Farm Indiana November 2012

November 2012 | Section A

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As central Indiana corn continued to wither and wilt under a searing and dry August blanket, shrink-ing yields and driving up feed prices, area livestock producers began wondering just how much belt

was left to tighten as they leaned into winter.Th e eff ects of the worst drought since 1956 on feed prices

were almost as varied as typical Hoosier fall weather, with most producers hanging on, a close eye on the bottom line, some considering expansion and others deciding to wait things out.

In the past, Fred and Bonita Hellmich usually raised 75 to 150 feeders on their Decatur County farm north of Greens-burg, buying calves somewhere between 400 and 600 pounds and getting them to market at 1,200 pounds.

However, aft er selling his stock last season and watching feed prices escalate this year, Fred opted to remain on the sidelines, and Bonita said he’s not presently kicking down doors to get back in, which is causing her a minor problem.

“He doesn’t seem all that excited about getting back into it right now, and I need beef in my freezer,” she said.

Decatur County hog producer John Corya said he’s aware of high feed prices pushing smaller pork operations to the margins as well. Th ough he declined to comment specifi cally on whether he’s culling early, Corya said his feed costs have doubled, “and the high prices have made things really diffi -cult” with each pig sold at a “signifi cant loss.”

Like many other producers, Corya said he’s looking for alternatives and moving to byproducts and feed substitutes when possible.

Forty miles northwest in Whiteland, Scott Beyer, dairy manager at Kelsay Farms, a sixth-generation, 500-head milk-ing operation in Johnson County, also has been seeking alter-natives and “getting creative.”

For the last two years, Beyer has been feeding hominy — alkali-soaked dried maize — to his dairy herd, which he gets at the same or better price as shell corn and which can go di-rectly from the truck to the cows with no further processing.

Th at alternative and a back-end bump on the farm’s 300-acre alfalfa crop due to September’s rains have him believing his head count will hold steady through the winter.

“We’re still holding fi rm on our numbers,” Beyer said. “We

BY JIM MAYFIELD

Even as feed prices rise, livestock producers maintain annual optimistic outlook

Down but not out

Top left: An alpaca at Whispering Pines Alpacas in Nashville. Top right: Bill Schnackel feeds some supplemental nutrients to an alpaca at Whispering Pines. Above: Wayne Downey holds a shovel full of the complete grain he feeds his cattle on his farm in Hope. Left: Downey holds gluten that is added to the feed.PHOTOS BY AARON FERGUSON

SEE FEED ON PAGE A2

A2 FARM INDIANA | November 2012

Farm Indiana’s first issue published right in the middle of the worst drought to hit our area in 60 years. Though the rains have finally returned, area farmers still aren’t quite sure how much damage the drought caused to their 2012 bottom line.

One thing’s for sure though, the effects of the drought are still being felt and will be for quite some time. In this issue we look at the impact of the drought on the livestock indus-try and agricultural credit.

On a more pleasant topic, I know there are many farmers in our six-county area who are also collectors of various farm-related items. Whether you collect antique tractors, John Deere memorabilia or whatever, or know someone who does, we’d love to hear from you.

As always, we welcome your input and contributions. Have a topic you’d like to see us cover? Know a farm family wor-thy of a profile? Let me know. I can’t promise we’ll get to all of them, but we will try.

We’re also looking for your contributions whether they be 4-H club news, FFA news, calendar items, whatever. If we feel it’s a good fit for Farm Indiana, we’ll include it in our next issue.

Send your contributions, thoughts, suggestions, etc., to me at [email protected], or call me at 812-379-5625 or visit us on Facebook at Facebook.com/farmindiana.

Comments should be sent to Doug Showalter, The Republic, 333 Sec-ond St., Columbus, IN 47201 or call 812-379-5625 or [email protected]. Advertising information: Call 812-379-5690. ©2012 by Home News Enterprises All rights reserved. Reproduction of stories, photographs and advertisements without permission is prohibited.

EDITOR'S NOTE

DOUG SHOWALTER

were pretty fortunate with corn silage. It looks good; there were more kernels of corn than we thought, so I don’t think we’ll need to cull.”

Rare surplusJust outside St. Paul in Decatur County, Keith Hu-

ber, who milks a herd of 80 and raises corn, beans and forage at the Huber Family Dairy, is also enjoying a rare surplus of grain.

An early September U.S. Department of Agricul-ture Crop Production Report indicated this year’s na-tional corn crop was the smallest since 2006.

“Fortunately, we’ve got plenty of grain. We can feed our cows and still have some left over to take to mar-ket. Hay has been hit hard, but we planned ahead and have some reserves left over from last year, so I think we’ll be all right for the winter.”

Th e problem, Huber said, is the milk price/feed cost ratio. Nationally, that ratio is currently running at about $3.

“We like to see that ratio at about $8,” Huber said. “It’s projected to return to about $6 in December where you probably won’t starve to death, but at $3 you’re going out of business.”

With those margins and a sluggish national dairy market, Huber said his family will be monitoring milk production over the coming months and possibly downsizing to 70 or 75 head.

But he doesn’t see a signifi cant exodus from the in-dustry here in the grain belt as opposed to the South-west and other areas of the country that were harder

hit by drought and need to import corn.“I’ve been dairy farming for 55 years, and I’ve found

if I stay with it, I’ll be OK.”It’s a similar long view that Bartholomew County

beef producer Wayne Downey is taking in the face of rising feed prices.

Down E Farms, a 50-head custom order beef op-eration near Hope, has seen its corn prices double in the last two years and byproducts increase by 25 per-cent. Downey, who raises his own hay, generally with enough left over to sell, caught a break with the Sep-tember rains that put his pastures back on the mend.

“I think I can get them enough to get them through the winter, but it’s going to be kind of iff y,” Downey said.

“We’re being real prudent about culling and keep-ing any animal that’s going to be valuable,” he said.

On the horizonDowney said if beef producers can hang on, a prom-

ising future may be just over the horizon.“Long term things look pretty good,” he said. “Per

capita consumption is holding pretty steady in the U.S., and worldwide the demand for beef is up, devel-oping more export markets.”

Nationally, there has been a signifi cant amount of culling over the last three years, and the industry is back to the cattle counts of the mid-1950s, signal-ing a positive supply/demand outlook for producers, Downey said.

“You’ve just got to be innovative and watch what you’re doing,” he said. “It’s not going to be a rosy pic-ture, but we’re hoping we can sustain ourselves and get through this.”

Th e extra rub livestock producers will feel from the 2012 parching is they have two seasons of feeding to get through before the next — and hopefully better — crop comes in.

“It’s going to be hard,” said Daniel Wilson, exten-sion educator at Purdue University Extension Offi ce in Decatur County. “Th ey’re going to have to plan to get through the winter months and then fi gure out how to feed their animals next season as well.”

Hard, however, is just another day at the offi ce on the farm, and without exception, every producer who spoke for this article invariably fell back to the fi rst axiom of agriculture: Th ere’s always next year. To say Indiana farmers are optimistic is like saying John Deere makes tractors. It’s just a given.

“Most farmers are optimistic by nature,” Downey said. “Tomorrow it’s going to rain; next year will be better. Sometimes you get pessimistic. Mother Na-ture’s been banging on us a bit, but there are a lot of good opportunities out there. You just have to work hard to fi nd them and work through this.”

Huber recalled a meeting with his banker some time ago, when the dairyman’s outlook didn’t quite square with the fi nance man’s tally sheet.

“About 30 years ago, I went to see my loan offi cer,” Huber laughed. “And he told me, ‘Keith, we’d like it better if you guys were alcoholics. At least then there’d be a chance you’d change.’”

CONTINUED FROM PAGE A1

FEED

Wayne Downey stands next to silage he uses to help feed his cattle.

PHOTO BY AARON FERGUSON

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There have been some instances of afl atoxin in corn brought to market locally, but so far, at least, it doesn’t appear to be a major problem for corn producers.

“We are seeing it,” said Bartholomew County ex-tension agent Mike Ferree. “I was talking to a producer this week that had some loads that went in, and it was above a cer-tain level.”

Th e drought and extreme heat season-long have led to perfect conditions for Aspergillus, a fungus that infects corn ears and produces af-latoxin, a toxic carcinogen that can also cause health problems for livestock that consume contaminated corn.

Th ere is some Aspergillus ear rot out there in local fi elds, but it varies greatly from fi eld to fi eld, mostly depending on planting time and environmental conditions at pollination and soil type.

“What we found early on was that the earlier planted, maybe drought-stressed fi elds, sandy ground or the hills in fi elds might be more in-clined to show it,” Ferree said.

Most local corn producers, like Scott Stam of Hartsville, don’t really fi nd out about the level of afl atoxins in their corn until it is sam-pled at the grain elevator when it is sold.

“I’d heard of it in the neighborhood,” Stam said. “I guess the conditions were just right for it.

“Th e fi eld it came out of, it was hard to fi nd an ear of corn in it,” he said. “It’s pretty sad.”

Greg Daily of Daily Feed and Grain in Columbus said that as of the end of September, “It has not been too bad.

“We have only had to reject three loads so far for afl atoxins,” he said. “But our cutoff , because we grind feed and everything, we’re not taking anything over 20 parts per billion.”

Not bad so farHe said a few local farmers have found low levels in samples

brought in from their fi elds.“Th ey went out, picked some ears and we shelled them off and

ran them through sampling, and we’ve had some with low lev-els, but not too much,” Daily said. “Not nearly what we thought it was going to be.”

He said more loads are being rejected in areas where sandy soil may have led to a greater incidence of the afl atoxin mold.

“Th ey’ve actually had a lot more up in the (northern) area because of the hotter sand ground, more stress ground,” Daily said. “It seems like it was more prevalent on that sandy ground rather than on the clay soil.”

Daily said testing a truckload of corn fresh from harvest

BY JEFF TRYON

Above: A black-light scan reveals glowing afl atoxins in corn tested at Daily Feed & Grain. Left: The test sample on the right is positive for afl atoxins (indicated by one red line.) The

two red lines on the other samples indicate the test was negative. PHOTOS BY SHARON SHIPLEY

Soil type, drought affected amount of aflatoxins in this year’s harvested corn

is “kind of luck of the draw.”

“You take a sample on a truck, and you have millions and millions of kernels of corn in that,” he said. “And you’re probing two times. You’ve got a small sam-ple, a 1,000- to 1,200-gram sample, and then of that you’re only grind-ing 200 grams.

“It’s like you’ve got about four handfuls of grain out of a semi load,” Daily said. “We’ve actually had some where we re-sampled, and it went through.

“It’s kind of all the luck of the draw on the grains you get in that probe,” he said. “It’s not an absolute science. Th e biggest thing in how it comes out is the sampling.”

A truck load of corn may represent the harvest of a large area of fi eld, which may have a large or small amount of plants af-fected by afl atoxin.

“What you run into, it might have been a small part of the fi eld that was aff ected, and it’s on a certain part of the truck that you got on one probe but you didn’t get on another,” Daily said. “When you’re talking about 20 parts per billion, it doesn’t take but a couple of kernels in there to make a hot sample.”

Insurance considerationsTh e discrepancy between separate samples from the same

load can lead to problems for farmers who are insured against loss because of the afl atoxins.

“A lot of times aft er it is found in a sample at the grain eleva-tor, the insurance company will come out and collect a sample,

and they will fi nd a diff erent result,” Ferree said. “So what hap-pens is the grain elevator says, ‘We won’t take it,’ and the insur-ance says, ‘Hey, it’s OK, we don’t have to reimburse you.’ Th e producer is stuck.

“Th at’s something that some producers are fi nding,” Ferree said. “Th ey need to be aware that it’s being found, and the insur-ance needs to be notifi ed well in advance. I know that some-times, they want to be out there sampling before it’s harvested, instead of aft er it’s been rejected.”

Daily said farmers have some options even when a load is re-jected. Some elevators allow a higher percentage of afl atoxins because of the markets they are shipping into, and some agri-cultural uses allow grain corn with higher levels.

“Some of the hog farmers are buying it to feed to the fat hogs, and they can take a higher level than what I can take here,” Dai-ly said.

“I have to worry about everybody’s animals that I grind feed for. I just can’t take a chance on more than 20 parts per billion.”

Just how much afl atoxin can be in fi nished livestock feed and corn for human consumption is regulated by the U.S. Depart-ment of Agriculture.

Regulations for consumption by humans and dairy cattle set the maximum at 20 parts per billion (ppb). Corn grain for breeding cattle, swine and mature poultry can contain up to 100 ppb; for fi nishing swine 100 pounds or more, 200 ppb; and for fi nishing beef cattle up to 300 ppb.

