PHOTO BY NATASHA BARBER
A cutter sleigh is parked among evergreen trees at Wee Trees in rural Royalton. The piece is situated for guests to use for photos.
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Sauk Rapids Herald | Saturday, December 18, 2021
Winter webinar series discusses commodity crops ST. PAUL – Growers have an opportunity to discuss key issues and questions facing Minnesota commodity crop production through the Strategic Farming: Let’s Talk Crops webinar series. This online program will provide up-to-date, researchbased information to help optimize crop management strategies for 2022. Sessions will be held over the online platform Zoom, which can be accessed via your computer, phone or other mobile device. Sessions take place from 9-10 a.m. Wednesdays, Jan. 5, 2022, through March 30, 2022. Sessions will be very informal and open to all interested. Each session will start with a brief presentation by the discussion leaders for the day, followed by discussion framed around farmer or participant questions on the topic.
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Strategic farming page 2B
Warzechas grow trees for every type of customer
A Christmas experience
BY CHRISTINE BEHNEN STAFF WRITER
R
OYALTON – Christmas trees are as alike to each other as one person’s Christmas is alike to another’s. They are alike in spirit, and yet, they are each entirely unique. A Christmas tree is not just a tree. It is special because of what it represents. Rick and Rosie Warzecha of Wee Trees near Royalton sell Christmas trees. They have been growing them for coming toward 40 years. Their farm is full of row after row of green trees. There are thousands of trees on their 50 acres. There are new seedlings barely surfacing above the snow, and there are grand old trees towering high. There are trees, and more trees, and more trees. They may have at one time, long ago in the beginning, imagined that one Christmas tree might do as well as another, but today they think otherwise. Way back in the beginning, Rick got the idea to grow Christmas trees. His father had owned a farm by Rice and planted thousands of trees as
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The Warzecha family of Wee Trees has been growing Christmas trees since 1983 on their farm in rural Royalton. Pictured are Rosie and Rick Warzecha (from left), Lucas Barber, Natasha Barber, Neil Maidl and Ryan Warzecha. windbreaks. Around 1969, Rick asked his father about growing some of the trees as Christmas trees. “Then it was more about just getting Christmas trees,” Rick said.
But it wasn’t until 1983 that Rick and Rosie planted the rst trees of what was to eventually become Wee Trees. The land that is now covered in trees had been a corn eld.
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Then, it looked nothing took to the earth, establike what it would come lishing what is currently to be. In 1989, they build the bough eld. their house and moved to their soon-to-be evergreen farm. Warzechas page 2B In 1991, 2,000 r trees
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Page 2B | SATURDAY, DECEMBER 18, 2021| SAUK RAPIDS HERALD
Strategic farming
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For more details and to register, visit https://z.umn.edu/strategic-farming. You need only register once for the program series. At registration, take a moment to let us know what questions you would like highlighted. There is no charge to participate thanks to generous sponsorship from the Minnesota Soybean Research and Promotion Council. Sessions will be recorded and posted for viewing at your convenience. Details will be included at registration on how to access the sessions on your computer or mobile device.
The green boughs from those original trees are now made into wreaths, garlands, porch pots, and other adornments. It takes commitment and perseverance to grow trees. Trees cannot be grown and harvested from one season to the next. Scotch pines, for example, grow seven to eight years before they can be harvested. “It’s a long long process to get to the point of selling that tree for the enjoyment of the family that’s coming to buy it from you,” Rick said. Rick and Rosie’s children, Ryan and Natasha, grew up with the trees. When the Warzechas started, their children weree small, but they quickly learned all about the trees.. They soon knew well the many kinds of trees that can be made to be Christmas trees. The list of varieties is long, and the recitation of their names is like an arboreal poem: Black Hills spruce, Scotch pine, balsam fir, the Norways, Fraser fir, Canaan fir, Meyer spruce, white pine, Korean fir … There are so very many. The trees have their smell, their texture of needles, their brilliance of green or tinge of blue, their branches thickly dense or sparse and strong. Why grow so many kinds of Christmas trees? “We have so many different types of people,” Rick said. “Everybody likes a different tree. There’s a reason for everything and why we grow all of the different varieties.” These are people from different places, different intentions and different traditions as Rick and Rosie elaborated. Central Minnesotans might tend to be more familiar with Scotch pines or balsam firs, but someone who was transplanted to Minnesota from the East Coast might be looking for the Fraser fir that they grew up with as a kid. A family from Montana has a tradition of getting a large Norway, cutting the top off, and then fitting all of the presents into the tree itself,
