Manure

Penn State Extension and Star View Custom Farming will offer information about alternatives to manure surface application during a Spreading Challenges field day Tuesday, Aug. 2, from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. at 9640 Anderson Road, Mercersburg. The event is free and refreshments will be served. In addition to an on-site field demonstration, and a question-and-answer session with a custom applicator, a full-scale odor analysis will be completed by Robin Brandt from The Pennsylvania State University and his odor-analysis team.

Any commercial manure hauler and broker operating on behalf of a farmer in Pennsylvania must be certified to haul, apply or broker manure. The objective of the new law is to track animal waste that is hauled in Pennsylvania and to be sure that the manure is handled in an environmentally safe manner. This means that all owners and employees of a commercial manure hauler will need to complete training and pass an examination by Feb. 26 to continue operating in Pennsylvania. There will be a training in our area on Feb. 17, at 8 a.m., at Premier Events, 429 East Orange Street, Shippensburg.

Last week my column dealt with safety at harvest. Today, we will deal with safety in and around the manure pit. Manure applications often follow harvest and prior to planting of fall crops. In spite of growing efforts to create more awareness in health and safety in the farming community, fatalities due to manure pit accidents are still reported. The causes seem to be a combination of: needs to enter manure storage; highly varied toxicity levels from manure pits; lack of information on why and when dangerous conditions exist; the need for more effective education; and safety procedures and practical reliable sensors to detect toxic gas conditions.

ANNAPOLIS - The Maryland Department of Agriculture still has cost-share funds available for the use of minimum disturbance manure injection equipment this spring. This is an excellent opportunity for farmers with liquid manure to save on their fertilizer costs as manure injection substantially reduces the loss of ammonia nitrogen through volatilization and works well with no-till planting. With the increasing cost of nitrogen, farmers should consider the financial benefit of this program.

HARRISBURG - The quality of water in Pennsylvania is improving thanks to recent changes in nutrient management regulations by the State Conservation Commission, Agriculture Secretary Dennis Wolff said. "We commend the State Conservation Commission and the Nutrient Management Advisory Board for their dedication in making these revisions," said Wolff, who is also chairman of the State Conservation Commission. The new regulations are a balance between properly applying manure generated on high-density animal operations - those with more than 2,000 pounds of animals per acre - without overly restricting the movement of nutrients throughout the state.

CHAMBERSBURG, Pa. - Are high fertilizer prices getting to you? If so, you might want to attend the nutrient management meeting set for Thursday, Feb. 7, from 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at the Cumberland County Extension Office to get up to speed on issues relating to manure management and nitrogen efficiency. The featured speakers will be Doug Beegle and Jerry Martin from Penn State Extension. Here are the topics on for this program; call if you have any additional questions: · Importing manure to your farm: do you know what you need to know?

Maryland Cooperative Extension is sometimes referred to as "a well-kept secret. " I am often asked what I do. The original title that my predecessor used was Extension Agent. We were considered agents of change and still are. Our mission isn't secret - it is education. Often, it is mistakenly thought that Extension has some sort of regulatory power. We do not. We are educators, not enforcers. Cooperative Extension programs are both formal and informal educational offerings.

Les Sellers hid with his buddy, the pilot of a downed aircraft, under a platform covered with manure for two days. A metal pipe with a wire strung through it ran from the hideout to some bushes. When Sellers, then 25, needed nourishment, he would signal by jiggling the wire and the family assisting him, members of the Dutch Underground, would send him a bottle of milk. Shirley Evans, 69, of Hagerstown, had known Sellers and his wife for about 25 years. But she'd never known of his travails during World War II until he began sharing a little during a Sunday school class in 2007.

Farmers seen as scapegoats for Pfiesteria By GUY FLETCHER Staff Writer A Maryland commission addressing the state's highly publicized Pfiesteria problem is raising concern among some farmers and lawmakers who feel agricultural runoff is being hastily targeted as the culprit in the outbreaks that killed thousands of fish and left dozens of people ill over the summer. "I hope we're not going off half-cocked," said Gerald Ditto, a Clear Spring hog farmer and president of the Washington County Farm Bureau.

Tomorrow is the first day of October and even though autumn officially started Sept. 22, most people associate October with fall. It won't be long before orange pumpkins, colorful mums and corn stalks will be decorating countless front porches and lawns. In addition to autumnal beauty with fall comes harvest. The county's fields will soon give up their bounty. Looking around, you can readily see the changing colors of foliage of not only the tree but of the corn and soybeans. This is all indication of the ripening of the crops and their pending harvest.