Ferree said Indiana was part of a recent USDA ruling that al-lowed the mixing of grains with a very low or zero presence with loads that had a higher level, which could help corn producers.

Stam said he found someone to take his rejected load of corn, even though he is insured for it, “as far as it goes,” but didn’t know what they are going to do with it.


says. “To be honest, if there’s a stranger who has never met you, they see that sticker and they know that you’re being ac-counted for,” he explains. “People are looking for organic stuff . Consumers are the ones driving the change. Everything or-ganic is going through the roof.”

Because demand for organic produce has steadily increased over recent years — according to the Organic Trade Associa-tion (OTA), the organic industry grew by 9.5 percent overall in 2011 to reach $31.5 billion in sales, outpacing increases in comparable conventional food sales — Keith and Aimee felt the only way to reach these customers was through “being le-gally allowed to use that (certifi ed organic label) as advertis-ing,” he says. “Th at’s what we’re paying for, to let consumers know this product is safe. Th at certifi cation is the fi rst step in building trust.”

Th at trust comes from knowing the certifi cation process takes vigilance to careful measures and practices, and it keeps grow-ers accountable every year aft er the initial application process.

Local growers can apply for certifi cation through smaller regional agencies, such as Indiana Certifi ed Organic or the

goingorganic

BY SHERRI DUGGER

Becoming certified organic growers isn’t necessarily easy, but for these Indiana farmers, it’s worth it

Keith Uridel and his wife, Aimee, have been farming their land in Nashville for the past 17 years, but it wasn’t until fi ve years ago that they decided to apply for organic certifi cation status. Growers of strawber-

ries, blueberries, raspberries and blackberries through their business, Backyard Berry Plants, the Brown County couple had been buying and growing organic products for years for them-selves before deciding to become certifi ed organic as growers.

Th e decision to switch was more to take advantage of the “advertising” that comes along with the certifi cation, Keith

Keith Uridel harvests a couple of peppers on his farm, Backyard

Berry Plants, outside Nashville. He specializes in organically

grown berry bushes.PHOTOS BY AARON FERGUSON


FARM INDIANAA H O M E N E W S E N T E R P R I S E S P U B L I C A T I O N

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Becoming organically certifi ed takes a lot of work. Th ere are several steps involved, and there are fees associ-ated with nearly every step of the process. Growers must fi rst compile an Organic System Plan, which is essentially a contract between the grower and the certifying agency that, if breached, can result in the denial or loss of certifi cation.

In the plan, growers have to describe crop rotations, de-scribe soil fertility management, list water quality practices, indicate weed and pest management plans, list all inputs, compost and manure ingredients and equipment used, save organic seed labels, describe record-keeping practices, contamination prevention practices and more.

Growers must then submit an application, which in-cludes the completed Organic System Plan. Applications are then reviewed, on-site inspections are made (which can take up to six months, depending on the time of year and weather) and the inspection reports are reviewed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture before growers are notifi ed of their certifi cation status.

Annually, growers will need to update their Organic System Plans before their anniversary date, pay annual fees and go through the inspection and certifi cation processes all over again.

Ohio Ecological Food & Farm Association, or larger agencies, like the Midwest Organic Services Association, in Viroqua, Wis., and California Certifi ed Organic Farmers, which off er international reach.

“Agencies contract with agents who are trained in organic certifi cation,” Keith says of the process. “Th ey interview us once or twice a year, check our sales records, go through our books, inspect our farms and make sure there’s nothing that should be here that isn’t. My certifying agency gets their re-cords looked at, and it cycles back to me. Everything has a pa-per trail.”

Th e process involves so much documentation, in fact, that Keith says he sometimes spends “more time doing paperwork than farming. You have to account for everything. Every seed, every plant we sell … it all has to be traceable.”

Welch family farmKeith and Anna Welch live on a three-generation small

family farm, where they built their home in 1997. Around that same time, “we decided that there was more to sitting on the porch and looking at lots of mowed space,” Anna says, and so they decided to try their hand at growing food. Th eir eff orts started with installing 12 herb gardens and growing heirloom vegetables, but quickly expanded.

Soon they were growing barley and fl ax, and once Keith got a tractor, Anna says, he was hooked on farming. Now the couple harvests 12 acres of golden fl ax and buckwheat and 45 acres of black beans each year, and they have partnered with other area farmers to run Fields of Agape, LLC, a grain, seed and bean cooperative in central Indiana.

Becoming organically certifi ed wasn’t such a diffi cult task for the couple when they applied in 2011. Th ey had been grow-ing their foods organically from the start, Anna says, out of necessity as much as desire. Both suff er from allergies and wanted to grow foods without chemicals to ease their symp-toms. Anna, a former technical writer, had been journaling their eff orts to expand their farm since they began growing food on their Carthage property. So detailing their practices — a requirement of the certifi cation application process — was already done.

“We have always been conscientious about maintaining good records,” Anna says. “Th at is how we continue to work to-ward profi tability. I spend every spring compiling all that data, and it’s really benefi cial. It’s like any other business. It’s benefi -cial to see your patterns and to know where to make changes, to see what worked and what didn’t. We found it to be painless, and we’re dedicated to it.”

Langeland FarmsPatty Lange Reding manages the Lange family farm, which

dates back six generations to the 1800s when the Lange fam-

ily came to Indiana as German immigrants. Conventional food is grown at Langeland Farms in Decatur County, and in 2000, Reding began making a transition to growing organic food, too.

She now farms more than 300 acres of certifi ed organic crops. Reding works cooperatively with the Welches’ Fields of Agape business, grows corn, wheat, small red beans, black beans, soybeans, spelt, popcorn and hay, and she also main-tains a small herd of Angus-cross beef.

Reding says she began growing organic food to add value to her harvests, but that continuing the organic certifi cation isn’t always easy.

“It takes constant vigilance to do all the necessary docu-mentation,” she says. “And there is also that ever-present ‘peer pressure.’ Seeing a ‘clean’ fi eld of conventional crop where her-bicides are sprayed to control weeds next to one of my own where sometimes weeds grow bigger and more abundant than I’d like isn’t easy. It’s a challenge to keep weeds at bay.”

Maintaining the integrity of the organic process takes work. Organic growers must rotate their crops annually so that they don’t deplete their fi elds of nutrients by growing the same foods in the same spaces each year. It is imperative to

fertilize the soil. Th ere are approved organic fertilizers for this. “You cannot continually take nutrients out of the soil with-

out putting something back,” Reding says. But remaining organic does have payoff s for the farm, the

farmer and the environment — as well as the customer. Th e overall health of the soil has improved since Reding began growing organically.

“If our soils are balanced/healthy, it stands to reason the plant tissues will be healthier, and a healthy plant is less likely to be attacked by insects, hence lowering the need for as much pesticide,” Reding posits. “I also believe the same theory holds true to ward off problems caused by some of the more recent funguses that are beginning to attack our crops.”

Reding says she’d like the environment to be “less subject to chemical input. I believe we have the capacity through re-search to make this happen. And yet, we also have industries that thrive on selling the chemical products, and they also do research. Th e goal is to feed a hungry world. Where the bal-ance is remains to be seen.”

Balancing actSmaller organic farmers are also searching for a balance

between being able to grow their businesses while using lim-ited resources and funding and little help. For smaller organic farmers, the question isn’t about whether there is a demand for organically grown food, but more so how to supply that demand effi ciently.

“We know we’re supposed to grow food,” Anna Welch says. “We’re trying to soul search and determine what we are sup-posed to do with this food.” For the Welches to grow, they need upgrades in equipment; they need more effi cient avenues of distribution; they need more time spent on the farm and — quite simply — they need more money.

Organic food is produced by farmers who emphasize the use of renewable resources and the conservation of soil and water to enhance environmental quality for future generations. Organic meat, poultry, eggs, and dairy products come

from animals that are given no antibiotics or growth hormones. Organic food is produced without using most conventional pesticides; fertilizers made with synthetic ingredients or sewage sludge; bioengineering; or ionizing radiation. Before a product can be labeled “organic,” a government-approved certifi er inspects the farm where the food is grown to make sure the farmer is following all the rules necessary to meet USDA organic standards.Companies that handle or process organic food before it gets to your local supermarket or restaurant must be certifi ed, too.

The United States Department of Agriculture National Organic Program (NOP, www.ams.usda.gov/nop/Consumers/brochure.html) defi nes organic as follows:What does organic mean?

Th e certifi cation process

SEE ORGANIC ON PAGE A7

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them and they get sucked into the grain as it’s unloading. We put a tube down in there so we can get them out. And we also use rope rescue.

“We had training on it last fall at Daily Feed and Grain and Clay Township Fire Depart-ment.”

Johnson said they typically get a couple of calls a year during the harvest season, usually for fi res.

“Once in a great while we get called on res-cue, too,” he said. “I’ve been to com-bine fi res and grain bin fi res.”

He said it’s probably been about 20 years since there was a really bad farm accident rescue in the area, but he thinks local rescuers are prepared.

“We don’t have a lot of special-ized equipment, but we usually have enough stuff to get it done,” he said. “Like, if someone is caught in a combine, usually we carry impact wrenches and saws and cutters that we could use to get them out.

“Putting out fi res, we carry a lot of that wet stuff and foam on the truck.”

Dangers everywhereFarming is a dangerous, sometimes fatal occupation, more

than seven times as hazardous as other U.S. industries, ac-cording to the Census of Fatal Occupational Injury.

Th e agriculture industry ranks third in Indiana for deaths in the workplace.

Reviewing the list of fatal farm accidents in Indiana over a two-year period is a stark reminder of just how dangerous much of what farmers do every day is, especially the operation of tractors and other farm equipment.

Tractor-related incidents were involved in 48 percent of the recorded fatalities, about the historical average. Tractor over-turns accounted for 22 percent of fatalities and are still the leading cause of farm-work-related fatalities nationally, ac-counting for about 25 percent.

Th e causes of farm fatalities included “Tractor run over, while repairing,” “Tractor fi re,” “Tractor overturn, mowing,”

“Operator fell off tractor, plowing,” “Crushed while working on tractor” and “Run over by tractor — jump starting.”

Also, “Run over by skid loader which was backing,” “Run over by pickup truck in barn,” “Run over by semi unloading grain” “Pickup truck driver died aft er hitting farm truck that was pulling wagon load of hay,” “Car driver collision with com-bine,” “Tractor-train collision,” and “Semi-train collision.”

But beyond the preponderance of farm vehicle-related deaths are the 101 other lethal chores a modern day farmer might be engaged in on a given day, from handling livestock to anhydrous ammonia or the dangers inherent in working around power lines or grain bins.

Other perilsIndiana farm fatality causes included such things as “Hit by

tree limb while felling tree,” “Crushed by tree he was cutting down,” “Ammonia applicator hit power line,” “Fell into hole repairing water line,” “Crushed against tree by draft horse,” “Loader fell on worker’s head,” “Grain entrapment, semi trail-er,” “Crushed under overhead fuel tank,” “Entangled in PTO of farm equipment, “Tree trunk rolled down tractor loader arms,” “Farmer trampled by a horse,” “Passenger fell off horse-drawn cart, run over by wagon,” “Hit on head by wrench work-ing on combine” and “Fell from grain bin.”

Indiana recorded 23 farm-related fatalities in 2010, the most recent year for which complete statistics are available. Th ere were 20 in 2009, 28 fatalities in 2008, 24 in 2007, eight fatalities in 2006 and 21 in 2005.

Th ere has been a steady downward trend in the number of farm-work-related fatalities over the past 40 years.

Th e 15 Indiana counties with 12 or more identifi ed fatalities over the past 30 years included Jennings with 14 and Morgan with 13.

Between 1980 and 2008, Bartholomew County had nine fatal farm accidents, Johnson County had eight, Decatur and Jackson counties each had seven, and Brown County had fi ve, according to Purdue University’s Agricultural Safety and Health Program.

Besides deadly farm accidents, many serious, non-fatal ac-cidents occur each year, resulting in permanent disabilities, including amputations, spinal cord injuries and brain injuries.

It is estimated that slightly more than 6,770 other, non-fatal injuries occurred on Indiana farms in 2010.

BY JEFF TRYON

The recent rescue of a Jack-son County man who became trapped in a grain bin shows that farming can be dangerous

work, especially around harvest time. Most local fi re departments and fi rst responders have had

training and experience in farm accident rescues, according to Chief Ed Johnson of the Hartsville Fire Department.

