the government did, and let’s talk about tak-

ing care of the people,” she said. “Everything about the COVID-19, it’s just a bad thing but you can’t blame nobody for it.”

Across the country, people like Lordz have picked up roughly 75 million food boxes this summer through the program overseen by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The effort began in the spring when efforts to slow the spread of the coronavirus caused food demand at restaurants and

Charlie Neibergall | AP

A volunteer loads a vehicle at a drive-up produce giveaway.

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Charlie Neibergall | AP

Volunteers stand with boxes of produce at a drive-up produce giveaway organized by a food pantry. Across the country, people have picked up roughly 75 million food boxes this summer through the Farmers to Families Food Box Program overseen by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

schools to plunge. That left farmers with little choice but to dispose of produce, meat and dairy products even as millions of people desperately turned to help from overwhelmed food banks.

The Farmers to Families Food Box Program was intended to help farmers, distributors and people who had lost their jobs. After a few hiccups, it has largely succeeded. The USDA recently added another $1 billion to the program this fall after already spending roughly $2.5 billion.

Anti-hunger advocates say that while they appreciate the delivery of fresh, high-quality food, many more people could be helped if the federal government would increase spending on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. Democrats in Congress have been seeking a 15% increase in funding for SNAP, the federal government’s main antihunger program, which lets people buy food at grocery stores and provides an estimated nine meals for each one offered by the nation’s food banks.

So far, proposals to increase SNAP have failed, leaving food bank leaders cautioning that there is a limit to how many people they can help. They warn of problems ahead now that a $600 weekly federal jobless payment has expired and many states haven’t approved even $300 in extra payments. Across the

Jacksonville Journal-Courier • Sunday, September 27, 2020 • 29

country, more than 14.5 million people are collecting unemployment benefits, compared to 1.7 million a year ago.

“Everyone sees we’re meeting the need and thinks maybe we don’t have to come up with these other solutions, the nonprofit sector will take care of it,” said Mutt Unger, CEO of a group that operates 14 pantries and mobile operations.

“But that’s not what we’re meant to be. We’re not supposed to be here in place of solving problems. We’re a stopgap measure.”

Feeding America, a Chicago-based network of more than 200 food banks, expects a 10 billion pound gap between demand and supply of food this year, made worse by the decline in unemployment benefits.

That’s about double the gap the organization saw last year.

“Increasing SNAP benefits is just the most efficient way we can make sure people have the food they need and reduce demand at food banks,” said Kate Leone, Feeding America’s chief government relations officer. “That kind of intervention is the only way to bend the demand curve down in a meaningful way.”

Despite those concerns, officials at food banks said the federal food box program has undoubtedly helped.

Brian Barks, CEO of the Food Bank of the Heartland, said at times this summer, his food bank was giving away nearly twice as much food as normal, and the food box program accounted for roughly 20% of its supply.

“It’s been awesome,” Barks said. “The amount we have been receiving has been very, very helpful.”

At the FIND Food Bank in California, the 2 million pounds of food being distributed monthly is roughly double the demand before the coronavirus pandemic struck. Since March, the food bank has distributed a total of 11.8 million pounds of food, and the food box program provided 2.7 million pounds of that, said Debbie Espinosa, president and CEO of the food bank.

“We’re very thankful the boxes came when they did because we needed the extra food support,” Espinosa said.

The federal food box program initially faced questions because some of the companies that won contracts weren’t food dis-

tributors and the contracts didn’t always cover the final delivery costs that food banks incurred.

Despite coming together quickly, Greg Ibach, the USDA undersecretary overseeing the effort, said its contractors “delivered all or above 90% of the boxes that they had proposed to deliver.”

Although food banks had to absorb the cost of delivering the prepackaged food boxes the program provided, they were able to use money they would have spent buying the produce and other products.

“It was a bit of a scramble

to get it going and get it out. But we were definitely very happy to have it, and we made it all work in the end,” said Rachelle Mesheau with the Redwood Empire Food Bank.

The USDA is tweaking the program in the third round of bidding to try to address some of the concerns that have been raised.

“The USDA definitely learned a lot from phase one and phase two, so in phase three they are really tightening up some aspects of it,” said Robin Safley with Feeding Florida food banks.

Charlie Neibergall | AP

Volunteers load a bike trailer.

Charlie Neibergall | AP

A box is filled with produce.

A volunteer loads a car at a food giveaway.

Charlie Neibergall | AP

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Charlie Neibergall | AP

Shirley Selover waits in line at a drive-up produce giveaway.

Volunteers load a pallet. The Farmers to Families Food Box Program overseen by the U.S. Department of Agriculture began in the spring, when efforts to slow the spread of the coronavirus caused food demand at restaurants and schools to plunge, leaving farmers with little choice but to dispose of produce, meat and dairy products even as millions of people desperately turned to help from overwhelmed food banks.

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30 • Sunday, September 27, 2020 • Modern Farmer

USDA

Turkeys

From page 10

From page 14

of dollars to foreign-owned operations and excluded some farmers entirely.”

He asked for congressional oversight and for the USDA to ensure that payments “are commensurate with demonstrated need.”

