Roots to Leaves - Earth Day/Arbor Day Celebration 2022
We received some much needed moisture the night before and the day of our Earth Day/Arbor Day Celebration which impacted the number of people in attendance but the event was still successful. Those in attendance learned how to properly plant a tree, the history of Arbor Day, the correct way to prune trees and shrubs, about pollinators, how to do a soil test to make sure you have the proper nutrients in your soil, and the steps to begin a vegetable garden.
Children and adults enjoyed and had fun learning about recycling and why it is important, how to make a pollinator hotel, and a seed bomb.
Due to the rain, the tour of the Northeast Arboretum at the end of the event was cancelled.
Waste to Worth Tour Piques Interest in Nebraska Replication
After the Easter holiday last month, I traveled to Ohio to attend the Livestock and Poultry Environmental Learning Community’s Waste to Worth Conference. It’s a great conference for people like me – you know, the ones that really love to talk about manure. The conference is geared toward folks working in the manure education and research realm, so there’s a variety of manure educators, researchers, professors there as well as NRCS and regulatory personnel in attendance. It’s a great time, full of lots of poop jokes and good friends. And, we manage to learn a lot from each other while we’re there. A highlight of this conference is that the conference begins with a day of tours of area farms and businesses that are doing great things with manure or other waste products.
Of the 3 possible day-long tours, the one I chose focused on composting. The first stop was a family-owned and -operated Ohio EPA Class 2 composting facility. While they started by composting manure and animal feed waste, the Andre family can now take in human food waste to be composted rather than it just going to the landfill. Their main carbon source is still animal feed waste from a nearby dairy farm. Trucks full of biodegradable refuse of all kinds come in regularly from across the region.
It was very interesting to see the big machine called a “Tiger” that could crush pre-packaged food items (including soup and drink cans), extract the food and clean the packaging which would then be recycled. This pre-packaged food sometimes comes from area stores that had coolers break down or from the occasional food processor that had food items that didn’t meet inspection due to seal problems or mechanical failure.
Prior to our arrival, they had received a load of pallets containing unsellable cans of soup, so they crushed some for us to demonstrate the machine. The soup came out one auger, the cans came out another conveyer after having been cleaned with recycled water from their holding pond (where all runoff from the composting facility is held). It seemed like such a fitting facility to tour around Earth Day.
At another site, we met a beef producer/farmer named Aaron, who was involved with a Great Lakes Commission grant led by Eric Richer, an crops-focused Extension Educator with Ohio State University Extension. The purpose of the grant was to find ways to decrease the volume of manure that needed to be hauled to the field, thereby making it more likely that farmers could haul the manure further to fields that needed the nutrients more than those closer to the main livestock operation. The primary way of doing this was by composting the manure from his bedded beef barn.
While Eric and Aaron had access to a compost turner to make very consistent compost, traditional composting is rather time/labor intensive as the pile must be turned regularly to keep the compost up to temperature. Aaron was quite innovative; he had an idea to try static composting and was fairly successful. Using a 4” PVC pipe with a bunch of holes drilled in it and hooked up to a small squirrel cage fan, he tried static pile composting. He laid out the pipe horizontally and covered it in woodchips to keep manure from getting into the pipe, and then he stacked the manure on top of the pipe in a pile about 8 feet tall.
Without turning the pile, the air from the fan through the pipe kept enough oxygen in the pile to keep the microbes active, reaching a temperature of 160 degrees at one point and maintaining a temperature of 140-145 degrees for quite some time thereby minimizing pathogens and weed seeds from the manure without a lot of added labor. Additionally, the resulting compost pile was only about two thirds the size of the original pile, which meant that it would take 1/3 less trips to the field to haul all the compost as compared to just stockpiling the manure. In addition to the bulk reduction, the actual tonnage was reduced by 53 percent as compared to the fresh manure coming directly out of the barn.
After the static composting worked so well, Aaron took that idea and thought that maybe he could put some of the heat created with the compost to work. He built one of the static piles in a concrete bay outside his shop. While building the pile, he used coils of PEX tubing (plumbing pipe) to create a radiator of sorts throughout the manure pile. He then hooked up the PEX pipe to small pump and radiator and filled it with water inside his shop. He rigged an old box fan to pull the heat from radiator to warm his shop. It was very creative and kept his shop about 50 degrees for a good portion of the winter.