“It’s really diversifi ed training,” he said. “I’ve taken anhy-drous rescues; I’ve been through grain bin safety, combine ex-trication, that kind of stuff .

“Usually training is sponsored by Purdue University, or the fi re departments get together and foot the bill, have somebody in,” Johnson said. “Th e anhydrous and natural gas stuff , usu-ally those companies will occasionally put on those kinds of trainings.”

Johnson said in most of the county departments, people grew up in farming and “they pretty much know what can be done.

“I used to build grain bins, so that gave me a lot of experi-ence there,” he said. “Sometimes people fall in, or they’re in

Staff members from Res-Q-Tube demonstrate how to use their product, which helps fi rst responders rescue a person who has been trapped in a grain bin. Friends of Johnson County Agriculture raised money to buy two tubes and set up a seminar to teach local fi rst responders how to use it. SUBMITTED PHOTO


Keith Welch still works a full-time job, leaving Anna, who resigned from her corporate position last August, to handle everything from marketing and distribution to grinding and packaging the products they grow.

Right now, the couple delivers food only to retailers within 100 miles of their farm — simply because they don’t have enough time and money to do more. Th ey work with regional bulk distributors, like Blooming-foods in Bloomington, Th e Good Earth and Pogues Run Grocer in Indianapolis and Clear Creek Food Co-Op in Richmond.

“We don’t want to get into taking it to 25 diff erent places,” Anna says. “It’s really a struggle for me right now. I don’t want to be a commodities farmer, but you have to have revenue streams where you can sell the majority of what you grow, where you can sell a few thousand pounds at one time.”

Anna is trying to fi nd new ways to bring in revenue and grow the farm, now that the couple operates on only one full-time income, but the reality is that she may have to take a seasonal job this winter to help pay their bills. Regardless of what measures she’ll take, “we’re not going to stop,” she says. “We live in total faith now.”

Th e Indiana State Department of Agriculture does reimburse up to 75 percent of the fees associated with becoming organically certifi ed to help smaller farm-ers, but Anna believes more could be done — on both individual and government levels.

“If people believe in organic, there need to be grants from private investors,” she says. “People should be able to rent the equipment they need for a day. Farm-ers need to work together. Th ere are things that need to be developed, so farming can be a little easier and more viable.”

CONTINUED FROM PAGE A5

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The Jennings County 4-H Junior Leaders are planning a unique opportunity where indi-viduals can bring in their electronics to be re-cycled. This special event will be 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Nov. 17 at the Jennings County Fairgrounds.

“So many times old computers, TVs and mi-crowaves end up in a Dumpster,” said Jr. Leader adviser Kelly Kent. This event is designed to col-lect the items and recycle them instead of having them end up in a landfi ll.

The Jr. Leaders are teaming with 5R Processors for the event where many items will be collected. This is an excellent opportunity for businesses to dispose of copy machines, computers, fax ma-chines, etc., that are no longer useful.

Some of the acceptable items are: comput-ers, monitors, printers, laptops, TVs, cellphones,

stereos, household white goods, equipment, microwaves and more. These items can be ac-cepted with no charge. Other items such as projection and wood console TVs, wood speak-ers, freezers, air conditioners, dehu-midifi ers and refrigerators will have a small fee ranging from $10 to $25. A data cleansing service is also available for $10 per hard drive.

A semi trailer will be onsite for the recycling collection, and the Jr. Leaders are planning on fi lling it. Volunteers will be available to assist with unloading the items and placing them in the trailer.

For more information contact Diane at 715-415-5366.

ELECTRONICS RECYCLING

Working togetherBeyond the government or individuals stepping in

to off er more support, Anna says one of the keys to success, in the meantime, is in taking the cooperative approach. Th e couple’s partnership with Patty Lange Reding, for instance, helps them to more quickly clean the foods that they grow. Reding owns a large grain cleaner that cleans thousands of bushels in a day.

“Fields of Agape owns a clipper grain cleaner that cleans 50 bushel in a day,” Anna says. “We are blessed to have Patty as a mentor and part-ner in organic food crop production. To become sustainable as an organic spe-cialty crop producer, it is critical to develop such partnerships and to work cooperatively within regions. We have to take care of one another. Share our gift s.”

As for Patty Lange Reding, she is happy to share her gift s with her farming friends, her business partners and with the world at large.

“I am proud to be an American farmer,” she says. “I have farms that are both organic and conventional. In my opinion, our soil health and eco-system health would benefi t from a better-balanced farming practice.

“In the meantime, I am continuing to farm organi-cally, and I will scowl and tug at my weeds and smile at my profi t. And hope the generations who follow will fi nd I have been a good steward of the land.”

FARMLAND LEASE GUIDELINES

T he fall prompts lots of questions about farmland rental arrangements. One of the questions is, “What is the typical arrangement for a farmland rental agreement?” In Indiana, 52 percent of

farmland is leased. Of that, 44.4 percent is cash leased, 21.4 percent is share leased, 21.4 percent is cash/share and 6.3 percent is adjustable cash lease.

Each type of arrangement has its advantages and dis-advantages to both the landlord and tenant. The cash lease is more popular because it can be simpler for both parties. I’ve found simplicity is even more important today as landlords live away from the farmland and agriculture has become so much more complicated with technology and farm support programs.

The most common question about farmland rental arrangements is, “What is the going rate for cash rent?” Market approach and tenant’s ability to pay are two meth-ods for arriving at this answer.

Another question regarding leases is, “What is the no-tifi cation date for terminating a lease if the lease is not in writing?” According to Gerry Harrison, Purdue Extension economist, Indiana law says a three-month notice may be required. Whether a legal notice is required depends upon the existing landlord-tenant arrangement.

This notice is to be in advance of the end of the lease year. When a lease agreement does not otherwise specify, the end of the lease year is likely to be the last day of Feb-ruary. This implies that the lease notice must be delivered before Dec. 1 of the prior year.

The question of adjusting rental rates is a very common one. Many have not changed the rental rate in years and wonder if an increase is justifi ed. To answer that, one must look at what the rental rate was when the lease began and if current conditions warrant an adjustment.

Our offi ce has several references available to help ad-dress developing a fair farmland rental agreement for both the landowner and tenant. Two of these are EC-257, “Indiana Cash Farm Lease,” and EC-713, “Legal Aspects of Indiana Farmland Leases and Federal Tax Considerations.”

The August 2012 Purdue Agricultural Economics Report included the June 2012 farmland and rental survey results.

Mike Ferree is the Purdue Extension educator–agriculture & natural resources in Bartholomew County. He can be reached at 812-379-1665 or [email protected].

BY MIKE FERREE


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Th is year’s new items were white pumpkins and pumpkins with really large stems.

“Everyone wants the biggest pumpkins,” Sturgill said.He has just about every variety of pumpkin. White pump-

kins, orange pumpkins, huge pumpkins, pumpkins with large stems, jack-o’-lantern pumpkins, pie pumpkins, tiny pumpkins.

Sturgill said his smallest pumpkin fi ts in your hand, while his largest pumpkins are probably 60 to 70 pounds.

“You never know what someone wants,” he said.Th is year, Donna said, she wasn’t so sure about planting such

a great variety of pumpkins.“I asked him, ‘Why put them out? It’s so dry. Th ey’re not go-

ing to make it,’” she said. “He said, ‘I gotta try, Mom.’”Donna said because the farm doesn’t irrigate, Sturgill carried

water by hand from a tank to the pumpkins for two weeks to make sure they turned out well.

“Th ose things really took hold,” she said.Donna’s husband, Carl VanAntwerp, said they started their

farm with 13 acres in 1977 and eventually added 26 more. Th ey opened the farm stand in 1978.

“We started with an old wagon out front and a sign that said

‘self serve,’” Donna said. “Th e kids would take turns standing by the wagon with the money box.”

She said the farm and the stand were completely run by the family. While Carl worked at Cummins Inc. during the day, she stayed at home with their fi ve kids working in the fi elds throughout the summer.

In the fall, she said, she and her daughters used to paint the pumpkins to sell to people who came to the stand.

Carl grew up farming with his father in Vallonia, another area of Jackson County known for its pumpkins, watermelons and cantaloupes.

“When I got out of the Army, I started growing a little bit of stuff ,” Carl said.

Aft er he started planting a few things, the idea grew and has continued to grow every year since then.

Donna was a beautician before the farm and ultimately de-cided to give the idea a try because it would allow her to be home with her children during the day.

“I remember when we started, the kids were little enough they carried the baskets of tomatoes together,” she said. “We said if we earned enough money the fi rst year, we would buy a

BY JESSICA SQUIRES

VanAntwerp’s Farm Market draws customers with fall crops as season winds down

Orange is the most celebrated color of autumn. As leaves turn and fall along with the temperature, one thing comes to mind when we see the color orange: pumpkins.

Donna VanAntwerp, of VanAntwerp’s Farm Market in Red-dington, said people know fall has arrived when pumpkins fi ll the stand outside their home on U.S. 31.

Th e stand sells pumpkins every September and October and always has something new to off er, said David Sturgill, Donna’s son. He runs the market aft er taking over for his parents six years ago.

Plenty of PUMPKINS

Left: The VanAntwerp family outside their market. The market, started by Donna and Carl VanAntwerp in 1978, is now run by their son, David Sturgill (left). Above: Sturgill picks pumpkins.

HOMESTEADS

PHOTO BY JESSICA SQUIRES

PHOTO BY AARON PIPER


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van for us all to be able to ride together.”Sturgill said he and his siblings defi nitely learned how to

work.“I just remember not seeing any of my friends all summer,”

he said, laughing.When it was time to retire, Donna and Carl said they planned

on giving up the farm and the stand, but Sturgill stepped in and decided to take over.

“I would probably be the last person they thought would do this,” he said. “I can remember doing it in third or fourth grade, and I hated it.”

But now Sturgill said he loves his job. Before taking over, he was a state correctional offi cer for 11 years. He said when his parents were ready to move on, he was ready for a change as well.

Sturgill said even though there are a lot of things out of his control when it comes to farming, he thinks there’s less stress compared to his other job.

“I really enjoy my job,” he said. “I work 15 hours from sunrise to sunset. I wouldn’t even be able to think about that in my other job.”

Sturgill didn’t just take over the work on the farm and the stand. Th e family also has sold produce at farmers markets in the state since 1984, and he continues the tradition.

“We fi rst sold retail at the Bloomington farmers market,” Donna said. “Th at fi rst Saturday we sold out the truck. As fast as we could put tomatoes out, they were gone.”

Since then the endeavor has expanded, and Sturgill frequents markets in Bloomington, Carmel and Indianapolis.

“It’s a family tradition,” he said. “People will stand in line.”Sturgill said people know him as “Tomato Dave” at the markets.“Tomatoes are really the bread and butter of the farm,” he

said. “I want to stick with what’s been best for our family.”Sturgill said he doesn’t tell people that his tomatoes are the

best. He said he tells people to try everyone’s tomatoes and stick with the ones they like the best, but they always come back.

“It has to be the quality,” he said.He said when people stand in line at the market, they see the

prices others pay for his tomatoes and ask if they are worth it. He said the people buying always say his tomatoes are the best.

“I don’t have to say anything,” Sturgill said. “People want more bang for their buck, and we just try to provide that.”

Sturgill said he has about three and a half acres of tomatoes, not to mention the tomatoes he grows in the greenhouse. He said it all adds up to about 10,000 tomato plants.

Th e farm produces three types of heirloom tomatoes, three types of grape tomatoes, three types of beef steak tomatoes and plenty more.

“We always try to be the fi rst tomatoes out, and we normally are,” Sturgill said.

Th e farm still has more to off er. Th ere are no root crops, but the farm produces watermelons, cantaloupe, honeydew melons, sweet corn, strawberries, blackberries, zucchini, bell peppers, jalapeños, habañero peppers, eggplants and even more.

Sturgill is currently the biggest grower of rhubarb in Jackson County, and besides pumpkins in the fall, he has gourds and squashes.

“It took years of doing it to fi nd what’s best,” Donna said.“Over the years we have experimented with every variety,”

Carl said.Now Sturgill runs the farm like a well-oiled machine.“Farmers take their money and bury it in the fi eld, but I’ve

never been happier,” Sturgill said.“God has been very faithful,” Donna said. “Every year we

have had a crop that has produced. It has not failed us.”

THE FOLLOWING RECIPES ARE COURTESY OF

Donna VanAntwerp of VanAntwerp’s Farm Market in Reddington.