Owners of even one horse, sheep, cow or pig in Pennsylvania are now required to maintain a written manure management plan, and that's no bull. The conservation district offices in Franklin and Fulton counties have workbooks to aid backyard farmers and owners of larger-scale operations in developing their manure management plans. The planning requirement from the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection went into effect last October. DEP inspectors could request record-keeping associated with the written plan when investigating complaints.

The Maryland Department of Agriculture announced that financial assistance is available to help farmers cover the cost of injecting or incorporating manure, sludge, food waste and other organic products into cropland. Gov. Martin O'Malley has earmarked $2 million in cost-share funds to assist farmers as they begin implementing the new requirements of Maryland's recently revised nutrient management regulations. Maryland's revised nutrient management regulations took effect Oct. 15. A major provision requires farmers to inject or incorporate manure and other organic nutrient sources into the soil within 48 hours of application in order to achieve maximum water quality benefits for streams, rivers and the Chesapeake Bay. Farmers who incorporate or inject all types of animal manure, food waste, sludge or other organic waste products into cropland can apply for cost-share grants from MDA.  Participation is limited to operators who have not used eligible equipment for incorporation or injection of manure during the past five years.

The Maryland Department of Agriculture announced that it has received $500,000 in additional funding from the Chesapeake Bay 2010 Trust Fund to expand its Manure Transport Program, including all types of eligible livestock operations seeking financial assistance to transport excess manure off their farms. In recent years, due to budget reductions, Transport Program grants have been awarded almost exclusively to poultry producers shipping poultry litter out of the Chesapeake Bay Watershed.

Les Sellers hid with his buddy, the pilot of a downed aircraft, under a platform covered with manure for two days. A metal pipe with a wire strung through it ran from the hideout to some bushes. When Sellers, then 25, needed nourishment, he would signal by jiggling the wire and the family assisting him, members of the Dutch Underground, would send him a bottle of milk. Shirley Evans, 69, of Hagerstown, had known Sellers and his wife for about 25 years. But she'd never known of his travails during World War II until he began sharing a little during a Sunday school class in 2007.

Penn State Extension and Star View Custom Farming will offer information about alternatives to manure surface application during a Spreading Challenges field day Tuesday, Aug. 2, from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. at 9640 Anderson Road, Mercersburg. The event is free and refreshments will be served. In addition to an on-site field demonstration, and a question-and-answer session with a custom applicator, a full-scale odor analysis will be completed by Robin Brandt from The Pennsylvania State University and his odor-analysis team.

CHAMBERSBURG, Pa. -- Chambersburg borough officials are looking into a proposal that might help the environment and save them more than $9 million. The borough council this week agreed to spend $15,000 on a study that will detail how nutrients can be removed from cow or swine manure. That study will be submitted to the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) to find out whether a participating farm's efforts can earn "credits" for protecting the Chesapeake Bay. Council President William McLaughlin hopes the amount of those credits will be enough to keep the borough from having to expand its Hollywell Avenue sewage treatment plant as planned.

Thumbs down to the Washington County Commissioners, for approving $520,000 worth of new county personnel positions. At a time when many county residents are dealing with being laid off or having their hours reduced, government should do its part by doing more with less. Thumbs up to the Jefferson County (W.Va.) Commission, for agreeing to hold the line on property taxes, offsetting a drop in revenues with budget cuts. When the county residents find they have less money coming in, they spend less.

FAYETTEVILLE, Pa. -- There's power in manure. Chris Brechbill estimates his 600 cows' manure could make more than 100 kilowatts of energy an hour if the methane is harvested from it. And removing the methane would also remove the odor, something that would be most noticeable when waste is spread on Brechbill's 450 acres of fields. "It's going to save me, they're projecting, $61,000 a year in energy savings," Brechbill said, noting he'd also have excess energy to sell.

Tomorrow is the first day of October and even though autumn officially started Sept. 22, most people associate October with fall. It won't be long before orange pumpkins, colorful mums and corn stalks will be decorating countless front porches and lawns. In addition to autumnal beauty with fall comes harvest. The county's fields will soon give up their bounty. Looking around, you can readily see the changing colors of foliage of not only the tree but of the corn and soybeans. This is all indication of the ripening of the crops and their pending harvest.

Teacher and children's book author Peggy Parish published 12 books about Amelia Bedelia, a literal-minded but lovable housekeeper. Her first book went into print about 45 years ago, and I enjoyed reading the series with my kids when they were little. The books are silly and the jokes corny, but they are good tools for learning the fun of wordplay - understanding words' multiple meanings. For example, Amelia Bedelia placed pieces of beef in the garden when asked to stake (steak)