Strategic Farming: Let’s Talk Crops 2022 webinar series – Jan. 5: Crop fertility adjustments. Featuring Dan Kaiser, extension nutrient management specialist, and Brad Carlson, extension educator-water resources. – Jan. 12: 2021: The year when past indiscretions were revealed (think compaction). Featuring Aaron Daigh, North Dakota State University, and Jodi DeJong-Hughes, extension educator-water quality. – Jan. 19: Compare and contrast: Management of corn for grain and silage. Featuring Joe Lauer, University of Wisconsin-Madison corn agronomist, and Luiz Ferrraretto, UW-Madison ruminant nutritionist. – Jan. 26: New findings with sulfur fertility. Featuring University of Minnesota nutrient management specialists and researchers. – Feb. 2: Strategies for effective weed management. Featuring University of Minnesota weed scientists and researchers. – Feb. 9: Cover crops: Termination timing and planting green. Featuring Axel Garcia y Garcia, sustainable cropping systems specialist, and Anna Cates, state soil health specialist. – Feb. 16: Tar spot of corn: Status and options for this rising issue. Featuring Dean Malvick, extension plant pathologist, and Nathan Kleczewski, plant pathologist, GROWMARK Inc. – Feb. 23: Small grains management update. Jochum Wiersma, extension small grains specialist. – March 2: Soybean gall midge: Knowns and unknowns. Bruce Potter, extension integrated pest management specialist; Bob Koch, extension soybean entomologist; and Gloria Melotto, graduate research assistant. – March 9: Getting ready for corn insects. Bruce Potter, extension IPM specialist. – March 16: Can we store C in a production ag system (and to what benefit)? Anna Cates, state soil health specialist, and Jodi DeJong-Hughes, extension educator-water quality. – March 23: Biocontrol strategies to manage pests. George Heimpel, extension entomologist. – March 30: Taming your fertility and soil amendment input costs. University of Minnesota Extension nutrient management specialists and researchers.
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A
y PHOTOS BY CHRISTINE BEHNEN
Rick and Rosie Warzecha hold wreaths inside their Christmas shop Dec. 8 in rural Royalton. Wreaths are b often made from boughs of trees planted in 1991.
Rick Warzecha wraps a Christmas tree Dec. 8 at Wee Trees in rural Royalton. Trees are wrapped to protect the branches and make travel easier. amongst the branches instead of under them. A customer looking for a tree that can resist the attentions of cats might want a Colorado blue spruce because of its stiff and sharp needles. The Korean fir has its own temperament and grows in its own direction, which is what some people are looking for.” “There are people that really do love Charlie Brown trees,” Rick said. “It’s what they grew up with, or something special happened in their life that that tree represents. And, that’s what they’re shooting for, to remember that Christmas.” What is that particular Christmas that has imprinted in memory? “I can remember the Christmas that my Dad took me to a little fix-it shop in Sauk Rapids and bought me a model train,” Rick said. “The train was built right before World War II, and it was a special train because Marx was one of the first to make automatic couplers. I still
have it. It still runs. We used to jump the train from bed to bed. That’s the Christmas I’ll remember. I’ll never forget.” It is precisely because the Christmas tree carries more than just the weight of its ornaments that buying one is not a stock and standard exchange of green bills for green boughs. Just as Christmas is an experience worth cultivating, so too is the experience of buying the tree. Rick and Rosie are certainly cultivating experiences for their holiday visitors. Porch pots, wreaths, and other creations turn the farm itself into a visual celebration. A wreath big enough to leap through has its place amongst the younger trees. Strategically placed photos opportunities in a cutter sleigh, hot cocoa stand and a large carved log bench allow ample room for families to take memorable photos while visiting. A plan is in the works to put in a garden train system for the children to watch.
Happy Holidays!
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Rosie Warzecha, Lucas Barber and Rick Warzecha plant young trees in spring 2019 at the Warzecha farm in rural Royalton.