Fall Recipes�

AUTUMN VEGGIES1 butternut squash1 sweet potato3 Yukon gold potatoes1 cup carrots1 cup bell peppers3 tablespoons balsamic or red wine vinegar2 teaspoons rosemary and thyme1 teaspoon olive oil1 teaspoon salt½ teaspoon pepper

Peel butternut squash and dice with vegetables. Mix ingredients together and spread across a baking sheet. Cook in the oven for 30 minutes at 425 degrees.

PUMPKIN BARS & CREAM CHEESE ICING»2 cups fl our2 teaspoons baking powder½ teaspoon salt1 teaspoon baking soda2 teaspoons cinnamon2 cups sugar1 cup salad oil4 eggs2 cups pumpkin

Mix ingredients and put in a jelly roll pan. Bake at 350 degrees for 15 to 20 minutes.

BUTTERNUT SQUASH PIE4 cups butternut squash1 cup brown sugar1 cup sugar3 tablespoons fl our2 teaspoons vanillaDash of salt4 eggs2 cups evaporated milk1 teaspoon cinnamon

Blend squash, brown sugar, sugar, fl our, vanilla, salt and eggs. Mix with milk and cinnamon. Cook in oven for 15 minutes at 425 degrees. Lower heat to 350 and cook for 30 minutes. Makes two pies.

ZUCCHINI CASSEROLE6 cups diced zucchini1 cup diced carrots½ cup chopped onion1 package stuffi ng1 can cream of chicken soup1 small container sour cream1 stick butter8 ounces shredded cheese

Boil zucchini, carrots and onion for three minutes and drain. Mix package of stuffi ng (dry), soup, sour cream, butter and shredded cheese and put in a 9-by-13 baking pan. (Optional add chicken.)Bake at 350 degrees until brown and bubbly.

Icing3 ounces cream cheese (room temperature)¾ stick butter1 teaspoon vanilla1 tablespoon milk1¾-2 cups powdered sugar

Mix ingredients and

spread over cooled bars.

degrees.

NG»

cook

ZUC6 cu1 cup


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move for the benefi t of their new baby, Beulah Mae. Th ey moved into the farmhouse together in 1906. Beulah

Mae would live there for the rest of her life.Line of matriarchsIn the Mardis family, success on the farm has been as much

about strong leadership by the mothers and daughters in the barns as by the men working the fi elds. Beulah Mae, who was widowed in 1936, looked over the property for most of her life. Her mother also lived in the house aft er her husband died in 1929.

Necessity forced them to take on the farm work themselves, with the help of their children.

Th ey sold eggs and cream to the local grocery stores. June remembers being 7 years old when her grandmother showed her the proper way to pluck the feathers and get the bird ready to be slaughtered.

“I couldn’t reach the chickens without standing on a chair, so I’d get up on a chair and clean those chickens,” she said.

Th e tomatoes the children painstakingly planted were sold to a canning factory in Franklin. A brick building to the rear of the house had been a milking barn for the family’s dairy cows. Above it was a smoke house for curing meat. A wooden well house protected the farm’s main source of water.

Everything they grew in the large garden behind the house was canned for the winter — beans, tomatoes, pickles and corn.

“I remember riding on the back of a tractor, planting toma-toes out in that fi eld. Th at wasn’t fun. It was hard work,” June said.

But at the same time, the sisters recognize the importance their farm upbringing had. For every hot, sweaty day in the fi eld, there were dozens of experiences they wouldn’t have had if they lived in town.

Th ey’d spend hours in the woods surrounding their farm

fi elds, playing hide-and-seek and tag. Every morning, a horse-drawn wagon would come to pick them up and drive them to Needham schools.

“When I get to town, I can’t imagine people living there. Th ey’re so close to each other. We had a horse, and we had the freedom to go anywhere,” Margaret said.

Th at nostalgia helps drive their eff orts to save the farm now and made it important to be recognized for the history of their homestead.

Still in the familyTo be considered for Hoosier Homestead recognition, a farm

must have remained in the same family for at least 100 years. Recognition is given for 100-year-old farms, as well as farms that are 150 and 200 years old.

Th e purpose is to honor those families who have signifi cantly contributed to the economic foundation of Indiana and dedi-cated their lives to agriculture, said Libby Fritz, who oversees the program for the Indiana State Department of Agriculture.

For their recognition, Margaret and June received a sign to post in front of Cedar Grove Farm. Th ey also were presented with a certifi cate at a banquet with Lt. Gov. Becky Skillman as the 55th farm from Johnson County to receive the honor.

“We had a lot of people come up to talk to us aft erwards, be-cause I think they thought we were the original owners of the 100-year-farm,” the 85-year-old June said with a laugh.

Walking through the historic farmhouse, Margaret and June point out oddities and quirks about the structure that’s almost 150 years old.

A collection of gas lamps that once lighted the home is ar-ranged carefully on a display shelf. Th e wooden high-chair that their mother had once used sits in the corner.

Margaret, 76, stopped at a squat, cast-iron pot to tell a story.

BY RYAN TRARES

Sisters know that farming is women’s work on their 100-year-old Hoosier Homestead

Even before the sun had risen, Cedar Grove Farm was bustling with activity.

Cows had to be milked, eggs had to be collected, and chickens needed to be fed. Long days of planting

tomatoes, weeding the garden by hand and cleaning the coops awaited the Mardis children in the 1940s.

Much of the activity has since ceased at the rural Franklin farm. But the family has kept the property as a monument to its heritage.

Th e 105-year-old farm is overseen by Margaret Mardis and her sister, June Mardis Wood. Th ey still raise horses and don-keys while watching over the sharecropped fi elds of corn and soybeans.

Th e farm is now recognized as a Hoosier Homestead centen-nial farm, and the family points to the respect of its agricultural tradition for maintaining it as long as they have.

“We’ve had a really good life, but it’s been work,” Wood said. “But I don’t think that’s hurt us any,” Mardis replied.Cedar Grove Farm offi cially became part of the Mardis fam-

ily in 1906, aft er it was willed to Mardis and Wood’s grand-mother and grandfather, Hattie and John Holcomb. Th eir fam-ily had lived in another house on the property, but aft er their fi rst daughter died of tuberculosis, the doctor advised them to

Preserving their heritageHOMESTEADS

Margaret Mardis says these donkeys “are just like big dogs. They come

running when they see you.”


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It had once been used by her ancestors when they came from Tennessee in the early 1800s. When they woke each morning, the family would fi ll the pot with scalding water and put a little bit of water and dried beans in a container inside it.

Letting it sit throughout the day, by the time they stopped at night, the beans were cooked and ready to eat.

“Th ey had slow cookers before we did. Th ey just didn’t have the electricity,” Margaret said.

Renewed attentionFor the past two years, the sisters have been restoring the

structure to look as it did when their mother, Beulah Mae, in-herited it in 1946. By the end of her life, it had fallen into disre-pair. A leaking roof and broken gutters had caused the plaster walls upstairs to crack and peel.

Letters, newspapers and other accumulated junk cluttered the hallways. A dusty wooden organ that has sat in the hallway for more than 100 years still has the yellowed sheet music rest-ing on it.

Beulah Mae collected dolls, amassing more than 4,000 of them during her lifetime. Many are still in the house, creating a problem of where to put them all.

“Biggest job is moving some of this stuff ,” Margaret said.Many of the rooms have been brought back to their original

glory. New paint, tile and plaster have made the house look as it did in the early 1900s. June craft ed new drapes and curtains out of lacy material that Beulah Mae had bought in bulk.

June and Margaret have also paid tribute to their mother’s art career.

Beulah Mae was a renowned local painter, giving lessons to aspiring young artists and creating the book cover for “Frank-lin: A Pictorial History.” Th e framed original of that painting still hangs in the house, as do dozens of her other works.

Continuity is a virtue the Mardis family has upheld. Th e same sharecroppers have worked the fi elds since 1957. Margaret helps review the planting and harvesting numbers, but other-wise allows them to operate on their own.

Over the years, the Mardis family has had a close relationship

with the farm community in Johnson County. Beulah Mae was a 4-H member when she was growing up, when the organization was called the Pig Club.

When her daughters were old enough to join, she became a 4-H leader.

June and Margaret have been active in Farm Bureau’s Farm in the Classroom, teaching a new generation of children about agriculture.

Th at will remain the same, no matter what becomes of their historic farm.

“Living on the farm is something we’ve enjoyed. It’s a special feeling,” Margaret said.

She and June acknowledge that they’ll have to sell part of their farm in the near future. Th eir oldest brother, Dean, died in 2000, and their other brother, John, has never been interested in farming.

“I hate to let go of any of it, but I’m going to try to keep this house,” Margaret said. “I own a quarter of the farm already; part of mine will include this, even if we have to sell.”

Margaret MardisAGE: 76HOME: FranklinOCCUPATION: Retired art teacher

June Mardis WoodAGE: 85HOME: FranklinOCCUPATION: Retired auditor for Johnson County and the U.S. government

Cedar Grove FarmFOUNDED: 1906CROPS: Corn and soybeans; raised dairy cows, chickens and hogs. Currently rents the land to another family and raises horses and donkeys.

Left: June Mardis Wood and Margaret Mardis hold a 1906 photo of their mother, Beulah Mae Holcomb Mardis, on a pony in front of their 1868 Italianate style home. From top: The farm’s Hoosier Homestead award, the sisters in front of their home and a freshly cut cornfi eld.PHOTOS BY MARK FREELAND

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Timber consultants help landowners see the forest for the trees

Left: Jeff Settle explains that dead or dying trees are not harvested, but left to return to the forest fl oor and eventually

nourish other trees. Inset: DNR District Forester Ben McKinney holds a Doyle Log Scale ruler used to determine the number of

board feet of timber a tree will produce. Above: This tree typifi es the ideal tree ready for harvest. It has good dimension in both height and diameter, is very straight and has no visible damage to its trunk.

PHOTOS BY GREG JONES

Rob Haubry, a consulting forester, holds a damaged beech tree that will eventually die as more valuable hardwoods become dominant at a timber harvest site near Gnaw Bone. PHOTOS BY AARON FERGUSON

November 2012 | Section B

Th e timber industry is showing signs of recovering from a multiyear slump, which is good economic news throughout the area for timber owners, loggers, veneer and lumber sawmills, as well as the secondary businesses they supply.

Jeff Settle, a DNR forest resource analyst at Jackson/Washington State Forest, said the for-est products economy has been “teasing.”

“Th ere’s a feeling that things are fi nally turning around and people get pretty opti-mistic,” he said. “We’re hearing good housing numbers, employment; and then it kind of falls back. It’s like someone turns around and pulls the rug out from underneath you.”

Indiana ranks third in the nation in hard-wood lumber production and ninth in total lumber production. Settle’s offi ce tracks lum-ber prices, and they are improving somewhat, he said.

“Th ings are a little better. Th ey’re not great, but guys are saying they can move their prod-ucts. Profi tability is still an issue. But the over-all feeling is, well, here not too long ago we couldn’t even move material for any price.

“Are things great? No. But they’re better

than what they were,” Settle said. “When you talk to some of the larger industries, they’re still saying 2013 is when they think we’ll see a more signifi cant turnaround.

“But it’s kind of like predicting the weather.”Regional District Forester Robert McGriff

also sees signs of improvement.“I do believe that timber prices have im-

proved a little bit from their low point in may-be 2009,” he said “So things have improved a little bit.

“We did just sell timber here (Selmier State Forest) in June, and I thought it sold very well. I think we had seven bids on that timber, and there was quite a bit of interest.”

Nearly all of Indiana’s 4.7 million acres of forest, 95 percent, is hardwood forest with 3.4 million acres of oak and hickory alone.

Th ose forest resources feed Indiana’s $3 bil-lion-a-year forest products industry, the state’s sixth largest industry, which employs more than 50,000 people, mostly in the southern half of the state, with a $1.4 billion payroll, ac-cording to the 2006 economic census.

Looking upWilliam Hoover, of Purdue University’s De-

partment of Forestry and Natural Resources, said conditions in the timber industry state-wide are generally improving.

“Hardwood lumber production starting about 2008-09 was down signifi cantly, by at least 30 percent, and it’s been coming back since then,” he said.

“Th e logging industry was hit particularly hard,” Hoover said. “A lot of the smaller mills have gone out of business. Th at industry consists of a lot of small-

er operators who sometimes come and go depending on economic conditions.”

Th e industry that harvests, transports and performs the initial processing of logs ac-counts for several hundred businesses state-wide, employing around 2,000 workers.

