The Grazing Adventures of FarminMike

Part 2

POWERFUL PRESENTATIONS!

Wednesday I had the opportunity to listen to Fred Ashforth and his topic was Powerful Presentations.

Fred taught us how to give a presentation so the people, “listen, remember and act”

He taught us to know your PAL

-Understand your real Purpose

– Know your Audience

-Be clear on Logistics

Understand your PECK

-being Prepared

-being Enthusiastic

-being Committed

-being Knowledgable

He was very warm and inviting and had us laughing. Fred was full of tips,  behaviors to use, behaviors to avoid, and we learned about Podium etiquette.

After lunch we got a demonstration on how to dress for a presentation:

After a laugh from this, we all took turns giving an Impromtu speech on a topic chosen by Fred, which really racked the brain because you spent about 30 seconds preparing until your name was or wasn’t called.*I was near the end so I went through this mental exercise several times before I was off the hook. I had the intention of recording this speech but unfortunately, the microphone on my camera didn’t pick up my speech, but heres a snapshot.

After we all gave our speeches, Fred encouraged us to join Toastmasters to gain more experience and he also said that if you see someone give a horrible presentation to have them contact him… LOL!

you can check out Fred’s website at http://www.fredashforth.com/

March 9-12

Water Quality Symposium

I drove down to Binghamton, which will be my home for the next week.

Tuesday afternoon, I attended a class on soil health with Dr. Harold van Es and Dr. Bianca Moebius-Clune from Cornell University Crop Science Dept.

They helped create a new Soil Health Assessment tool that goes into much further detail than the traditional chemical soil test. Here is a link to their website: http://www.hort.cornell.edu/soilhealth/index.htm

(taken from Cornell Soil Health Website)

The new test describes Soil health as a combination of several factors: Physical, Chemical, and Biological.

Physical factors:

Aggregate Stability, Available Water Capacity, Surface Hardness, Subsurface Hardness

Biological Factors:

Organic Matter, Active Carbon, Potentially Mineralizable Nitrogen, Root Health Rating

Chemical:

Soil Chemical Composition (Standard Soil Test) includes pH, plant nutrients, and toxic elements.

Their website provides more details than I am describing here but the test is a way of measuring the change over time. I propose that this could be an excellent tool to assess the effects of grazing vs. crop production. You could also look at the effects of different strategies of grazing, for example Holistic Planned Grazing with ultra high stock densities as a strategy to improve the soil… *here is an article by Abe Collins describing the Ultra High Stock Density Method*  http://www.rodaleinstitute.org/200668/collins

March 4, 2010

I drove to Cornell University to participate in this years Cornell Small Farms Program Summit, where we break up into work groups to discuss some of the issues that the Cornell Small Farms Program is going to work on for the next 2 years.

In the morning I attended the one on Grazing Lands. The fact that theres 3 million acres of underutilized farm land in New York state is staggering. We need to find a way to bring more of that land into production. We discussed some strategies to try and promote intensive grazing such as hosting some classes or certification courses. Also discussed was the fact that we needed more research on the different strategies of grazing.

All very near and dear to what I’m working with here at my internship.

After a delicious lunch, we discussed the issue of availability of slaughter houses in New York. We discussed why there is such a bottle neck on the amount of custom slaughter facilities (especially in the Fall) and some potential solutions. Fay Benson (whom I had worked with before) was there moderating the groups I was in.

All in all I heard lots of great ideas thrown around… the Cornell Small Farms Program will have plenty of work going forward… I look forward to seeing more from this group in the coming years.. for more info about the Cornell Small Farms program, check out their website… http://www.smallfarms.cornell.edu/

I took a ride down to Tioga County SWCD today and along the way I stopped to visit the finished fence project I had worked on last week. It looks really good. hopefully it is effective in protecting the planted trees from deer pressure for the next few years…

heres some pictures of the finished fence

The Upper Susquehanna Coalition (www.u-s-c.org/) has a wetland mitigation project that they built over the last 2 years in the town of Caroline, NY Tioga County. in an effort to protect the trees that were planted from deer pressure, it was decided that a deer fence would be built…

Troy Bishopp, and Jerry Boyd from Madison County SWCD came down with me to help build the fence…

Here’s Troy and John Wickham Eastern and Western grazing specialists for the upper Susquehanna Coalition

East meets west…

All in all the fence turned out well…

*I will be driving down to Tioga County again on monday, I plan to get some pictures of the finished fence…*

I finally got the opportunity to work in Tompkins County… We drove out to see the farm and by the time we got there, it was snowing pretty heavily. Jake  and I walked around the farm to take a look at a few details he was trying to figure out for the plan he was working on… as you can see in these pictures he is close to a creek that runs into the Susquehanna.