Some attractions at the farm have lasted for generations. “On a warm day, a lot of kids get out of the vehicle and head straight south to the sheep,” Rosie said, laughing. “We have parents that were little kids when they came here with their parents, and the first place they went is to see the sheep.” Some visitors have been visiting for generations. They come from near, and they also come from as far as Park Rapids, Brainerd, Stillwater and the Twin Cities metro area. They come every year, no matter how strange or unusual the year itself may has been. Even the previous holiday season, the year of the pandemic, they came without fail, and even, perhaps with extra joy. “Last year, we have never seen so many families bring so many kids because it was someplace to go out and enjoy themselves,” Rick said. “There was laughing all of the time, with little kids running here and little kids running there.” If the children of today are having the same holiday experience at the Wee Trees farm as their own parents did before them, then the experience of Christmas trees has clearly leaped free of the pretense of just any tree for tree’s sake. The warm light of a Christmas star, perched high upon a tree, falls much further than the extension of the tree’s greatest boughs. The light reaches far enough to touch the Christmas that was, the Christmas that is commemorated and revived every winter, and the Christmas that can be known in some part through the encounter of the grower and their guests. A tree is just a tree, and, it is so much more.
SAUK RAPIDS HERALD | SATURDAY, DECEMBER 18, 2021 | Page 3B
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Signup for 2022 Dairy Margin Coverage opens
PEOPLE...PRODUCTS...KNOWLEDGE...
Expands program for supplemental production
In the United States Department of administrative fee. The fee is waived Agriculture’s ongoing efforts to support for farmers who are considered limited dairy farmers, the Farm Service Agency resource, beginning, socially disadvanhas started signup for the Dairy Margin taged or a military veteran. Producers Coverage program and expanded the procan use the online dairy decision tool gram to allow dairy producers to better found at www.fsa.usda.gov/programsprotect their operations by enrolling supand-services/dairy-margin-coverageplemental production. This signup period program/index to determine the approruns until Feb. 18, 2022. This enables priate level of DMC coverage for their producers to get coverage through this dairy operation. Farm Service Agency News important safety-net program for another Updates to feed costs by Ryan Brunn, year as well as get additional assistance USDA changed the DMC feed cost executive director through the new Supplemental DMC. formula to better reflect the actual cost for Benton and Supplemental DMC enrollment dairy farmers pay for high-quality alfalfa Mille Lacs counties Eligible dairy operations with less hay. FSA will calculate payments using than 5 million pounds of established 100% premium alfalfa hay rather than production history may enroll supplemental pounds 50%. The amended feed cost formula will make based upon a formula using 2019 actual milk marDMC payments more reflective of actual dairy proketing, which will result in additional payments. ducer expenses. Retroactive payments from 2020 Producers will be required to provide FSA with their and 2021 have been processed through the FSA of2019 Milk Marketing Statement. Supplemental fice as of the week of Dec. 13. DMC coverage is applicable to calendar years 2021, Producers have until Feb. 18, 2022, to revise 2022 and 2023. Participating dairy operations with their 2021 DMC contracts with their 2019 Milk supplemental production may receive retroactive Marketing Statement and apply for a 2022 DMC supplemental payments for 2021 in addition to paycontract. Contact the office at 320-968-5300, ext. 2 ments based on their established production history. for an appointment or if you have any questions. Supplemental DMC will require a revision to a producer’s 2021 DMC contract and must occur before enrollment in DMC for the 2022 program year. DMC 2022 Enrollment After making any revisions to 2021 DMC contracts for Supplemental DMC, producers can sign up for 2022 coverage. DMC provides eligible dairy producers with risk management coverage that pays producers when the difference between the price of milk and the cost of feed falls below a certain level. So far in 2021, DMC payments have triggered for January through October for more than $1 billion. For DMC enrollment, producers must certify with FSA that the operation is commercially marketing milk, sign all required forms and pay the $100
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Page 6B | SATURDAY, DECEMBER 18, 2021| SAUK RAPIDS HERALD
WEST DES MOINES, Iowa – Helena Agri-Enterprises is excited to announce they will be awarding a $1,000 Helena Acre HomeGrown Scholarship to an eligible student residing in a qualified county. The Helena Acre HomeGrown Scholarship will be given to a 2022 graduating high school senior who will pursue a degree in agriculture or science. The Royalton location of Helena will be distributing the scholarship. Students in Benton, Stearns, Mille Lacs and Morrison counties are encouraged to apply. To view all qualified counties, visit www. helenahomegrown.com. Helena is committed to supporting the next generation of agriculture through the Helena Acre HomeGrown Scholarship. The company wants to help customers and communities grow more than crops. Whether through the scholarship or its industry-leading intern program, Helena is committed to growing the future generation of ag leaders and professionals. Qualifying graduating seniors can apply for the scholarship by visiting www.helenahomegrown.com. Applications are due Jan. 30, 2022, and winners will be announced by March 1, 2022.
