NewsTribune_Farm Directory_090923

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AGRICULTURAL

Blunier Builders

309-467-4847 blunierbuilders.com

AUCTIONEERING

McConville Realty & Auctioneering

612 Main St. Mendota, IL 61342 (815) 539-5673

www.mcconvillerealty.com

AUTO SALES

Vaessen Brothers Chevrolet 505 Pennsylvania Ave. Sublette, IL 61367

Service: 877-880-6979

Sales: 877-737-7619

www.vaessenbrothers.com

CHIROPRACTOR

Marty Chiropractic 1310 N., IL-251

Lostant, IL 61334 (815) 368-3421

www.martychiropractic.net

CONSTRUCTION

Blunier Builders

309-467-4847 blunierbuilders.com

Hartman Statewide Buildings 13062 HWY 26, Princeton, IL. 61356 (815) 830-1975

hartmanstatewide.com

DECKING

Maze Lumber

1100 Water St. Peru, IL 61354 815-223-1742

www.mazelumber.com

DOORS

Overhead Door Company of Illinois Valley

617 Shooting Park Rd. Peru, IL 61354

(815) 223-8471

EQUIPMENT

HCC Inc.

1501 1st Ave. Mendota, IL 61342

(815) 539-9371

www.hccincorporated.com

Martin Equipment

2901 May Rd. Peru, IL 61354

(815) 224-4711

www.martinequipment.com

Vaessen Implement Repair 542 US-52

Sublette, IL 61367

815-849-9010

www.vaessenimplement.com

EQUIPMENT RENTAL Rental Pros 2 1150 38th St. Peru, IL 61354 (815) 224-2800

FARM BUREAU

La Salle County Farm Bureau 4201 N. Columbus St. Ottawa, IL 61350

815-433-0371

www.lcfb.org

FARM DRAINAGE

Advanced Drainage Systems 1600 Industrial Dr. Mendota, IL 61342 (815) 539-2160

Gary Safranek

Mike Wasmer Tyler Full

Jerrick Kapraun Jennie Smith

Lee Excavating & Tiling 29408 3450 East St.