“We do have some very professional logging companies that have stayed in the business through the downturn,” Hoover said, but “it’s not something that you can do as casually as you used to be able to do.”

Th e forest products industry has many lev-els, from the timber owner, logging companies, primary veneer and lumber mills to secondary manufacturers like furniture and cabinet mak-ers or manufacturers of doors or windows.

Th e local economic impact varies, depend-ing upon how much processing is done here and how much of the “value added” to the products is added here.

“Very little of the timber that is harvested in Indiana goes for pulp to make paper,” Hoover said.

“Th ere’s probably 50 percent that goes into pallet wood and railroad ties, what we gen-erally call industrial wood, and the rest of it goes into grade lumber or veneer — furniture or fi xtures or cabinets, millwork or something that is signifi cantly value added.”

Several hundred secondary wood-based

Hardwood can still be hard sell

BY JEFF TRYON

BY JEFF TRYON

Forest products industry remains slow-growing but valuable resource for state

SEE HARDWOOD ON PAGE B9

SEE CONSULTANT ON PAGE B9

Farmers are usually landowners and oft en hold timber lands as well as fi elds. And when those timber lands are managed and cultivated as carefully as farm fi elds, they can produce a higher yield on the investment of holding that ground and a sustainable forest.

But most farmers are not timber experts, are not familiar with tim-ber markets and aren’t qualifi ed or prepared to oversee logging on their lands. Th at’s where a qualifi ed con-sulting forester comes in handy.

“Th e thing about hiring a con-sulting forester is, you’re going to get your timber value before it’s ever advertised for sale,” said Rob Haubry of Haubry Forestry Consulting in Seymour. “So instead of a landowner saying, ‘Th is guy told me this and this guy told me that,’ based on what I know the market is doing and what I have been selling other tracts of timber for, I’m pretty sure what I’m going to get on a particular timber sale.”

Haubry said most foresters will be willing to visit a local farm woods and discuss with landowners what species are growing there, any problems that should be addressed, and what the ob-jectives for the forest are, whether maximizing revenue, wildlife habitat or just sustainable timber management.

“If the landowner decides he’d like to get at least an appraised value, then a forester would actually go out and mark the trees based upon that landowner’s objectives,” Haubry said. “Once the trees are measured and marked, the landowner knows ex-actly how many trees, how much volume and what those trees are worth before any timber buyer is involved.

“So if the landowner decides then to go ahead and have a tim-ber sale, then we have a base for the sale. Once we advertise the

bids, the landowner has a minimum he knows he’s going to sell the timber for, and that’s the appraised value.

“So basically the trees are identi-fi ed, marked and measured and a landowner knows exactly what he has before he ever puts it out for a bid.”

If aft er the appraisal is done, the landowner decides not to sell the trees, he would pay the forester for the appraisal.

Th at system makes sense to farm-ers like Tom Hackman of Vallonia, who farms grain crops, has livestock

and grows produce in addition to owning, along with his father, about 600 acres of timber land.

“With everything that we’ve got going on, quite honestly, I

know corn and beans, but I don’t know trees,” Hackman said. “Instead of just being at the mercy of a logger, using Rob, you’ve got some representation there, even though it’s going to cost you some money.

“Th is, to me, is the only way to go,” he said. “You get the job done right. You’ve got a guy that’s working for you and taking care of your property.

“I think you’re a fool if you sell on your own. It’s just one of those things where you don’t know what the market is. Some

B2 FARM INDIANA | November 2012

those who planted more corn, especially on our hotter sandy soils.”

Th e major factor determining whether farmers are going to sink or swim, Staf-ford stresses, is whether they purchased crop insurance and at what level they purchased.

“Th ose who purchased the revenue protection at higher levels may come out better fi nancially than if they had had an average production and average price,” Staff ord explains.

“Th e fall harvest price for insurance purposes has not been determined yet, but all indications are, it will be set rela-tively high. Th e farmers who have the plans that pay indemnity based on the better of the spring or fall price will have big insurance checks to more than make up for their losses.

“Most all of the insurance plans prob-ably will pay the producers some indem-nity,” he adds. “Th ose that don’t have any insurance and have the big yield loss are going to be hurt seriously.

“I’m very concerned for the livestock producer who is suff ering from a crop and forage production loss and now has to buy his feed at tremendous prices.

Th at is why the impact is going to vary greatly from farmer to farmer.”

Insurance and loansStaff ord notes that Farm Bureau is working on a plan that

could loan farmers some sort of advance crop insurance in-demnity money at low interest rates through Farm Bureau Bank to hold them over while insurance payments are being estimated.

“In the case of GRIP (Group Risk Income Protection) and GRP (Group Risk Plan) crop insurance, which fi gures every-thing based on county average yield, most payments won’t be paid out until next April,” Staff ord notes. “Most farmers, though, are going to need operating money for the 2013 crop before then. But again, every farm and situation is so diff erent and lenders are going to treat them on a case-by-case situa-tion.”

Farmers in Bartholomew County are not alone. Th e linger-ing eff ects of water-starved corn and soybean crops are hitting farmers throughout south central Indiana, including those in Brown, Decatur, Jackson, Jennings and Johnson counties.

“Th e impacts of the drought on south central Indiana farm-ers are going to be wide-ranging, from fi nancial disaster to one of the best years ever,” said Christopher Hurt, professor of agricultural economics at Purdue University’s West Lafayette campus.

He notes that situations will vary according to several fac-tors, including a farmer’s fi nal yields, if he has crop insurance and whether the insurance includes a fall price option, and if the farmer has livestock.

Farmers who have 70 percent insurance coverage or greater will be OK fi nancially, Hurt notes, but about 30 percent to 35 percent of Indiana farmers, including those in the south cen-tral part of the state, have no insurance at all.

“It is a very bad year for those who have near zero yields,” Hurt cautions, “and those who had forward contracted at the lower spring prices, those who do not have any crop insurance, and those who have livestock which will be losing money.

“Livestock producers will lose a lot of money, and the big-ger the operation, the bigger the losses. Hog farms and dairies will face the worst cash-fl ow situations, especially if they have to buy corn.”

Better than nothingHurt stresses, though, that the situation is better today, at

least for most. “Rains since August have restored pastures,” he explains.

“Th is has been a godsend for beef and dairy operations that use grazing. If those rains had not come, there would have been no fall pasture. Th is has allowed them to hold on to some of their calves and not be forced to sell off their cows.

“Rains have probably helped the soybean yields in south central Indiana, but the USDA (United States Department of Agriculture) did not raise those estimates in September from their August report. Corn yields are about 100 bushels down from about 170, the normal in south central Indiana.”

Th e situation elsewhere also seems to be a mixed feedbag.“No one wants to face a drought, but it’s part of farming,”

says Grant VonDielingen, crop insurance specialist with Mid-west Ag Finance in Rushville. “Th e good years must be taken with the bad years”

VonDielingen has a broader perspective of the situation than most. Besides his work with Midwest Ag in preparing tailor-made insurance solutions for farmers, he grew up on a farm in Jackson County and today, along with his father, Joe VonDielingen, and his uncle, Kurt Fenneberg, farms about 800 acres of corn, beans and wheat in Jennings and Jackson counties.

“On my family farm,” VonDielingen says, “we have harvest-ed the early corn, and some was what I expected and some was better than expected. But the average yield for the early corn

This past summer’s drought — the worst in a gen-eration — is expected to hit south central Indiana’s farmers in the pocketbook, though some will fare better than others.

“Th e actual drought condition is the worst that I can ever remember in my lifetime,” says 57-year-old James Staff ord of Columbus, an Indiana Farm Bureau Insurance agent in Bar-tholomew County. “Th ere will be a very wide range of eff ects on our local farmers fi nancially.

“We are seeing a wide range in yields and what kind of crops they planted. Th ose who planted more soybeans later or hap-pened to catch a crucial rain or two throughout the summer will have a better crop to harvest. Th ey will fare better than

And now, the aftermath

BY DICK ISENHOUR

Farmers assessing final toll of drought on crops and livestock

B3FARM INDIANA | November 2012

was not that great. Th e late corn is still several days away from harvest, and only time will tell what the late crops will make.

“Th ankfully, we carry a high level of crop insurance.”VonDielingen estimates that between 70 percent and 80 per-

cent of farmers in Jackson and Jennings counties carry crop insurance. He adds that the need for emergency farm loans has risen about 10 percent to 15 percent, mostly because of higher input costs this year, but predicts that the need for loans due to the drought will come about in the next 30 to 150 days.

For the futureLooking ahead, Purdue’s Hurt believes the drought will af-

fect many decisions farmers need to make. “Th ere are income tax issues, especially related to large in-

surance payments, and when those will come in 2012 or 2013,” he says. “(Farmers) have to consider how their fertility pro-gram will change. Since so much phosphorus and potassium were not used by the crops this year, this means they can re-duce those amounts for next year. Th ere also is a lot of nitro-gen left in the ground that was not used by corn, so some are considering cover crops this fall to try to take up some of it.”

“We are still fi nding out how much of a crop our farmers are going to harvest,” VonDielingen notes. “In this particular year, the early crops were more aff ected by the drought, and these crops are the crops being harvested. Th e later crops seem to be potentially better. Soybeans also seem to have a better than expected yield in areas, and along with a high price, they seem to be profi table.

“Ultimately, though, it doesn’t matter what inputs you use or the color of your tractor, in a drought, everyone suff ers.”

This year’s historic drought has provided a prime opportunity for a special focus on a most precious resource, our soil. Th ough we tend to think fi rst of the extreme weather’s

eff ect on our 2012 crop yields, its impact on feed sup-plies and the health of our fi elds could easily extend the damage into next season and well beyond.

ISDA encourages our farmers to minimize this im-pact by spending some time this fall considering their opportunities to improve soil health.

One way to address soil health and make the most of these conditions is through the establishment of cover crops like oats, clover, rye grasses and/or rad-ishes. Th ese can provide emergency forage, reduce soil loss, scavenge precious nutrients, improve water qual-ity, off er wildlife habitat and rehabilitate pastures, all while developing soil health at the same time.

Cover crops improve soil health by creating more organic matter in the ground and increasing water-holding capacity. Th ey help to reduce soil compaction and erosion, and can ultimately suppress weed pres-sure while increasing the yields of subsequent crops.

Th ey can also provide critical forage for grazing, chopping or haying at a time when livestock producers everywhere are facing cost-related challenges and hav-ing to reassess how to manage feed sources for their animals.

As evidence to the interest in cover crop benefi ts from our farmers, we witnessed overwhelming re-sponse to emergency cover crop cost share assistance from recent announcements of federal and state pro-grams.

In spite of the fact that the interest from Indiana landowners proved to be much greater than the avail-ability of funds, many landowners are choosing to continue with these conservation eff orts on their own.

Th ere are a host of resources that can assist these eff orts, including the Conservation Cropping Systems Initiative, Purdue University Extension, the Natural Resources Conservation Service, Soil and Water Con-servation Districts certifi ed crop advisers and numer-ous online chats, blogs and message boards, just to name a few.

Much time will be invested in the recovery from this year’s drought, and we will fi nd solutions to mini-mize the challenges of 2012, with a deliberate focus on improving our soil. Many diff erent avenues can off er help, arming producers with the essential tools they need to get to the best position for the future.

What is most exciting is that Indiana has proven over and over again that by focusing on our strengths and constantly innovating, especially in diffi cult times, we continue to propel Indiana agriculture forward.

Joe Kelsay is Indiana agriculture director.

In the wake of this past summer’s drought — consid-ered the worst since 1988 — all 92 Indiana counties have been designated primary natural disaster areas by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The designation is signifi cant because it provides loan assistance to all producers who suff ered a loss of 30 percent or more of at least one crop.

“It’s been one challenge after another this year for our farmers, who provide so much for all our families,” notes Indiana Lt. Gov. Becky Skillman. “This is another great step in the recovery process, and we remain committed to helping members of our agricultural community get through these diffi cult times and move forward with re-newed optimism.”

Besides loan assistance, the USDA also has improved fl exibility in its Conservation Reserve Program, mak-ing more livestock producers and landowners eligible

for emergency haying and grazing. For updates on the drought and more information on federal and state relief programs available to farmers, go to www.in.gov/drought.

Another option is the Emergency Drought Relief Pro-gram recently unveiled by MainSource Bank. It’s designed to assist the agricultural community in south central Indi-ana with burdens associated with the drought.