Aaron was using woodchips to bed his cattle. That’s not all that common here because woodchips aren’t as accessible as in Ohio. So, what does any of this have to do with Nebraska? I would love to see if static-pile composting works with manure that contains cornstalk bedding, which is more common here. I don’t have a grant, but I’d be happy to hear from you and share my experiences more in depth. Maybe we can even partner up to do a little testing of this process here in a drier climate with cornstalk bedding rather than woodchips.
Save the Date - 2022 UNL/SDSU Forage Field Day A Forage Field Day wil be held at the Haskell Ag Lab Farm on Thursday, August 4th. There will be presentations and demonstrations focused on forage production and utilization for livestock. More details will be coming. Watch this newsletter for more information.
Employee Spotlight
Mary Jarvi is an Office Associate at HAL. She manages the hal website, social media sites, and the monthly newsletter. Mary serves on the committees for Family Field Day, Fall Fest, Winter Fest, Earth Day/Arbor Day and other events to help plan, organize, promote and publicize the events. She also serves on the Northeast Career Day team working with educators, guidance counselors, and presenters to bring career and college information to approximately 1100 high school sophomores at the annual Career Day in the fall.
Please plan to join us at the Haskell Ag Lab for Coffee and Conversations the 2nd Tuesday of each month at 9 AM. We will have coffee and snacks ready. The next Coffee and Conversations will take place on Tuesday, June 14th. Alfredo DiCostanzo, Beef Systems Extension Educator for this area will be here to introduce himself and answer your livestock questions. Please invite friends and neighbors to attend with you to share ideas for programs. If you have ideas for presentations at Coffee & Conversations, please share with us.
Haskell Ag Lab Nature Camp 2022
June 13-17 - Details on flyer. For more information and reservations, call Sarah Roberts at 402-584-2234 or email sarah.roberts@unl.edu
HAL Science & Ag Family Field Day - August 3rd
The University of Nebraska-Lincoln Haskell Agricultural Laboratory (HAL) will be holding a Science & Ag Family Field Day on Wednesday, August 3. This is a free and open to the public event. All ages are welcome and encouraged to attend. There will be a variety of activities and programs. Registration will begin at 8:30 AM at the farm site with booths and activities scheduled from 9 AM to 2:30 PM.
A walking tour of the Northeast Arboretum will be offered at 9 AM and 1 PM. Trolleys will be available to transport individuals from the farm site to the Arboretum. A presentation, “2022 Nebraska Land Values and Cash Rental Rates” by Jim Jansen, Extension Educator, is scheduled for 9:30 AM. An opening ceremony will be held at 10 AM with cookies, coffee, and ice tea. During this time, Dr. Charles Stoltenow, Dean and Director of Nebraska Extension will be introduced. Al Dutcher, UNL Climatologist with Market Journal will follow with a presentation.
A pollinator program will be offered at 11 AM by Kelly Feehan, Extension Educator. Also at 11 AM a research farm tour will be offered. This will feature several UNL faculty conducting research trials at HAL.
Backyard Farmer will hold a live question and answer panel at 2 PM. Please bring your questions and plant samples if you would like them to identify an issue.
Food trucks will be on site and tickets to use at the food trucks will be given out when you sign in the day of the event.
Several activities and booths will be available all day including Heartland Docs DVM (Drs. Ben & Erin Schroeder) to answer animal related questions, University of Nebraska-Lincoln Mobile Beef Lab, Science Literacy Trailer, various learning child activities, self-defense demonstrations, health checks, geothermal greenhouse information, food demonstrations, ag budget calculator, farm safety for kids, drone demonstrations, and DIY waterwise landscaping by Nebraska Statewide Arboretum staff. Northeast Power will also be doing safety demonstrations, and several other vendors will be present.
For more information, call the Haskell Ag Lab at 402-584-2261 or visit their Facebook page at www.facebook.com/HALenrec/ or the HAL Field Day website at: https://hal.unl.edu/halfieldday2022. The Haskell Ag Lab is located at 57905 866 Road (about one-and-a-half miles east) of Concord, NE
Suggestions/Requests
Do you have a suggestion or a request for a program at the Haskell Ag Lab? We want to hear from you.
Click this link and complete this form and submit. We will look at all suggestions and requests. The form is available at: https://go.unl.edu/halsuggest
You can also reach us by phone at 402-584-2261 with your suggestions/requests for programs.