I took a ride up to Johnstown for a talk by Bill Paddock, grazing specialist from Oneida County.

He discussed how his grazing program works on his home farm. He is proud to admit that grazing has made a big impact on the profitability of their farm. He likes the fact that life is pretty easy during the grazing season… “The cows go out and we don’t have to worry about them until they have to come back and get milked.” He seemed pretty passionate about it. The event was advertised and promoted by Hudson Mohawk RC&D and Cornell Cooperative Extension to try and attract new people to grazing.

I took a trip down memory lane today… returning to my Alma Mater: Cornell University. I was contacted a few months ago by Katie Swick from SCA. She was going down to Cornell to do some recruiting. I thought it would be a great opportunity to chat with some old professors and hopefully inspire some students to learn more about conservation.

I spoke at 3 events and reached out to about 30 students…

Batavia, NY

After a bit of a drive to the western side of New York. I am attending a training on the AEM Tier 3a plan. After a short presentation from Jeff Ten Eck, some others came up and talked the group through the plan that they delivered to the farmer. We talked about the purpose of these conservation plans and what things to add to make them more useful.

January 29-30

I’m attending the second annual Winter Green-Up Grass Fed Beef Conference at the  Century House in Latham, NY.

The First speaker is someone whom I know very well… My very own Supervisor for this position… We all know him as “the Grass Whisperer” Troy Bishopp…

He decided to try for shock value by wearing a pair of “blinders” and he would be “led” in. It’s a metaphor for “farming with the blinders on” or farming the same way day in and out, year in and year out not really paying much attention to other ways things could be done.

Troy talked about his grazing farm and about the custom grazing he does on other properties.

He was proud to say that “Today, My cows were outside eating grass! Even at the end of January… Yes it can be done!”

After Troy, we listened to Ken Jaffe who gave a talk about Grazing and his marketing to restaurants in Metro New  York.

After a Pleasant lunch we Listened to Terry Gompert give us a presentation about “Ultra High Stock Density Grazing” or sending a large group of grazing animals into a small paddock for a short period of time… sometimes moving the wire every 4-5 times per day…Some spoke of using “a million pounds” of beef on 1 acre for 1 hour…. Using the hoof action of these animals and their natural behavior in these tight groups, they will break up the soil surface a good portion of what has grown out there.  According to the hand out given at the conference ” The results of such practices over the years have been reported to thicken stands, increase diversity, and increase production over TWO FOLD. Sounds like pretty powerful stuff… Holistic management provides the framework to help use this management scheme in context of a larger program.

Well A break then a fine dinner…

Then we listen to Dr. Allen Williams from Tallgrass Beef Company.

This picture says it all… for many farmers across America… it has been a tough year!

Dr Williams Spoke to us  his tallgrass beef company…

The genetics of the animals to the challenges associated with maintaining the integrity of his product all the way to the store shelves.

For more info on his farm check out: http://www.tallgrassbeef.com/

Well thats all for Saturday,

Sunday started with Mark Deboo from Diamond D ranch in Montana…

Mark Gave us a talk about How he uses Line Breeding in his herd and how he transitioned from the traditional Grain-fed diet to an all forage diet.

After a short break, Eric Shelley and Clint Layne gave us all present a different perspective. Eric is a Butcher and he also runs the Meat Processing Facility at SUNY Cobleskill. Clint has been his business partner with Cowboys Custom Cutting. Eric and Clint talked about what graziers can do to improve the consistency and quality of grassfed beef.

A lot of info packed into a 2 day weekend!

Hopefully they have it again next year!