Farm Safety First!

Jesse Fulbright, MSU Liberty County Extension

Last week was National Farm Safety and Health Week.  While I might have missed the boat on highlighting farm safety last week, the importance of farm safety leads me to continue to promote it this week.  With so many of our neighbors, friends and family are involved in this industry, doesn’t it warrant repeating some precautions to keep them safe?

Farm safety covers so many things, moving equipment down public or private roads, safety with pesticides and fertilizers, servicing farm equipment, the list goes on and on.

Slow down and watch carefully on roadways for slow moving farm machines and implements.  Arrive at your destination alive and be cautious and aware of your surroundings as you pass farm equipment, only doing so when you have a clear line of vision.  If you are moving farm equipment on the roadways, make sure all lighting and marking are up to current state law requirements and are clearly visible and functional. 

Spend a few dollars to invest in the appropriate array of personal protective equipment or PPE including safety glasses, hearing protection and gloves.  The right safety gear is important to every size of farm as well as people with small parcels of land and homeowners doing routine yard work.  This includes those smaller pieces of equipment such as lawnmowers and leaf blowers. 
As you service your farm equipment, try and perform maintenance on a regular schedule.  Record the dates of maintenance for each piece of equipment for future reference.  Follow the maintenance recommendations in your user manuals and routinely adjust brakes, clutches, and drives.  Keep all parts of your equipment—especially steering, ignition, exhaust system, and brakes—in top condition.  This not only keeps things safer for you, but increases the life of your equipment.  Turn the engine off and make sure it is stopped before refueling, servicing, or greasing.  Allow the engine to cool before refueling.  The time you may save trying to service equipment when it is hot will disappear in an instant if an accident occurs. 

Once again, there are a myriad of ways that you enhance farm safety on your farm or small acreages.  Please take the time to identify how you can work and stay safe, for yourself and your family.

Preparing Your Trees for Winter

Jesse Fulbright, MSU Liberty County Extension

As much as I hate to admit it, leaves are beginning to fall slowly from the trees and gardeners are wrapping up their harvests.  Doesn’t it seem like winter was just here in April?  As we prepare for autumn now we need to be thinking about how to prepare our perennials, especially our trees for the long winter ahead.

During a normal autumn, as leaves fall off and temperatures drop, transpiration, or the loss of water from plant tissues, also falls off, most of it occuring through the stomata and epidermal openings on shoots and leaves.  Water loss therefore is minimal in the fall under normal conditions according to the Montana Master Gardener Handbook.  The low rate of transpiration, coupled with low temperatures, allows plants to harden and enter dormancy to survive the winter.  A normal recommendation for trees and shrubs, especially for conifers, is to water throughout the fall until the soil freezes.  Fall watering fills the plant’s reserves for use during the winter months.  Watering also reduces desiccation of shoots and foliage, and because the plants are dormant, doesn’t stimulate new growth. 

Photo courtesy of University of Illinois Extension

Everything I just mentioned is true for a normal autumn.  However, if we have a warm autumn, continued watering may keep less hardy trees from hardening off.  Therefore, you have a tree that is not prepared for those icy blasts of fall and winter when they do come.  However, withholding water from conifers may make them more susceptible to sun scald, which is just a fancy term for winter desiccation.  Overall, recommendations from M.S.U. Extension is to reduce, but don’t stop, watering in the fall.  Conifers are the exception to this as they still need water going into the winter. 

Continuing to speak about the conifers in our yards, they need attention during the winter when we get those warm spells or chinooks.  Evergreen trees and shrubs should get watered during these warm spells to help them with the winds and south and western sun aspects.  However, avoid heavy watering as this could stimulate early growth, especially under warm conditions.  We would like all the trees to break dormancy naturally and not be fooled into breaking dormancy when there is still more winter ahead. 

If you need further information about how to prepare your yards, trees and shrubs for winter I would encourage you to contact your local county Extension office.

Garlic-Good for More Than Just Vampire Control

Jesse Fulbright, MSU Liberty County Extension

I love garlic.  Whether it be on fries, on shrimp, or a variety of other ways, it is one of my favorite things to see added to different foods.  So, what if you want to grow it?