Emslander first in U.S. to use technology on beef operation BY JAKOB KOUNKEL STAFF WRITER OAK PARK – Technological advances in agriculture have evolved and benefited local farms, from now-standard equipment like tractors to advanced airborne drones that help track individual crop health. One local resident knows firsthand how technology can improve a farm. Dave Emslander, owner of Emslander Farms in Oak Park, has utilized a robot to feed a portion of his 2,000 head of cattle since mid-August. Emslander’s farm is the first beef operation in the nation to utilize the technology. Emslander hosted beef and dairy farmers from Idaho, Wisconsin and Minnesota at his beef operation Dec. 2 to demonstrate the robot’s capabilities and usefulness. “Basically, what it does is it feeds to the animals’ needs,” Emslander said. “Once it’s done feeding, it’ll sit in its station for an
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Dave Emslander stands just a bit shorter than his newly-acquired Lelvy Vector robot Dec. 2 at his farm in Oak Park. Emslander Farms is the only beef cattle operation in the United States that uses the piece of equipment. hour and a half and then it’ll go out and push up the feed and scan the bunk, and if anything needs feed, it’ll just feed that area.” While the technological marvel is a great improvement for feed efficiency, waste reduction, labor and payroll, Emslander said the motivating factor behind the investment was the prospect of improved animal health. “The biggest reason why I did this was for animal health and feed efficiency,” Emslander said. “It’s no different than the human diet, where you have consistent, fresh meals every single day, which makes the gut health better for the animal.” In the nearly four months he has used the machine, called the Lely
Vector robot, Emslander said he has already seen benefits of improved animal health. The herd’s rate of gain – measured in pounds per day – has improved and so has feed efficiency. “I have noticed a lot of benefits in animal health, and we did some weights on some (cattle) that we’ve shipped and the feed efficiency has been greatly improved,” Emslander said. Prior to purchasing the robot, for Emslander, feeding cattle was a guessing game regarding exactly how many pounds of each ingredient was being fed. With the robot keeping track of every single pound of feed and feeding more accurately than a human could, Emslander appreciates the consistency and
accuracy. Not only that, but the robot saves Emslander wasting feed – the robot does not dispense too much or too little, and the cattle eat until the feed is gone. The Lely Vector also gives Emslander reports with data measurements related to feed. “We always kept feed in front of them, but how many pounds we were feeding and how accurate the rations were was always a variable,” Emslander said. “That’s not a problem anymore.” Emslander showed other farmers the technology to inform them how the Lely Vector has improved his farm operation from an animal feeding perspective.
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The Field Guide Podcast After a short break over ing practices that make up our the summer months, we are complex farming communiback with brand new epities throughout Minnesota. sodes of “The Field Guide If you would like to learn Podcast.” In November, more about the podcast or we introduced the newest listen to the most recent reoccurring co-host, and in episode, go to thefieldguide. December, we start introtransistor.fm or wherever you ducing new farms in the Rice access your podcasts. If you University of County region. Topics will MN Extension would like to subscribe and include vertical tillage, inby Nathan Drewitz listen using your favorite app, termediate wheatgrass, soil go to thefieldguide.transistor. health and more. Be on the lookout for fm/subscribe. If you have questions new episodes in the new year. on the above information, email me at Listeners of this podcast will benndrewitz@umn.edu or call 608-515efit from the many years of experience 4414. of our local farmers and the researchTo receive future events, educabased information provided by Unitional programming and agronomic versity of Minnesota Extension. Come updates by email, sign up at z.umn. join us as we highlight the successes edu/tricountysignup. and failures, pros and cons, and differ-
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Emslander from page 6B “The biggest selling point to me was the feed efficiency and animal health,” Emslander said. “Not a lot of people have tried it out, and it’s an investment, but there are definitely benefits to it.” Emslander housing cattle at multiple locations, some of which do not benefit from the robotic feeding technology. Although the helpful robot has proven beneficial, Emslander is holding out on purchasing another robot of the same type until he can prove, through data and metrics, whether the investment is worthwhile for the other locations. “I didn’t want to go and set it up at both farms not knowing the entire outcome of it,” Emslander said. “But so far, since we put it in in August, there have been tremendous benefits to having it.”
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