Albin news June 28, 2010

Albin News Readers,

Thank you to those who have taken the time to comment on this column. It's suprising to me who reads the Albin News. I'm glad to see there are a few of us who still like to read a newspaper! I've come to relish a fifteen minute break with a cup of coffee and a newspaper. It's a like a little vacation. This time of year the real vacations, at least for those in agriculture or road construction, are limited to the occasional Sunday afternoon. Speaking of vacations, I came within a half mile of getting the summer off this week. After watching the hail storms zinging by on every side, a small but deadly storm cell chewed it's way East along county road 14 in Banner County and through the North end of some of my fields. Many of the crops along county road 14 going east from the state line into Banner County were badly damaged if not completely destroyed. Even some of the more hail-resistant crops like alfalfa and corn were mowed down. Thank you Ann for adding some tips on how to handle hail on a garden!

In community news, two long-standing community members passed away this week. Wilma Moore died died Sunday evening at about 8:00 and Maxine Boyce died the next morning. These are two women who meant much to many and will be greatly missed. Maxine's funeral will be Thursday at 1:00 pm at the Albin Community Center. For details on Wilma's funeral you can contact Jon Moore at (307)246-3228 or the Albin Baptist Church at (307)-246-3254.

The Sorenson family had a family reunion at the Albin Community Center in honor of Jack and Naida Sorenson's 40^th wedding anniversary. In attendance were Grandma Doris Sorenson and children Jack, Mike, Sherree, and Kathy. Ron was busy driving truck with Larry but wife Judy was able to make it. Jack and Naida's three kids, Gina, Pam and Tyler attended. Pam and husband Shad Ballard brought their children Reagan, Riley and Britton. Sheree's daughter Jenny and husband Brian Sciciluna attended with their children Braylee and Trevor. Ray and Kathy attended along with children Travis, Cody and Lori. Travis and wife wife Natalie brought their children Karston and Braidee. Cody and wife Jaimie brought their child Brynlee. Lori brought her fiance Ty Trevillyan. Also in attendance was the Marv and Dana Mirich family. They had dinner at the community center in Albin, and enjoyed playing games and visiting.

Tim Malm has been transferred from the ICU at Cheyenne Regional Medical Center to the Memorial Hospital in Craig Colorado. The Memorial Hospital has a unit that specializes in rehabilitating patients with tramatic brain and spinal cord injuries. As of Monday evening, Tim was showing improvement in the level of response to different sensory stimuli but still had not regained full conciousness. It is still too soon to say what the eventual outcome will be. In the mean time, thank you again to those who have found a way to help out.

Now for some helpful and timely garden tips from our local Master Gardner Ann Sanchez...

Hail Damage and the Vegetable Garden

Each summer hail makes its unpleasant appearance around our area. For the gardeners that have adequate warning that hail is likely, keep a light weight plastic tarp handy and with a partner spread the tarp over the part of the garden that you want to protect. Anchor the tarp with rocks or landscape timbers. Don’t give up hope for the damaged parts of your garden. Most plants will usually regenerate. Trim any broken stems and continue to fertilize and water regularly.

Protecting Your Garden from Grasshoppers

Many experts are predicting a large population of grasshoppers this summer. Vegetable crops favored by grasshoppers are lettuce, carrots, beans, sweet corn, and onions. Natural ways to deter grasshoppers from your garden are to keep the grass and weeds trimmed around the garden area, add a bird bath to attract hungry birds, and allow the family’s chickens or ducks to free range in the garden. There is a trade off with poultry because of some of the damage they cause with their scratching and eating of young plants. Repellents generally are not effective in deterring grasshoppers. Protective covering such as cheesecloth or screen have been used with limited success.

Insecticides used to control grasshoppers in gardens include: nosema locustae which is a biological control; Sevin and Permethrin. Sevin is available in a spray, dust or bait.

I’ll be looking at my resident robin family with a whole new appreciation when I see them visiting my garden each day.

In Ag news, we've continued to have hot dry days with low humidity. It has been hay drying, wheat maturing weather and has the pivots making their slow circles. Wheat harvest is moving north at a rapid pace. By the time you read this, the latest Grain Stocks and Acreage reports will have been released by the National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS). Many are wondering if the wheat crop is indeed as large as all the predictions. In the Albin area, a promising winter wheat crop has been tempered by hail, stripe rust, and now grass hoppers. Much of the wheat in the area, even though it may have been sprayed with a fungicide, has lost its flag leaves to stripe rust. Since the wheat is now in the critical stage of filling the heads, this will certainly affect wheat yields. The only question is how much. It will be interesting to see how the 2010 crop predictions stack up against the actual harvest so far.

Many farmers are also putting up their first cutting of hay. One of the challenges with putting up high quality alfalfa and alfalfa mix hay is trying to bale the hay in the right “dew window.” For those of you not familiar with a dew window, it's a window of time that begins when the alfalfa leaves have just enough moisture to keep them from turning to powder and dropping out of the baler. The dew window ends when the hay gets to wet to bale. It's always a challenge for the baler man to know when to start baling and when to stop. Thus the time honored tradition of sleeping on a pickup seat and groggily staggering out every few hours to see if the conditions are right yet. If you're lucky, you'll wake up at the right time and get the job done before the hay is wringing wet. If you're unlucky (or just dog tired) you'll blunder out at 4 am to find the hay either bone dry or dew rolling off the truck hood.

I was recently conversing with my good friend Matt Durstine about the follies of dew windows. Matt commented that he hates putting up hay this time of year because he'll often spend all night checking the hay for a dew window that never comes. It got me thinking – there's got to be a better way to reliably put up that beautiful hay in the perfect dew window. I started digging into relative humidity, ambient air temperature, air pressure, and how it all related to putting up high quality hay. This is what I found out.

For several years now, Dad and I have been using online weather predictions to try to predict when the dew windows will occur. If you know the humidity of the air at a given temperature, you can find the dew point by looking it up in a table. Also, if the humidity is above 50%, you can use this equation to find the dew point within +/- one degree F. Dew point = Temp – (100 - humidity)/2.778. In other words, all you need to know is the temperature and humidity and you can quickly figure the dew point. Dad and I would just look it up online and would set our alarms for when the temp was predicted to be about 10 degree F above the dew point. Where this didn't work is if their was a sudden change in air pressure. Unfotunately, every time the temperature changes and the wind blows, the air pressure changes and so does the dew point. Also, once a breeze starts moving, pockets of fog or higher moisture air move into or out of an area pretty quickly.

Because of all these complicated factors, I decided that an actual humidity measurement at the hay field would be a nice compliment to the online predictions. I wondered if their was a simple device that would measure humidity at the hay field, and set off an alarm when the conditions are right. This would allow hay baler to sleep soundly without having to constantly keep checking the hay. Better yet would be a device that would call a phone so the hay baler could have the luxury of sleeping in a bed! Using Google, I found such a device in just a few minutes. You hay farmers can check it out at this link. http://www.omega.com/ppt/pptsc.asp?ref=OM-THA2

I hope this help. Happy haying!