Lucky for me, and anyone else that would like to grow garlic in their garden, there is an M.S.U. Extension MontGuide on it.  Garlic is a good thing to grow in Montana as it tolerates our cold winters and short growing seasons well.  If planted at the right time, it should supply all the garlic an average family needs.  Note the “average” part of that statement.  Garlic has been found to be an excellent source of selenium.  Selenium is an antioxidant that fights oxidative stress, meaning it helps protect our cells from damage.  This is not a cure-all of course but one of the side benefits potentially of garlic.  Garlic is also a good source of protein, phosphorus, iron and potassium. 

Traditionally, garlic is planted in the early spring and harvested at the end of summer.  I suppose you could try that here, under the right conditions in the right year.  However, many gardeners in growing areas such as ours have better luck planting garlic between mid-September and mid-October.  This way, the garlic plants have a chance to develop a strong root system, overwinter and are then harvested the next summer.  If you decide on fall planting, be sure to mulch your plants with about six inches of straw or some other good protectant to protect them from winter heaving and desiccation.  You can leave out the mulch if we get a decent snow cover for most of the winter.  The plants will grow beneath the snow and may be two inches tall as the snow melts. 

Photo courtesy of University of Maine Cooperative Extension.

A word on the actual planting now.  Each bulb is made up of several cloves held together by a thin membrane.  You are probably familiar with this if you have cooked with garlic.  Each clove consists of two miniature leaves and a vegetative bud.  Separate the cloves just before planting and plant only the larger outer ones.  Use the smaller inner cloves for cooking, since the size of the resulting bulb is directly related to the size of the clove planted.  The moral of the story is, plant small cloves and you’ll get small bulbs.  Turn under about five pounds of 5-10-10 fertilizer or equivalent per 100 square feet before planting.  Then, work some compost or other rotted organic material into the soil.  Set the cloves into the soil right-side up about two inches deep and four to six inches apart in rows about 12 inches apart.  Five feet of row will satisfy the average person for one year.  You’ll need about one pound of cloves to plant 20 feet of row.  Garlic does best when planted in a sunny location but will tolerate partial shade.  Please let your local county Extension office know if you have any further questions about garlic this fall!

You Are What Your Mom Ate

Adriane Good, MSU Extension Pondera County

I’m sure everybody has heard the phrase “You are what you eat”. This phrase may or may not be accurate for some people, but for livestock a more accurate phrase would be “You are what your mom ate”. How you feed your cows in the fall and winter has a major impact on the calf growth both prior to and after weaning thanks to something known as fetal programming.

Most of the cows around here should be getting pretty close to the mid-point of gestation. Their energy requirements are decreasing due to declining lactation, but the requirements for their growing fetus is increasing. This is the time of year when their nutrient requirements are the lowest and it may be tempting to squirrel all your good feed away for winter and leave your girls on the drying-up pasture and hope for the best, but this might not always be the best idea.

During the mid-point of gestation, the fetal calf is undergoing muscle cell and fat tissue development.  A calf is born with only a certain number of muscle cells; as it grows these cells can get bigger but never increase in number. When the calf is developing, brain and organ development take priority over muscle and fat tissue development, meaning if nutrients are restricted too much during a cow’s pregnancy, the carcass traits of that calf won’t reach their full potential. Research has shown that calves that were born to nutrient-restricted mothers had a decreased growth rate, poorer carcasses, and poorer feed efficiency in the feedlot than those whose mothers received adequate nutrients throughout gestation. It has also been shown that the middle of gestation was most important for determining the tenderness and marbling of steaks from those calves. Meaning what your cows are eating now have a big impact on what the meat from those calves will taste like.

Timeline of fat and muscle development in utero

So what do your cows actually need during the midpoint in gestation to ensure their calves will be as delicious as possible? The protein requirement for a cow in the 2^nd trimester of pregnancy is about 7% and the TDN requirement is about 50% of their total diet. These requirements are increased slightly for replacement heifers depending on how much they have to grow. These requirements can also change based on the condition of the cows. It’s important to body condition score them to determine if they can handle a little less or if they need to be pushed a little harder. If they are at a body condition score below 5, they’ll need a little extra. If they’re well above a 5 they can probably handle some of the sub-par pasture that you might have. If you’re concerned about what the nutrient level of your pasture or your forages are, bring a sample into the office and we can get that analyzed for you! We can also help you formulate rations to make sure your cows are at peak performance at all times of the year.

What you do in the off season....Determines your winter and spring, 2019!

Kari Lewis

With the fall sports season underway, the phrase, ‘What you do in the off season determines what you do in the regular season,’ certainly comes into play.  I feel the same way about September for rural Montana.  What we do in September will determine what we do in the coming winter and spring. 