La Moille, IL 61330 (815) 910-5479

Lilja Tiling & Excavating 2000 Welland Rd. Mendota, IL 61342 (815) 539. 3485

FARMERS’ ELEVATOR

Earlville Farmers Coop 602 W Railroad St. Earlville, IL 60518 (815) 246-8461

www.earlcoop.com

Sublette Farmers Elevator Co. 100 W Main St. Sublette, IL 61367 (815) 849-5222

sublettefarmerselevator.com

FEED INGREDIENTS

Ridley Feed Ingredients 1609 1st Ave. Mendota, IL 61342 (815) 539-9321

FINANCIAL

Country Financial

535 Elm Place

Princeton, IL 61356 (815) 221-3075

FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS

First State Bank

Mendota (815) 538-2265

McNabb (815) 882-2146

Peru (815) 224-4484

Ottawa (815) 433-3727

Princeton (815) 872-0002

LaMoille (815) 638-2398

www.firststatebank.biz

Illini State Bank

Oglesby 815-883-8400

Tonica 815-442-8211

Lostant 815-368-3333

North Central Bank

110 N. Main Ave. Ladd, IL 61329 815-894-2386

126 E. High St. Hennepin, IL 61327 815-925-7373

www.northcentralbank.com

NuMark Credit Union 137 S. Main St. Earlville, IL 60518 (815) 246-9318

303 S. Pennsylvania Ave. Sublette, IL 61367 (815) 849-5242

235 Chicago Rd. Paw Paw, IL 61353 (815) 627-2651

numarkcu.org

FIREPLACES

Maze Lumber 1100 Water St. Peru, IL 61354 815-223-1742

www.mazelumber.com

FOOD McDonald’s Spring Valley, Mendota and Princeton www.mcdonalds.com

FUEL

Michlig Energy 105 1st St. Manlius, IL 61338 815-445-6921

www.michligenergy.com

INSURANCE

Country Financial 535 Elm Place Princeton, IL 61356 (815) 221-3075

First State Insurance 715 Washington St. Mendota, IL 61342 (815) 539-5651

114 W Railroad St. Earlville, IL 60518 (815) 246-8261

Peru Waltham Insurance 1724 Peoria St. Peru, IL 61354 815-223-4414

www.perumutual.com

INVESTMENTS

Country Financial 535 Elm Place Princeton, IL 61356 (815) 221-3075

KITCHENS

Maze Lumber 1100 Water St. Peru, IL 61354 815-223-1742

www.mazelumber.com

LAWNMOWER SALES & REPAIRS

Smith’s Sales and Service

1604 Peoria St. Peru, IL 61354 815-223-0132

REAL ESTATE BROKERS

Capital Agricultural Property Services

Timothy A. Harris, AFM Princeton, IL Cell: 815-875-7418

REUSEABLE OIL

Mahoney Environmental 448 N 3973rd Rd

Mendota, IL 61342 (815) 539-9925

www.mahoneyes.com

SEEDS

Eiten Ag Solutions

6131 Plank Rd. Peru, IL 61354 (815) 341-1602

MJ Seeds, Inc.

8927 1925 North Avenue Sheffield, Illinois 61361 815-878-4430

Renk Seed

Keith Gehm 815-883-7197

TRUCKS

Vaessen Bros. Chevrolet

505 N Pennsylvania Ave.

Sublette, IL 61367 (877) 244-2457

TRUCK REPAIR

Untz Truck Repair

3460 Brennen Dr. Peru, IL 61354

(815) 224-2675

www.untztruck.com

WATER SYSTEMS

Prairie State Water Systems

3281 E 28th Rd.

Marseilles, IL 61341

Phone: 815- 357-8300

48W557 Rt. 64 Maple Park, IL 60151

Phone: 630-365-4242

WINDOWS

Maze Lumber

1100 Water St. Peru, IL 61354

815-223-1742

www.mazelumber.com

WORK BOOTS

Vlastnik’s Menswear

1809 4th St. Peru, IL 61354 815-223-0695

New nozzle control system set for release

By Tom C. Doran AGRINEWS PUBLICATIONS

PONTIAC, Ill. — A limited commercial release of a new nozzle control system designed to maintain consistent pressure regardless of rates and ground speed is slated for this fall.

Precision Planting’s Symphony nozzle control system features new Pulse Width Modulation nozzles.

With PWM nozzles, the liquid flow rate through each nozzle is managed via an intermittent, brief shutoff of the nozzle flow activated by an electric solenoid that replaces the conventional spring-loaded check valve and is controlled by the Precision Planting Gen 3 20|20 system.

The new system was among the features at Precision Planting’s Summer Sessions at the Precision Technology Institute, where visitors were able to test it in the field.

AGRINEWS PHOTO/TOM C. DORAN

Josh Robinson, Precision Planting product support specialist, points out the details of the new Symphony nozzle control system that’s set for limited commercial release this fall. The system can be retrofit on various sprayers and was featured at the Precision Technology Institute during Precision Planting’s Summer Sessions.

“We’re controlling each nozzle with a solenoid, controlling rate and pressure,” said Josh Robinson, Precision Planting product support specialist.

“Sprayers haven’t changed a lot in the last 30 years. They’ve gotten bigger and booms have gotten wider, but they’re still spraying the set rate and as your speed changes your pressure changes to hit that rate which means you get inconsistent droplet sizes. You have to be spraying a certain speed to get the droplet size you want.

“With Symphony, you’re able to set your pressure and your rate, and as your speed changes, it changes duty cycle to get the coverage and the droplet size you want consistently.

“So, when the applicator is coming in and out of headlands or slowing down for a waterway, they’re going to get that even coverage that they need instead of varying droplet size and missing weeds or building resistance in their weeds because of poor coverage.”

The system is also touted as providing more efficiency.

“You’re able to better place your chemicals more effi -

ciently. Especially if you have an odd-shaped field, you’ll have better swath control. It’s going to be a nozzle by nozzle. So, instead of seven sections over a 100foot boom or a 120foot boom, you’re going to be down whatever your nozzle spacing is,” Robinson said.

“There will be savings with swath control and chemicals, but then also efficiency as far as where the chemical is placed and making sure the dollar you spend on the chemical are actually dollars well spent instead of just kind of tossing it out there and not getting the application you want.”

MAPPING

The 20|20 system features application mapping capabilities that documents product

and application rates throughout the field. The maps can be exported and layered with the 20|20 mapping on the planter.

“It gives you great viability into what your sprayer is doing, how you’re applying and how the system is working,” Robinson said.

RETROFIT

Symphony is a retrofit solution for different sprayers.

“Our goal is to be able to put this on any make and model. Most of them will be compatible. You’ll be able to put it on anything with a three-quarter inch or one-inch boom,” Robinson said.