“MainSource Bank recognizes that the agricultural com-munity throughout the areas we service may need an avenue to rebuild any personal loss that they may have incurred as the result of the current drought conditions,” says Daryl R. Tressler, president and CEO.

“Our Emergency Drought Relief Program will provide MainSource borrowers with the opportunity to lessen the fi nancial burden that some may be experiencing as a re-sult of the unfortunate circumstances.”

Essentially, the program provides qualifi ed borrowers the opportunity to defer the principal portion of agricul-tural loan payments for up to one year.

For information on the disaster relief program, call or visit your nearest MainSource Bank, which has branches in most south central Indiana counties. For branch locations and telephone numbers, go to MainSourceBank.com.

Resources for post-drought relief

“Th is is another great step in the recovery process, and we remain committed to helping members of our agricultural community get through these diffi cult times and move forward with renewed optimism.” — Lt. Gov. Becky Skillman

Grant VonDielingen, a crop insurance specialist, inspects an area cornfi eld. PHOTO BY SHARON SHIPLEY

BY JOE KELSAY

Drought provides opportunities to improve soil health


A lease agreement with the Sycamore Land Trust, signed in 1972, gives the Bartholomew County Soil and Water Conservation District the privilege to use a tract of land west of Columbus, just off State

Road 46, for an outdoor nature study area. It is well-known now as the Educational Outdoor Lab.

Th e district recently held its fall workshop for Bartholomew County fourth-grade students at the Outdoor Lab. Unfortu-nately, only about half of the students scheduled to attend were able to due to bad weather.

Still, 271 children attended and visited various stations at the Outdoor Lab. Th e educational stations provided by volun-teers and district staff consisted of storm water, forestry, wild-life, erosion, the 3 R’s, soils and alternative energy.

Elizabeth Marthaler (Flatrock-Haw Creek Watershed staff ) provided students with a demonstration with the district river lab about erosion.

Heather Siesel (Solid Waste Management District) explained the importance of the 3 R’s: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.

Kathy Hershey (Wildlife Utopia) brought a peregrine falcon and a barred owl and educated the students about each animal, the food chain, endangered species and what we can do to help wildlife.

Rob McGriff and David Pyle (DNR) educated students about what it meant to be a forester. Two children from each group even got to dress up like a forester and a logger as they heard

the diff erence be-tween the two and learned about sus-tainability.

Erika Bonnet and Mike Ferree (Purdue Extension) educated the stu-dents with an ac-tivity that showed how when they combine all of their eff orts toward con-serving energy and using alternative means for energy, they can make a big diff erence.

Becky Douglas (City of Columbus MS4) educated students on water conservation and did a demonstration that showed how much water we really have to use. Students were given a bracelet to remind them to conserve water.

Heather Shireman (Soil & Water Conservation District) educated students on how much topsoil is available to produce food for the world population by using an apple as the Earth. Kids get a little review of fractions and then enjoy a tasty treat.

Our next workshop at the Outdoor Lab will be in the spring of 2013 for the second-graders of Bartholomew County.

Outdoor Lab teaches students

lessons from nature

BY HEATHER SHIREMAN

Clockwise from left: Kathy Hershey shows students a peregrine falcon. David Pyle talks about the duties of a

forester. Elizabeth Marthaler demonstrates erosion.SUBMITTED PHOTOS


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USE CAUTION IN MARKETING GRAIN IN DROUGHT YEARS BY JAKE WIENER

Now that we have the USDA’s October supply and demand report, the market has little to focus on

for at least another 30 days. In corn, the USDA lowered production 21 million

bushels with a national yield of 122.0. What may have been a surprise was USDA did not lower the harvested acres but, in fact, increased them by 300,000.

Of course due to the Sept. 30 stocks report, this year’s beginning stocks were reduced 193 million. To compensate for lower total stocks, exports were lowered 100 million, resulting in a 114 million drop in carryout to 619 million bushels from the previous month.

So what now? Th is is the question on everyone’s mind. Th e bull still wants to advertise that we haven’t rationed prices high enough or long enough, since we only entered the new marketing year little over a month ago.

Perhaps the better question is, “What will the com-modity funds do with their sizable long positions now that the Dodd-Frank law is trying to limit their overall position size, which was just announced on Oct. 12?”

Th e sell-off following the announcement has been a bit brutal, but the same repetitive performance hap-pened again this month, as the market initially rallied on the day of the report (Oct.11) but fell out of bed in the following days.

Technically, the market has peaked with the August highs behind us. Weekly stochastics are now rolling over and support has been breached (as of this writ-ing) as the market tries to fi nd a fall low. Perhaps the gap on the weekly chart around $6.76 will provide support?

On a separate note, history has always been a good reminder and teacher. Arguably, some will say that in today’s markets, history may not apply. However, one always must be cognizant of what typically happens in short-crop years.

Historically, drought markets (short crop years), once peaked, have trailed off going into spring. Th e most notable evidence we’ve seen of this occurred in 1988, 1983 and 1974 in corn.

Most recently, the 1983 market peaked during Au-gust, and the 1988 market peaked during July. Only in 1974 did we see a rare top in October.

For now, we can say, historically, we can only hope that October may provide a chance of a high still in front of us, but looks very doubtful at this point. Th us, odds are low, given two of the three previous drought years happened during the summer months of July or August. Th e high for 2012 (so far) has come in August.

So beware of the “short-crop–long-tail” scenario … storing your corn into the winter or later may be haz-ardous to your bank account.

Jake Wiener is a local grain marketing consultant for Diversifi ed Services Marketing Group. He can be reached at [email protected] or 513-615-8913.

SCHNEIDER ELECTED TO BOARD OF NATIONAL LAW ASSOCIATION

Indiana Farm Bureau staff attorney Justin Schneider, a Jackson County native, has been elected to the board of directors of the American Agricultural Law Association, a national profes-sional organization that focuses on the legal needs of the agricul-tural community.

The AALA off ers an indepen-dent, nonpartisan forum for investigation of innovative and

workable solutions to complex agricultural law problems. This role has taken on greater importance in the midst of current international and environmental issues that are reshaping agri-culture, and the impending technological advances that promise equally dramatic changes in the future.

“It’s gratifying to know that my colleagues in ag law were confi dent enough in my abilities to cast a vote for me,” said Schneider, referring to the September board election. “I look forward to working with the AALA to further the understanding of important issues that directly impact how farmers grow food and ultimately the people who eat it.”

Indiana Farm Bureau is the state’s largest general farm advo-cacy organization. Schneider, who earned a bachelor’s degree in agribusiness management from Purdue and a JD from Indiana University’s Maurer School of Law, has been with Farm Bureau since 2005. In his role as staff attorney and lobbyist he is primar-ily responsible for regulatory aff airs with a focus on environmen-tal issues.

A native of Brownstown, Schneider is a graduate of Brown-stown High School. He and his wife, Tammy, live in Columbus with their children, Jackson and Blake.

STAFF REPORTS

Jennings County Schools has been selected as a $10,000 winner in the Monsanto Fund’s America’s Farmers Grow Rural Education. This program gives farmers the opportunity to nominate their public school district to apply for a merit-based grant to en-hance math and science education.

After a three-tier grant review process, Jennings County Schools was selected as one of 10 winners in Indiana.

The Monsanto Fund will invest $2.3 million in ru-ral education across 39 states through this program. A total of $130,000 is being invested in rural educa-

tion in Indiana. This year, more than 61,000 farmers nominated their rural school districts to apply for this grant opportunity.

America’s Farmers Grow Rural Education is part of a four-part initiative that highlights the important contributions farmers make every day to our society.

Jennings County Schools wins rural education award


Craig Bolte dreams of working full time as a farmer someday, doing what he loves most and becoming the fi ft h generation in his family to pursue a ca-reer that is becoming more challenging for today’s

younger generation.Craig and his wife, Dawn, both 31, bought a small farm in

southwestern Bartholomew County near Ogilville in 2009, but they could easily be successful in their current jobs and ca-reer paths. Craig is a mechanical engineer who works at Ray-theon Technical Services in Indianapolis. Dawn is a physical therapist and clinic manager of Progressive Physical Th erapy in Columbus.

Although thankful for their good fortune to attend college and have good jobs, the dream of making a living by planting and selling crops, being their own bosses and carrying on the Bolte family farming tradition keeps the young couple moti-vated.

At Craig’s offi ce at Raytheon, he keeps a bumper sticker that states, “I’d rather be farming,” which has generated quite a few conversations from curious co-workers. He oft en fi nds himself answering the question, “Why?”

“From my standpoint, it’s something I grew up with. It’s al-ways been in my blood,” said Craig, who would help out family members on their farms when he was growing up.

He also heard the family stories about his great-great-grandfather, John Bolte, who came to the United States around 1880 from Germany and bought land near Jonesville to farm and eventually began Bolte’s Dairy. John’s son, Frank, con-

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tinued the dairy, and Frank ’s son, Marvin (Craig’s grandfather) continued to farm the same land.

Aft er Marvin’s death, some of the farm-land was purchased by Craig’s father, Tony, and his sister since other family members did not want to continue the family farming tra-dition. Tony and Craig will begin farming the land in 2016 as part of a family agreement.

“He just loves to farm and loves that kind of work,” Tony said about his son. “He comes from a long line of farmers, so I think it’s in his nature.”

Help from familyTony, who has always wanted to be a farm-

er, works part time with Craig on his farm, but his career has involved 34 years as a tool-

maker at Product Engineering Co. in Colum-bus. He looks forward to when he and Craig can spend more time on the farm together.

Tony is impressed with how Craig and Dawn have set a goal for themselves and are working to accomplish it through hard work, planning and patience.

“It’s real hard for the young generation to get started in farming, especially with land prices now,” Tony said.

Since Craig did not grow up on a farm, he started from scratch. He used money he saved for the down payment on the 95-year-old country home where he, Dawn and their 1-year-old son, Anthony, live. Most of his farm equipment is older, so he’s thankful his father is a master at repairs.

Although many told Craig he should con-sider a career other than farming, he received positive encouragement from his parents and extended family. And area farmers and agri-culture professionals were eager to see an en-thusiastic, young man enter the fi eld.

“We always encouraged him to do what he wanted to do,” said Craig’s mom, Connie Bolte, who said she saw his interest even as a young boy.

Engineering a careerCraig drove tractors on his uncle’s farm,

participated in FFA in high school and even considered being an agriculture teacher un-til his teachers persuaded him to study engi-neering in college because they saw his natu-ral talents.

“I originally thought I wanted to work for Case International or John Deere to build and design tractors. I then found out I would have to move to Iowa or Wisconsin, and I didn’t want to do that,” he said.

Dawn also did not grow up on a farm but has loved the opportunity to raise their son in the country and share her husband’s dream.

“With a farm, you’re basically owning your own business and being your own boss,” she said.

Craig said they work together as a team, and Dawn’s fi nancial sense has been a real plus to their farm business, which has a long way to go but has seen some early successes. When he wants to buy land or equipment, he creates an analysis of the proposal to present to Dawn for discussion.

“It makes me do my homework so there are no impulse buys,” Craig said.

Dawn, a former standout high school and college runner, has adjusted to her busy life that includes a 25-minute, one-way commute to work, dropping off and picking up Antho-ny at the baby sitter, working an eight-hour shift and fi nding time in the evenings for the family and farm paperwork. She and Craig joke that they each have two full-time jobs.

“It’s incredibly diffi cult at times,” Dawn said. “But we have a dream that we want to do this, and we will make it happen.”

Craig, meanwhile, has a 55-minute, one-way commute to the east side of Indianapolis to Raytheon, and Dawn without hesitation uses the terms “hard worker” and “smart” to describe her husband.

Craig planted and harvested his fi rst crops in 2004 and this year farmed about 200 acres of corn, soybeans and wheat in areas west of Columbus and in Jonesville, Ogilville and Elizabethtown.

Technological assistance“We are a small farm in today’s terms but

own most of the land that we farm,” Craig said. “Despite being small in size, though, I have incorporated many technological ad-vances into the operation.”

Connie said today’s farmers must be more

knowledgeable of business, technology, me-chanics and other fi elds as they try to be prof-itable, and Craig brings many of those skills to his farm operation.

“He keeps a spreadsheet for everything,” she said with a smile, noting that Craig’s en-gineering side comes in handy on the farm.

Craig said he uses GPS guidance for ap-plying chemicals and spreading fertilizer and sometimes for planting, and he uses grid soil sampling to make effi cient use of fertilizers. He also created his own farming soft ware program that tracks inputs, profi ts, insurance and prices from year to year and crop to crop.