Scott Irwin, a University of Illinois professor who focuses on agricultural markets, said the federal payments have offset a “triple whammy” of low commodity prices, a trade war with China and a drop in demand due to the coronavirus. It’s hard to overstate how much the payments have helped some Midwest corn and soybean farmers, Irwin said, noting that a University of Illinois analysis found that in 2019, various federal support programs were responsible for 90% of a median grain operation’s net farm income in Illinois.

“It has basically stopped the agricultural boat from leaking,” Irwin said. “It’s been so big under President Trump that at least for the time being the financial

picture in agriculture is not going backward.”

Even as federal support has been responsible for more than one-third of U.S. net farm income in 2020, Irwin said many farmers still are struggling because of poor prices.

“No one is getting rich from of all this aid because the market prices have been so low, but it has stopped the bleeding financially,” Irwin said.

The money for the farm programs comes from the Commodity Credit Corp., which was created in 1933. It has authority from Congress to borrow up to $30 billion from the U.S. Treasury and private lending agencies.

With the latest round of aid, the CCC may deplete its current limits, requiring a continuing resolution by Congress to replenish its funding, said John Newton, chief economist for the American Farm Bureau Federation.

Weegman said researchers are considering multiple factors in the crashing poult counts.

Extreme rain or cold may affect their survival.

Some predators may have gained subtle advantages recently — there’s evidence, for example, that adult turkeys smell more pungent when wet, meaning that increases in rainfall could make them more easily detected by predators.

Even a drop in the price of raccoon pelts since the 1980s could play a role. With fewer racoons getting trapped, more might be free to raid turkey nests.

But the culprit may also be harder to detect by weather station or wildlife camera: Turkey habitat may be getting crowded out.

In northern Missouri, for instance, more land is being farmed, thanks partly to changes that made marginal areas more profitable. In the Ozarks, meanwhile, the decline of local logging activity has allowed forests to mature and choke out brushy undergrowth that provides turkeys with shelter and camouflage.

Fieldwork is set to start in January and continue for several years on public and private land near Lancaster, in northern Missouri.

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Modern Farmer • Sunday, September 27, 2020 • 31

Chore TV From page 27

among a younger generation of farmers who are learning from Gold.

“He has taught me I am no longer selling hay; I am selling a lifestyle,” he said.

“He’s really selling himself — his emotions, his opinions, his downfalls, his successes. Boom! That’s it.

That’s the way forward.”

As Gold’s audience has grown, he has at times been taken aback by the enthusiasm.

Several dozen viewers have driven all the way to his farm and knocked on his door, hoping to buy eggs or talk about ducks, something his wife described as “really distressing.”

“Morgan is so vulnerable

on film,” she said, “that people assume they know us as people.”

Most of it is nice, though. Viewers send handcrafted accessories for his outbuildings, like a plaque that says, in elaborate lettering, “Ye Olde Quack House.” When one of the Golds’ barn cats was hit by a car recently, at least 50 viewers offered cash to cover her medical bills.

Samier Elrasoul, a nursing student in Howell, Michigan, is so devoted to Gold’s videos that he got a vanity license plate reading QUACKN, in honor of the catchphrase — “Release the Quacken!” — that Gold exclaims when he frees his

ducks from their hutch in the morning.

Elrasoul, 34, said the videos inspire him because he, too, has a dead-end job — he works as a supervisor at Starbucks — and he, too, harbors a dream of changing his life.

“Seeing some guy just like me, just dropping everything and doing what he’s passionate about, was very encouraging to see,” he said. “I’m like, wow, he’s living his dream.”

For others, Gold’s farm has provided a haven in a difficult time. Charlotte Schmoll, who is 6, spent days at the beginning of lockdown watching Gold’s videos over and over. She announced last month that

she, too, plans to raise ducks.

“One of the questions that comes up when we watch shows is, ‘Is this real? Did this happen?’” said her mother, Julie Schmoll. “That’s one of the things she liked about Mister Rogers and maybe she likes about the duck farmer: that he is also quoteunquote true, or real.”

Gold does wonder, sometimes, about what it means, in the long term, to make his life into a story.

When the cat was hit by a car, he found himself reflexively converting the event into a script and stopped to ask himself who he was becoming.

“It’s like, how much is

the experience, and how much is the packaging of the experience, and how do you distinguish between the two?” he said.

“Because you almost go, ‘I had a duck die. Let me think about the first act here, and the second act.’”

And still, the show goes on. Late on a recent evening, Gold was putting finishing touches on a video about his dog, Toby, who has never quite grown into his intended role as a duck herder.

Early drafts of the video had focused on how much the dog had improved.

But there was something dishonest about that, Gold realized that evening, as he and his wife flung them-

selves around the paddock, trying to catch birds with string nets while the dog looked on placidly, thumping his tail.

Now, in the gathering dark, Gold was rewriting the ending to one that emphasized his acceptance of the dog’s true nature.

It’s always difficult to bring closure to a video, Allison Gold said. It was almost 9 o’clock, and she was hoping to go inside.

“You have to create an end,” she said. “Because the truth is, we do this every day, so there’s not really an end.”

But Gold, for his part, was pleased.

“I love it when a story has a good moral,” he said.

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Morgan Gold is joined by his wife Allison Ebrahimi Gold and their dog, Toby.

Hilary Swift | New York Times

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