            In terms of preparing for winter, we know propane prices are lower this time of year than

Winter 2018 was one for the books, make sure
to get propane ordered, firewood cut, and
cupboards and freezers filled now.
Photo by Kari Lewis

during the dead of winter, so now is the time to get that supply ordered.  We know it is much easier and safer to access firewood now, than in the winter.  And, we know that now is the time to stock those cupboards and fill the freezer as well.  Do you remember what last winter was like??  Let’s be prepared!

              In terms of our lawn, now is the time to make those fall fertilizer applications.  In Montana, we recommend fertilizing around Memorial Day, Labor Day, and Columbus Day.  The final fall fertilizer application should occur after the last mowing of the year, but about four weeks before the soil freezes.  Therefore, by making those fall fertilizer applications now, our lawns will green up much sooner in the spring and have increased vigor.

             In terms of any newly planted trees, now is the time make sure newly planted evergreens have sun barriers on the windward and south side, and that deciduous trees have their trunks wrapped with a tree wrap to help reflect the sun, which will reduce sunscald on the bark.  Later in the fall after the leaves have turned color and fallen off, trees should be watered weekly until the soil freezes.  These fall waterings (after the leaves have fallen off) will help maintain tree health and longevity. 

            In terms of the cowherd, we know that cull cow prices are typically higher in September than they are in October or November when the dry cows hit the market.  Therefore, now would be the time to market those cull cows.  We also know that it’s much easier to put condition on a cow in the fall while she’s in the 2^nd trimester, than later in the winter or right before calving.  Now is the time to body condition score those cows and sort off the young cows or thin cows to early wean their calves and provide them a little extra time to bounce back before calving.

            In terms of controlling winter annual weeds and perennial weeds, fall is a great time to do so.  Winter annual weeds, such as cheatgrass, are best managed in the early fall.  Winter annual weeds are easiest to control when air temperatures are mild, and weeds are still actively growing, generally before the first killing frost. 

Fall is a great time to control perennial weeds as cooler temperatures trigger the weed to prepare for winter by moving food reserves down to its roots, which promotes movement of herbicides to the plant’s roots and results in improved control.   Dandelions in the lawn, spotted knapweed, houndstongue, and whiteop are examples of perennial weeds that can be effectively managed in the fall.  Fall herbicides should be made only if plants still have green, pliable leaf tissues and are best done when daytime temperatures are expected to exceed 60 to 65 degrees Fahrenheit.

If you have questions on fall lawn or tree care, weed management, cowherd nutrition, food preservation, etc., be sure to contact your local MSU Extension office!

Waste Pesticide Disposal Program Coming to Central Montana

Jesse Fulbright, MSU Liberty County Extension

On September 18-21, the Montana Department of Agriculture’s Waste Pesticide Disposal Program will be coming to central Montana to four different locations.  I recognize that central Montana is a large swath of land so I have additional information so you can get to a location closest to you.  The program will be in Havre on September 18^th, Great Falls on September 19^th, Bozeman on September 20^th and Columbus on September 21^st.

With any program, there are basic question I’m sure you wanted answered.  First, waste pesticides are any pesticides that are unwanted or unusable.  Pesticides become unusable when they have been improperly stored, become contaminated, if their uses and registrations have been cancelled or if labels were lost or have become unreadable.  The program accepts empty metal pesticide containers as waste. 

Photo courtesy of Washington State Department of Agriculture

Secondly, how do you participate?  First complete a MDA pesticide disposal registration form.  You can google MDA pesticide disposal registration form and download it from the website as well.  The deadline for that is September 10^th.  Once pre-registered you will be notified of the exact location of the collection site in your area.  The actual drop-off will take less than 15 minutes.

If you have a considerable amount of waste pesticides you might be interested in knowing that the first 200 pounds are free.  There is a fee of $.50 per pound for amounts over 200 pounds.  If pesticides are pressurized or contain dioxins or heavy metals there might be a higher fee.  Licensed pesticide applicators will receive a monetary credit when they participate in the disposal program. 

There will not be any penalties.  The disposal program is a non-regulatory service program that offers pesticide users the opportunity to dispose of unwanted and unusable pesticides.  Please take advantage of this service this year while it is in our general area.

For further questions, I would encourage you to contact your local county Extension office or the Montana Department of Agriculture at 444-3144.