“The system as a whole is very serviceable. All of the harnesses jump from one module to the next. So, if something

gets pinched or broken, it’s one simple replacement.

“The computer chip that’s controlling the valves is separate from them. So, if you have to replace a solenoid or a nozzle body, you don’t have to pay the cost for kind of the brains behind it, as well.

“It’s pretty economical to rebuild or replace parts in that solenoid. The installation is also very simple. It’s a few harnesses that run in parallel with each other down the booms, and then changing the nozzle bodies out. Two can easily install this with teardown and installation in a day.

“It’s also been designed to not have to service it with tools. For some systems you have to have a special wrench or something to take it apart. It has like a clip that sticks in there and you can pull it out with your fingers and pull the solenoid out and service it without a tool.”

Tom C. Doran can be reached at 815-410-2256 or tdoran@shawmedia.com. Follow him on Twitter at: @ AgNews_Doran.

“We’re controlling each nozzle with a solenoid, controlling rate and pressure.”

Josh Robinson PRECISION PLANTING

Giving farmers credit for storing carbon

By Melina Walling ASSOCIATED PRESS

DYSART, Iowa (AP) — When Al Schafbuch cut back on plowing his Iowa fields decades ago and later began growing cover crops, he was out to save money on fertilizer and reduce erosion.

He got those benefits and saw his soil change for the better, too: dark, chunky, richly organic matter that he said feels like “chocolate cake.”

There’s one more big payoff that benefits everyone: tilling the soil less, and growing more cover crops, can help farmers store more planet-warming carbon in fields.

More plants take in more carbon dioxide, and soil microbes breathe out less carbon when undisturbed.

That can mean money for participating farmers in the form of carbon offsets — payments that companies can make that support carbon storage in farms and, in theory, balance out their emissions elsewhere.

“The more carbon you store

from the atmosphere with your crops, and the more crops grown throughout the year, you offset some of your waste, your wasted energy,” said Shalamar Armstrong, an associate professor of agronomy at Purdue University. “Because you’ve stored carbon that would have been emitted (into) the atmosphere.”

It’s an area getting more attention from lawmakers, researchers and industry professionals.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture recently announced a $300 million investment to monitor agricultural emissions, including by creating a research network to monitor carbon in soil.

And U.S. Sens. Tina Smith, D-Minn., and Todd Young, R-Ind., introduced a bill that Smith said would support the research needed to “properly credit soil carbon storage.”

The USDA announcement and the legislation are both aimed at the difficult question of how to quantify carbon stored in soil.

It’s an obstacle to overcome if

the young and booming soil carbon market is to avoid the scrutiny, and skepticism, directed at carbon credit markets.

“The science piece (of carbon credits) has really lagged behind, particularly when it comes to things like monitoring, reporting and verification,” said Cristel Zoebisch, deputy director of policy at climate organization Carbon180.

“These are huge obstacles for not just soil carbon sequestration, but really any land-based carbon removal solution.”

Armstrong has been trying to help fix that problem. He runs a lab where researchers are investigating how farming management affects the amount of carbon in soil across different landscapes.

He and others at Purdue have been studying soil samples that date back more than 40 years, comparing different types of tilling and cover crops to determine their long-term effects on carbon storage.

It can take years of fieldwork, careful chemistry in the lab and lots of expensive equipment to

puzzle that out.

He hopes his precise calculations will help farmers make decisions that allow them to receive worthwhile incentives for sequestering carbon while maintaining their existing profits.

But other academics worry that even if farmers do get paid for storing soil carbon, it won’t solve a bigger problem: that carbon markets often don’t work.

For offsets to be legitimate, they have to meet four criteria. They have to store carbon that would otherwise be emitted; they have to be verifiable in data; they have to be immediate — planting a tree that might grow up in 20 years doesn’t cut it; and they have to be long-lasting, said John Sterman, a professor of management at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Better quantifying soil carbon storage through research might make the offsets more verifiable, but it doesn’t address other factors.

For example, many farmers rent the land they work, and can’t guarantee that carbon

Barbara Haya, director of the Berkeley Carbon Trading Project at University of California, Berkeley, has worked on research that she said shows the effects of carbon offset projects are commonly overestimated, sometimes vastly so.

“Carbon trading is a mechanism that has failed miserably over the last 20 years that we really need to be moving away from,” Haya said.