“As my farm has grown larger, this data is invaluable to me as I can use it to identify ar-eas where I can focus on being more effi cient, as well as whether the farm is ready to take the next step in growth,” he said. “I feel like that gives me at least an advantage to know not only where the money is going but where it’s coming from to pay for things.”

So even though he doesn’t have as much cash, equity, land or equipment as longtime farmers, Craig said, he believes he can make strides through effi ciency.

He already is hoping that his love for farming will continue with his son. Anthony can’t wait to play with his toy tractors, and when the family strolls across the road to the red barn and stops to see the combine, Anthony smiles and stretch-es his little hand out to touch the huge wheel. He even cries if he sees Daddy or Grandpa take off in the tractor or combine without him.

Craig sees that as a sign that farming might be in Anthony’s blood, too, and that the Bolte farming tradition might continue for a sixth generation.

Bolte FarmWHO: Craig Bolte and Dawn (Boggs) Bolte graduated from Columbus East High School in 1999, both in the Top 10 of their class, although they did not know each other at East. Craig earned a bachelor of science degree in mechanical engineering from Purdue University and will receive a master’s degree in systems engineering from Johns Hopkins University School of Engineering in May. Dawn received a bachelor of science degree in health sciences from the University of Alabama and a doctorate of physical therapy degree from Washington University in St. Louis.

HOME: Southwestern Bartholomew County, where they farm about 200 acres.

CAREERS: When not farming, Craig is a system engineering team leader for Raytheon Technical Services in Indianapolis, where he works on the V-22 aircraft for the Marines and Air Force. He recently spent time on a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier running tests. Dawn is the clinic manager at Progressive Physical Therapy in Columbus.

FAMILY: Craig and Dawn were married in 2009 and had son Anthony in October 2011. Craig is the son of Tony and Connie Bolte of Columbus, and Dawn is the daughter of Ted and Karen Lucas of Edinburgh.

Opposite page: Craig and Dawn Bolte, seen here with their son Anthony, bought a farm near Ogilville in 2009. Above left: Craig Bolte’s grandfather and grandmother, Marvin and Martha Bolte, stand next to the family business truck on their wedding day in 1941. Marvin’s father, Frank, started the dairy farm and milk pasteurizing and bottling business. PHOTOS BY CARLA CLARK


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We can track fi elds with a GPS unit, feed the information into a computer and get a drainage picture of the fi eld. Th en we can use that information to come up with an accurate drainage map so we know how much tile we need to install and where we may need to level out some areas.”

Miers sees a couple of emerging technologies he believes will revolutionize farming even more. One allows a grain cart to “communicate” with a combine so the combine can unload its contents on the fl y, similar to an airplane refueling in mid-fl ight.

Th e other, being developed by John Deere, will make it pos-sible for a farmer to “tell” his tractor which fi eld he is working and then let the tractor do most of the work, including slowing down and actually turning.

“Th e farmer will still have to sit in the seat, of course,” Miers says, “but that’s about all he’ll have to do.”

Sometimes costlyLike Miers, farmers through-

out south central Indiana are discovering the boon to production tech-nology provides, al-though the extent to which farmers use technology varies.

“ T e c h n o l -ogy is being embraced to varying degrees by our farmers, probably more by the larger farm-ers because it oft en requires a large invest-ment,” notes Bob Steiner of the Jennings County Soil and Water Conservation District.

Still, it’s estimated that about 80 percent of farmers in south central Indiana at least use information technology and GPS for planting and harvesting, applications and soil sam-pling.

“GPS and GIS (Global Information System) are being uti-lized for various agricultural methods to gain maximum ef-fi ciency,” says Mike Hughes, district conservationist for the U.S. Department of Agriculture in Greensburg. “A whole host of technologies are being utilized at various adoption rates.

Whenever David Miers cultivates a new use for technology on the family farm in Decatur County, word spreads faster than giant rag-weed in an Indiana drought.

“I believe all farmers should embrace the use of technology in their operations,” says Miers, long considered an innovator in agricultural production. “Technology helps make farming more cost-eff ective, helps to increase production and is a boon in such things as the proper application of fertilizers and nu-trients.”

A sixth-generation farmer operating a farm that has been in his family for more than 170 years, Miers was among the early adopters of GPS (Global Positioning System) technology, grid soil sampling and variable rate lime and fertilizer application. He has used technology to engage in an extensive program of farm drainage improvement that has included leveling more than 1,300 acres, installing a half million feet of drainage tile, surface draining all fi elds and installing dry dams and rock chutes.

His use of grid soil sampling to determine proper amounts of fertilizer and lime, as well as his incorporation of crop yield mapping and global positioning to identify weak yield areas, has drawn hundreds of agricultural groups from around the globe to his farm to chew on his agricultural production prac-tices.

“I’m a big proponent of proper drainage,” Miers notes. “Our soil is mostly clay, and we can’t have water sitting in fi elds be-cause of improper drainage, and technology helps us with that.

Th ese technologies aid in better profi t margins while reducing the environmental footprint, which is a major goal in (Decatur County) agriculture.”

Indeed, the advancement of technology has helped Indiana farmers operate more effi ciently and increase the production level despite decreases in their ranks and the acreage they farm. According to USDA fi gures, the amount of land devoted to agricultural purposes in Indiana has declined from about 19.7 million acres in 1950 to slightly more than 14 million acres today.

Although the quantity of land available for farming has de-creased, the size of farming operations has grown. And de-spite the conversion of farmland to residential and commercial uses, productivity levels likewise have increased. Th e reason: technology.

In addition to GPS, technologies credited with making farming more effi cient and productive include biotechnology; growth of the Internet and its uses; improvements in the accu-racy of weather satellites; the cellphone; fi eld mapping; and the use of soft ware in grid soil sampling, which divides farmland

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manufacturers that dry, plane, cut and assemble wood prod-ucts into parts or fi nished products employ about 30,000 people statewide manufacturing things like kitchen cabinets, counter-tops, furniture and woodwork.

“Th e value added steps are very signifi cant,” Hoover said. “Th at’s where most of the value of the industry lies.

“Indiana is very lucky because we have a large value-added in-dustry compared to Illinois and other states,” he said. “Indiana is a net importer of logs. We import logs from surrounding states to be processed in Indiana.”

In fact, less than half of the wood used in Indiana veneer mills is harvested in Indiana.

Even exports support jobsAnd while foreign exports are a growing part of the timber in-

dustry picture, even trees that are exported have “value added” costs that support jobs and industries locally.

“Most mills buy their timber from within a 50-mile radius,” Hoover said. “Th at means that most of it is processed locally. Even if it’s going overseas, it goes through a concentration yard, it gets sorted at sawmills, so there’s a value added even if it goes for exports.”

Settle said export markets have “tremendously improved.”Rob Haubry of Haubry Forestry Consulting in Seymour said

exports have “really been helping us the last few years.“Some of these sawmills, 75 percent of what they saw is going

overseas,” he said. “China, Korea, Taiwan, Japan, you name it, they’re using it.”

Haubry said the restrictions on harvesting timber in the United States aren’t nearly as tough as in some other countries. Germany, for example, has very stringent environmental regula-tions.

And sometimes the hardwoods produced in other countries aren’t as good as what they can get here.

“Indiana grows some of the absolute best white oak in the world,” Haubry said. “Indiana is known for our white oak.”

McGriff said white oak and walnut have been selling well, while other species, like black cherry, have been a bit weak. He said ash is selling well, and he is encouraging people who are al-

ready doing some tree harvesting to sell it while the price is good because the emerald ash borer will probably kill it.

Settle said there’s a lot of poplar on the market and it has “sus-tained a stronger market than almost anybody expected. Profi t-ability is kind of an issue, but demand is still good.”

He cautioned that prices of some species may never reach lev-els they did a decade ago.

“I’ve talked to some guys who have been in the industry and have been operating sawmills for 30 or 40 years, and they’re say-ing, ‘If people are waiting for the red oak prices to get like they were in the early 2000s or the ’90s, they’re going to have to wait a long time.’”

Haubry said red oak is “moving decent,” while black oak is “not very good.

“Th e market is still soft , basically because housing starts haven’t picked up,” he said.

Lag timeEven aft er housing starts to improve, there’s about a six-

month lag in the local economy because the hardwood timber that is coming out of the woods is not actually being used to build the house; it’s going into furniture and molding and doors and cabinets.

“So, if you see the housing market really start to take off , it’ll be about a six-month lag for us,” Haubry said. “But it also works in converse, once the housing market kind of slumped, we still had a little bit of demand for the timber.”

But Hoover said housing isn’t the whole story when it comes to the timber industry recovery.

“Probably a third of the hardwood industry tracks the hous-ing market,” he said. “Th e rest of it is tracking industrial produc-tion and the investments the railroads are making in replacing ties or putting in new tracks, so it’s not all housing.”

Settle said timber owners are generally doing a better job than in the past of gauging markets and not overproducing.

“Previously, when you had these ups and downs, people would get optimistic, think things were turning around, and a lot of the industry would tend to overproduce.

“I think now people are really more in tune with the market,” Settle said. “It’s really helped to kind of keep things moving.

“A lot of mills used to just cut and warehouse lumber. But you don’t see a lot of that anymore, because they can’t aff ord to keep that inventory on hand.”

CONTINUED FROM PAGE B1

CONTINUED FROM PAGE B1

HARDWOOD

CONSULTANTpeople may, but usually the people who know the most about that market are in it.”

And besides market advantages, the consulting forester helps to protect the integrity of the land, oft en the land owner’s pri-mary concern.

“With Rob there, he’s watching over that stuff , he’s making sure it’s done right. It takes the pressure off of us,” Hackman said. “To be honest with you, somebody could say they had put all the water bars in, or whatever, and I wouldn’t know enough to know if they had been done right. With Rob, I think he’s got a better handle on whether it’s done right or not.”

As Haubry marks the stand of timber, he’s setting everything up correctly for future use, planning logging trails and roads that can be used again 10 or 15 years from now.

Th e forester makes sure best practices are used, and because the sale is pre-marked, landowners have control over their tree inventory.

“Th at way, we know what’s being taken out,” Hackman said. “It’s not like you just turn them loose in there, and they just take whatever they want.”

Managing timber lands means a better long-term return on the investment of holding them, Haubry said,

“Sometimes we go into a stand full of young red oak, white oak and black oak. However, it’s got an excessive amount of maybe lower quality trees such as beech, or maybe some soft maple or maybe the poplar is competing with sweet gum.

“We can come in and mark the lower quality trees and harvest those,” Haubry said. “Th e revenue from that sale won’t be high, but it will be some.

“Basically what you’ve done is reduced your volume per acre so you maximize the growth in the residual timber. And because you’ve removed the lower quality species and are growing the higher quality species, your rate of return on owning that prop-erty is going to increase.”

Haubry said most of his clients from around here have any-where from 10 to 30 acres of timber; the average in southern In-diana is probably 30 acres. He said the average timber holding in northern Indiana is probably only eight or 10 acres.

“But most of the time, if you’ve got fi ve to 10 acres or more, that’s usually when you’d want to contact a forester, because you really don’t know what’s on that fi ve acres,” Haubry said. “Th ere could be a few really high quality trees on that fi ve acres, and that could make a big diff erence.”

grid for use in determining fertilizer and nutrient applications as well as tracking productivity.

“Technology is increasingly allowing us to do two things,” notes Michael Boehlje, professor of agriculture at Purdue University. “First, it allows us to be more accurate in our pro-duction practices and get even more output from the limited resources that we’re using. Second, it does this automatically, without human intervention.”

Boehlje predicts that by 2020, farmers will rely even more on the marriage of agronomic, information and process con-trol technologies to grow thousands of acres of crops in ways that actually create smaller carbon footprints. Th is, he ex-plains, is because consumers will demand more organic, lo-cally grown and earth-friendly foods, with products labeled as such. He notes that the giant retailer Wal-Mart already is moving in that direction.

“If Wal-Mart wants that kind of product and expects to have that kind or product, they’re going to be wanting more information through the entire value chain — including pro-ducers — in terms of how those products are produced and what practices are used,” Boehlje explains. Farmers will have to balance cost, return on their investment in technology and environmental considerations.

Indiana grown softwareTechnologies already are emerging that will help farmers

become more eco-friendly. For example, Spensa Technolo-gies Inc., a Purdue Research Park-based company, recently launched MyTraps.com, an online data application that helps growers and pesticide consultants electronically track the number of insects in their crop fi elds so they can better control crop damage and improve their use of pesticides.

