Four fire departments received the call late at night. On Oct. 3 in Keithsburg, Illinois, a local farmer became trapped in the silo after monitoring his grain. Firefighters spent the next hour working to free him, but unfortunately, the man suffocated before rescue...
As we move through summer, it’s time to start thinking about grain storage. How big will this year’s crop be? Do we have enough space set aside? More than that, do we have the right tools to prevent rot and waste? That last question can be the most perplexing, as some...
No farmer is ever satisfied with their crop. When harvest time comes, you think about all the things that went wrong, or ideas you want to try next year. As we head towards autumn, it’s not too early to start thinking about the 2020 growing season and ways to improve...
For some farmers, cover crops are almost an afterthought, something to fill space in different seasons. But in many ways, planting the right cover is a critical part of the year. Get it right and you improve the yearly yield. Get it wrong and you’ll have an army of...
The water just wouldn’t go away. For weeks, the farm’s planting fields looked more like rivers than places to grow crops. Seeds got swept away, plants were damaged and in some cases uprooted. That’s been the story for grain farmers across the United States this year,...
