Water 'n Poo: a retrospective

It was a beautiful late-September day in 2009, and the air was alive with the sounds and smells of the dairy farm. I was engaged in the rather monotonous job of filling our honeywagon up with manure at our storage tank, discharging it on hay fields, and returning for another round. With no working radio in the tractor to distract me from my boredom, I began to entertain myself by making up song lyrics describing what I was doing. As word after word, line after line started coming together to an old country music tune, I realized that I was crafting something that could potentially entertain and educate people about what I was doing in the field that day. After a couple of hours of  thoughtful composition and rehearsal I pulled into a field with a full load, pulled out my smartphone, pressed the "record" button on its video camera, and the rest is history.

Three years later, I just smile and shake my head when I think about "Water 'n Poo". While I thought a few people might enjoy the novelty of it, I never expected it to be more popular than the other farm videos I had posted in the previous months. And while it easily accounts today for far more "views" than any other video I have ever published, the statistics aren't the measuring stick by which  I gauge its impact.

I cannot tell you how many times I've been asked, "You're that Water 'n Poo guy, aren't you?"...I swear I've met at least a quarter of the people who have seen it! I have been told many times via text and Twitter (as recently as today, in fact) that so-and-so was showing it as part of his or her presentation to such-and-such group. And I figure it is at least indirectly responsible for half of the interview and speaking requests I've received since I published it. So for better or worse, me and that video are pretty well tied together in people's minds.  And based on the feedback I've received, it's been relatively successful in accomplishing the two primary goals of all of my videos: showing folks the good things that are happening on my farm and encouraging other farmers to do the same. 

For all the attention "Water 'n Poo" has brought my way, it has about run its course and will eventually reside in that dusty corner of the internet where it will only be seen by folks who accidentally happen upon it. I'm afraid it doesn't have enough "depth of message" to enjoy the same staying power of some farm videos or the glitzy production value and mainstream appeal of some others. But it is what it is: raw, simple, and genuine. It reminds me of a time when using social media seemed more like an exciting exploration than a routine obligation, and I had a blast making it! I want to thank all you folks who have taken 2 minutes and 32 seconds out of your busy lives to watch it, and I hope you enjoyed learning a little bit about nutrient management along the way.

Wordless Wednesday: what I did all afternoon

Looking pretty green around here!

We couldn't hardly have asked for more favorable weather over the past three weeks, and most of our farm is turning a nice deep shade of green.  Generally mild temperatures and well-timed rains have helped our fescue pastures and our fields of spring forages (triticale, oats, rye, and ryegrass) start growing up (stem) and out (leaf).  Even the the bermudagrass hayfields are turning green due to a healthy stand of spring weeds, a situation I hope to address within the next couple of weeks.

I spent the first half of this past week applying additional nutrients to one of our grazing areas in the form of 100,000 gallons of dairy slurry.  Meanwhile, we started grazing our cows for 4-5 hours each morning on the adjacent field of rye and ryegrass.  Not only has grazing allowed us to "cut out" 1 ton of corn silage, 1.5 tons of baleage, and 4 pounds/cow of dairy feed from their TMR, it has also resulted in a 4 pound/cow increase in milk production over the course of the week.

I won't be able to resume my slurry application this week thanks to nearly 3 inches of rain this weekend and another rain system predicted for Wednesday.  Despite the rain, though, our ground is still in good enough condition to allow our cows to go out on the fields and graze.  Look for them if you happen to drive by the farm one morning this week!  If you're not going to have that opportunity, you can do the next best thing by watching the cows graze in the video below.

Busy times on and off the farm

It's been a couple of weeks since I've blogged, so here is a quick entry to catch you up to speed with what's been happening.

I took a little break from farming a few days ago to spend a long weekend in St. Louis with other members of the AFBF YF&R Committee. We toured Monsanto's research facility, listened to very informative presentation on the GIPSA proposal and what effect the recent election would have on drafting the 2012 Farm Bill, and of course handled a fair amount of committee business. Several committee members also uploaded farm videos to YouTube, which you can view here. Hopefully there will be a few more added in the coming weeks.

Once I got home, it was back to business. I begin no-till drilling rye and ryegrass on Monday, and by lunchtime Wednesday I had planted 48.5 acres worth of grazing land. Before planting any more, we decided that I should go ahead and fertilize some of this acreage before the weekend. So, I spent yesterday pulling the honeywagon through the fields and plan on doing it again today. If all goes well, I will have covered about 30 acres by the time I shut down this afternoon.

I expect to plant at least 20 more acres within the next couple of weeks, maybe even as much as 40 if we buy some more seed. All in all, we have just shy of 130 acres planted right now. Most of what I had planted prior to this week has sprouted, and the stand looks to be pretty good. The cool nights and warm days have made for great weather to get the crop up and established.

I'm going to sound like a broken record on our cows, but it's pretty much the same story. The milking herd is still hovering around 170 head and production is slowly increasing. We have switched to a newer, less expensive dairy feed formulation, and I think the cows are actually doing better on it than they were on the previous feed. We're breeding several cows a week now, and our conception rate should be getting back to normal now that we're past the heat of summer. We'll also start breeding our next group of heifers in about 3-4 weeks.

Rain and a temperature change is in the forecast for the first part of next week, so I'm not sure how that will effect our farming agenda. I'll also be pretty busy with off-the-farm activities. I'm emceeing our county's Farm-City Banquet on Tuesday night before flying to DC for an America's Heartland advisory board meeting on Wednesday and Thursday.

I hope you all have a "dairy" good weekend!

Warm Weekend

Temps this weekend will be touching 90 degrees, with a lot of humidity in the air. It looks like summertime is just about here.

This past week has been fairly productive. We've "cleaned up" a couple of our hayfields and got a pretty fair crop of mature ryegrass/early bermudagrass hay. Thanks to favorable weather conditions, I was able to apply about 75,000 gallons of cow-generated liquid fertilizer to those fields to give them a kick-start. I'll hopefully be able to apply N-sol (32-0-0 liquid nitrogen fertilizer) to the bermudagrass on Monday or Tuesday to give it the rest of the nitrogen it needs.

Our window for planting silage corn is getting pretty small, and the bottom land where we've planned to grow it has still been too wet to work. We'll have to tear the ground to have any chance at all of drying it out enough to plant corn, and hopefully we can begin with that on Monday as well.+

Spreading Slurry

I finally pumped some stored up agri-byproduct out of the SlurryStore and field applied it to some wheat and oats. In about three hours time, I made 11 trips with the honeywagon and spread probably around 36,000 gallons. I've gotten just over half the field across from the farm covered, and hope to get it finished up this afternoon. Being able to spread the slurry has allowed me to cut back on the amount of N-sol (32-0-0) needed to adequately fertilize it.