“In the U.S. in 2010, crop growers lost $20 billion to insect damage and spent $4.5 billion on insecticides,” says Johnny Park, president and CEO of Spensa and a Purdue research as-sistant professor in electrical and computer engineering.

“Insect population data is fundamental to any pest-manage-ment program. Most of the time, data is collected on sheets of paper by walking around the fi elds and checking insect traps. MyTraps.com provides tools to make the insect data collection easier and to make better pest-management decisions.”

Once someone subscribes to MyTraps.com, he can input in-sect data, and the online soft ware program will create insect population line graphs so farmers can target their insecticide use to where it’s needed, thus reducing usage in areas where insect populations are not high.

“Another important feature,” Park adds, “is that the pro-gram provides aerial fi eld images taken from satellite cameras and places the insect data over the image of the fi elds so grow-ers can see the insect population data on photographs of the fi elds.”

“Technology is being embraced to varying degrees by our farmers, probably more by the larger farmers because it oft en requires a large investment.” —Bob Steiner of the Jennings County Soil and Water Conservation District.

Rob Haubry shows Jack Christenberry of Tri-State an area where no trees are to be harvested.

PHOTO BY AARON FERGUSON


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Despite being fully armed with a fashion design and management degree from Purdue University, Te-resa Hatton has been tied to the rich soil of De-catur County all her life, and there was probably

little question she’d eventually wind up farming the same land that’s been in her family for generations.

In the early 1900s, Teresa Corya Hatton’s great-grandfather settled just about due west of Greensburg. Son Russell Corya followed his father’s footsteps, and Teresa’s father, Irven, be-came an entrepreneurial farmer in his own right — starting one of the fi rst commercial livestock feeding operations in the area, an innovation that caught the collective eyes of Purdue ag experts back in the day.

Her grandfather took over the farm along with her father, and in 1945 the house where Teresa and her husband, Jay, now live was built.

Th ere was a time when it was a hard row to convince dad to teach a young farm girl to drive a tractor. Aft er all, in her father’s eyes there were things a young woman could, and per-

haps should, be doing other than lumbering through rows of corn on heavy farm equipment.

Th at all changed, Teresa said, when her father went off to an agriculture seminar and she took that brief window of oppor-tunity to learn how to plow from a hired hand.

Th e obvious quips about being the most fashionable com-bine driver in the county aside, Jay said there’s no question about his wife’s operating skills.

“Th e combine is totally hers,” he said. “She’s a very good operator.”

Today, Jay and Teresa farm 1,300 acres of seed corn, commer-cial corn and seed soybeans, continuing a four-generation legacy.

“We feel very fortunate to have the privilege and the oppor-tunity to carry on,” Teresa said. “We’ve been very, very, very blessed. Th is is some very good ground out here, and there’s never been a year without a crop,” she said.

Besides years of persistent, hard work, the Hattons say suc-cess hinges on effi cient, sound farm management and market-ing decisions.

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Three crops better than one“Marketing and diversifi cation are the

keys,” Jay said. “We love knowing who the end users are, and we know the end users be-fore we plant the seed.”

Instead of planting one crop, the Hattons bring in three harvest products. About a third of their crop goes to a seed corn producer, with the remainder being split between seed soybeans and a commercial corn crop that winds up in Jim Beam’s distillery outside Louisville, Ky.

Having the harvest purchased and locked in provides at least some measure of com-fort in an enterprise dominated by nature’s whims, but prudence and solid management practices are the only ways to stay in the game — especially on a family farm.

“Family farming is diffi cult and somewhat on the way out,” Jay said. “You have to grow exponentially to get this done.”

Alternatively, they’ve become as effi cient and resourceful as possible with automated equipment and land management.

Besides utilizing GPS and automated pre-cision planting, maintenance and harvesting, the Hattons maximize their fertilizer dollars by having their fi elds computer-analyzed for productivity.

Th e farm is parsed into 2.5-acre plots, each plot evaluated for productivity with the most productive tracts receiving the most fertiliz-er. In that way, they avoid an annual fertilizer base spread and link fertilizing costs directly to land productivity, Jay said.

“You have to do this because it’s not like you have 5,000 acres to spread your costs over,” Teresa said.

“It’s just another stage of management we’re working really hard at,” Jay said.

Since purchasing the family’s farm corpo-ration in 2010, the Hattons have been essen-tially a two-person operation, only occasion-ally picking up additional help.

“We’ve become lean, mean and effi cient in our manpower versus the acres we work,” Jay said.

If Teresa’s specialty is operating the equip-ment, Jay’s is keeping it in the fi eld.

Born in Decatur County and growing up among the farms around Greensburg and Shelby County, Jay always had a passion for farming and farm machinery.

He raised cattle with his family, then found his niche turning wrenches on farm equipment.

“I thought if I can’t own my own farm, I can at least work on a farm and my own equipment,” he said.

In 1989, both wishes came true with Tere-sa. Th e two have been an ag partnership ever since, and they like it that way.

Small is goodRunning a small, family farm has its com-

petitive challenges, but the Hattons enjoy ad-vantages over the big corporate and conglom-erate operations.

For one, all decisions are made locally on their farm, they said. Th ey don’t have to wait for someone else, someplace else, to decide the next step, and that keeps their operation nimble and adaptable to the changing condi-tions and markets.

And while always “farming,” whether working the fi elds or replacing several barns damaged by last May’s tornados, the duo manages to fi nd a balance between life on a farm and life.

“Working on a farm, you don’t have that line of separation (between work and lei-sure). When we hit the blacktop, that’s when the work ends,” Jay said, pointing to the driveway between their house and the farm’s offi ce and shop.

When they do fi nd some downtime, the Hat-tons enjoy Jeeping, waterskiing, boating and being actively involved in the community.

Jay co-chaired their church’s capital cam-paign committee, serves on the area planning commission and board of zoning appeals and is past-president of the Decatur County Community Foundation, where he is active in the foundation’s Ag Field of Interest Fund. Over the last four years, the fund’s “Harvest A Row” project has raised more than $86,000 for county agriculture groups and nonprofi ts.

It continues to be a good ride for the Hat-tons, who remain “cautiously optimistic” about the current harvest despite this year’s

searing heat and parching drought. Th ey are doing what they’ve always wanted to do from as far back as they can remember on land that’s been in their family even longer.

For them, farming is more than a job, even more than a way of life.

“We are stewards of the land,” Teresa said. “And it’s our responsibility to not only main-tain it, but to pass it on in better condition than we received it.”

In the end, the Hattons say, farming in Decatur County is what they are and what they’ve always been.

“It’s our passion and our love,” Teresa said. “It’s our heritage.”

Hatton FamilyWHO: Jay and Teresa Hatton

WHAT: The Hattons raise seed corn and soybeans with the remainder of their land devoted to commercial corn for Jim Beam Distillery

WHERE: They live on West Base Road near County Road 400W near Greensburg, where they own 1,300 acres.

FAMILY: Jay and Teresa continue a long legacy in Decatur County and farm land originally owned by Teresa’s grandfather, Russell Corya, who was born in 1899. Corya married Ethel Alexander in 1920, and two years later, Teresa’s father, Irven was born. Irven married Helen Stockhuetter in 1945. Jay is the son of the late Jack and Donna Hatton from the St. Paul area. Before Irven passed away in 1991, Teresa promised to take care of what he called his “pretty farm.”

Opposite page: Harvest time on the Decatur County farm of Jay and Teresa

Hatton. At right: The Hattons are continuing a four-generation legacy.

PHOTOS BY SHARON SHIPLEY


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Look — no hands!

BY JIM MAYFIELD

Autonomous technology part of future for farm operations

At fi rst glance, nothing appears ir-regular or extraordinary as a com-bine pushes steadily through an expansive row crop fi eld, tended

dutifully by its tractor and grain cart escort.Nothing out of the ordinary, that is, un-

til the tractor turns away and plods toward a waiting semitrailer at the edge of the fi eld. When the low sun beams through the tractor cab, it reveals no one at the controls — the tractor is driving itself.

Outfi tted with an array of cutting-edge sensor technology and a brawny computer-ized brain, the tractor is testing Iowa-based Kinze Manufacturing’s “autonomy project” that allows the combine operator, in this case, to also direct the tractor remotely, enabling it to navigate and complete its operations inde-pendently.

While current technology allows growers to increase yields and effi ciency with fi ne-tuned planting, applications and harvesting through precision, hands-free steering, GPS guidance and computerized implement ad-justments, the Kinze project is the fi rst of its kind to develop completely autonomous ve-hicle control for row crop applications, said Rhett Schildroth, Kinze product manager.

“Historically, farmers have gone to bigger operations with more vehicles to expand,” Schildroth said recently, while speaking from an Iowa testing fi eld. However, fi nding and keeping a skilled workforce and equipment operators in the fi eld have become a signifi -cant hurdle faced by growers looking to move to the next level.

It takes little more than a passing glance at the controls of a Case IH Magnum to under-stand the skill set necessary to drive such a beast is vastly diff erent from that needed back when a Ford 8N was the tip of the spear.

“Th is is one way farmers can continue to grow their operations without having the people to do that. Autonomy is the next wave,” he said.

Essentially, the drone vehicle is retrofi tted with a cluster of sensors, cameras, radar and LIDAR units. LIDAR is a ranging and imag-

ing device similar to radar that utilizes light pulses instead of radio waves to paint a vir-tual picture of the vehicle’s path.

Akin to NASA technology used to land ro-botic spacecraft , the sensors paint a detailed, three-dimensional view of terrain surround-ing the drone.

“We could use it to see the glasses on your face and be able to tell what kind of glasses you have on,” Schil-droth said.

Real-time analysisHowever, the

scanned and digitized terrain means nothing if someone, or some-thing, is not capable of analyzing the infor-mation and making the right decision — such as staying out of the oncoming ditch, driving around a stand pipe or avoiding the occasional stray head of livestock, per-haps.

“A signifi cant de-velopment for us was the high-speed, ‘rug-gedized’ computer system,” he said.

Th at computer crunches the informa-tion and determines in real time the most effi cient path plan-ning and obstacle avoidance, Schildroth said.

Th ough not run-ning over livestock is good news, the bet-ter news is one doesn’t have to be a computer engineer to operate the system, the company says.

Apart from the science under the hood, outwardly the system appears deceptively simple. Sitting in the cab of a GPS-equipped combine, the operator is faced with a tablet computer and display screen with four opera-tional buttons.

By simply touching his screen, the operator can choose between having the drone tractor and cart match the combine’s speed precisely while it off -loads on the go; selecting “park,” which will command the tractor to leave the mother ship and rendezvous with the grain

truck; or punching “idle,” which will direct the drone to simply sit at the edge of the fi eld and wait for its next command.

“All the technology is hidden away, and the combine operator simply sees an aerial view of the fi eld and the drone vehicles,” Schil-droth said.

Wait and seeTh ough local farmers, especially smaller

operations, continue to focus on effi ciency to stay competitive, the system may be best suit-ed for large, mega-farming operations in the plains where expansive fi elds are more con-ducive to cutting loose an expensive piece of farm machinery and its tag-along fi lled with $10,000 worth of crop, said Decatur County row croppers Jay and Teresa Hatton.

While the automated machinery would defi nitely lighten the workload and reduce fatigue, “I think you’d like to see it proven be-fore it’s yours,” Jay Hatton said.

Initially rolled out two years ago for shake-down trials on Kinze corporate and family farms, the system is now out for selective fi eld trials on a limited run with row croppers in Iowa.

Ease of use and rapid adaption to the sys-tem have been the highlights of this year’s testing, Schildroth said.

“Th at’s been the take-away from this sea-son — how quickly the farmers are learning to use it,” he said.

Th e company sees applications for the system in all phases of row crop production, from planting to harvesting, and says in ad-dition to saving man-hours, autonomous op-erations can increase effi ciency in the already too short planting and harvesting windows.

With testing and development trials ongo-ing, Schildroth said the company continues to refi ne the system and has yet to determine exactly when the autonomous technology will be brought to market commercially.

Th ough the technology may still be a few years from appearing on dealer fl oors, it hasn’t dampened enthusiasm from the farm-ers that have tested the design.

“Th e one thing we keep hearing from the farmers that have used it is, ‘When can we buy it and keep it?’” Schildroth said.

Iowa-based Kinze Manufacturing Inc. has partnered with Jaybridge Robotics of Massachusetts to develop an autonomous agricultural equipment system. The system is designed to increase productivity, reduce input costs, and operate safely and efficiently. The system's components:

Documents

Farm Indiana November 2012