U.S. Rep. Jared Huffman, D-Calif., last month introduced a bipartisan bill to support farmers in improving soil health, with incentives that don’t necessarily involve the carbon market.

He said farmers in his district have also described the benefits of regenerative practices, and that many would be interested in participating in carbon markets with “robust” accounting systems. But he added that those hoping for serious climate action shouldn’t rely only on offsets.

“In my opinion, it’s really not the silver bullet,” Huffman said. “I think offsets are inherently sketchy.”

Some farmers are moving

cautiously.

Brad Wetli, an Indiana farmer who collaborates with Armstrong, has been trying techniques that use less tilling and has been planting cover crops like rye for a few years now.

He’s happy with the way his current fields look — “It feels like you’re doing something” to contribute to sustainability, he said — but he’s still weighing his options with possible carbon credit contracts, doing the math and waiting to see whether the price will be right, since many offset agreements can last for several years.

“I’m going to do maybe a field or two at a time, and as I learn more, I’ll hopefully incorporate the carbon or carbon credits more into the operation,” he said.

Schafbuch, for his part, is skeptical of carbon credits, but would have been enthusiastic about regenerative farming no matter the upfront costs.

He said he was an early adopter in the face of neighbors who laughed and suggested he would “end up being broke” — but he’s proved them wrong.

“I’m convinced that if you do it right, anybody can do it,” he said.

Illinois’ longest operating lumberyard continues to thrive along Peru’s historic riverfront. Maze Lumber has been providing top quality building materials to Illinois Valley contractors and homeowners for 175 years, still owned by the founding fathers (Maze).

Located in a 15,000-square foot showroom and office, we offer building materials for the modern home as well as a full line of the traditional lumber items used in home building, commercial construction, and industrial applications.

Our experienced sales staff takes pride in their ability to provide knowledgeable assistance along with prompt delivery at reasonable prices.

1848-2023

At Heartland Bank, we cultivate the

RELATIONSHIPS

It’s the land you grew up on; your father always said it would be yours someday. It was his legacy and now its yours. And someday, hopefully it will be your child’s legacy too.

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Count on Heartland Bank to help cultivate your family’s legacy.

It’s high time for shrubs that attract birds

Interest in songbirds is often thought of when it comes to feeding, but with some planning you can also offer habitat for possible nesting. Planting shrubs is an activity that takes place in the fall, but there can be added benefits when it comes to selection. Here are some tips for selecting high-growing shrubs to attract birds.

DOGWOODS

Select for high-quality food. Our best dogwoods for high-quality food for the birds are Gray Dogwood (Corunus racemosa) and Silky Dogwood (Conrus amomum). Dogwoods are most often associated with their spring floral displays, but

these flowers turn into fruit and offer an excellent food resource for the birds. Gray Dogwood is very adaptable (suckers easily) to soil conditions and is excellent for difficult sites (not polite for the garden site). Silky Dogwood is especially useful in moist sites and has reddish stems and burgundy fall color.

SUMACS

If you’ve got room to spare and care to share with the birds, sumacs are a great selection. Smooth Sumac (Rhus glabra) offer excellent fall foliage when the large compound leaves turn red and orange. Smooth Sumac is a dioecious species as male and female flowers are produced on separate plants. It is recommended to plant three to five plants in close proximity to ensure the presence of both sexes for ample fruit and seed production. Although a fair food source, the canopy is too open to make good cover.

ELDERBERRY

Plant elderberry in spring after the final frost. If you are planning to establish elderberry (Sambucus canadensis), selecting a proper site can be beneficial in the fall. Preplant soil testing is recommended to determine if pH levels are suitable to the level of 5.5-6.5. Sites that have less than ideal drainage can be more productive if planted on berms or raised areas with better drainage.

VIBURNUMS

Viburnums are vibrant for their fall color, but some also offer a late fall feeding opportunity for birds. Arrowwood Viburnum (Viburnum dentatum), Wayfaring Tree Viburnum (V. lantana), American Cranberrybush Viburnum (V. opulus var. americanum), and Linden Viburnum (V. dilatatum) all are fall fruiting with fruits blue-black in color. There are many choices when it come

to viburnums. Possumhaw (V. nudum) fruits are attractive to many desirable birds and American Cranberrybush Viburnum has attractive fruit that attracts cardinals. Be careful when selecting viburnum to select an appropriate size for your location.

Andrew Holsinger is a University of Illinois Extension educator, horticulture.

Andrew Holsinger Extension Notebook

Birds enjoy smooth sumac berries.