Tons of Topics at Moose Mountain Ag Day

Feb 15, 2018

Arcola's Prairie Place Hall played host to the 18th Annual Moose Mountain Ag Day where producers got to discuss a number of different topics from what the weather in Saskatchewan is doing to automated agriculture.

One if the biggest areas people were speaking about was the rise of intercropping, growing two types of plants together in the same field, in Western Canada and the benefits it has. Lana Shaw with the South East Research Farm (SERF) in Redvers has been collecting data on the practice since 2012 by growing plots of mixed chick peas and flax seed.

"Being able to test this across a lot of wet and dry environments has given us some really good data on that. It seemed like we were better off having more chick peas and not a lot of flax on the dry years and that's really good information to have."

With land prices on the rise and it being more and more difficult to find land in Saskatchewan, Shaw says intercropping could be a way for many young farmers to get more for the most they can out of every acre of land.

"If you can get more profit off the same land base, then that enables the younger generation to actually look at that land and say this is a viable option for me."

There is still more research being done on the topic, including comparing growth between an organic crop grown without the use of pesticides and herbicides compared to conventional growers.

"We've done one year of an organic type of trial and there was good results witht he intercrop, but it's harder to have controlled conditions for research trials. You may be able to get more data off of the weed growth, but with a non organic situation we've got a little more controlled conditions."

Lorne Klein with the Saskatchewan Ministry of Agriculture was one of the organizers of the event and had his own thoughts on the growth of the practice.

"It appears that it's got some agrinomic advantages to doing that, so we're just going to have to follow that practice and see how that evolves over time."

Klein was also one of the speakers at the event, where he highlighted the use of canola straw as a potential food source for feeding livestock.

Source : Discoverestevan

Video: A chain harrow is a game changer

Utilizing a rotational grazing method on our farmstead with our sheep helps to let the pasture/paddocks rest. We also just invested in a chain harrow to allow us to drag the paddocks our sheep just left to break up and spread their manure around, dethatch thicker grass areas, and to rough up bare dirt areas to all for a better seed to soil contact if we overseed that paddock. This was our first time really using the chain harrow besides initially testing it out. We are very impressed with the work it did and how and area that was majority dirt, could be roughed up before reseeding.

Did you know we also operate a small business on the homestead. We make homemade, handcrafted soaps, shampoo bars, hair and beard products in addition to offering our pasture raised pork, lamb, and 100% raw honey. You can find out more about our products and ingredients by visiting our website at www.mimiandpoppysplace.com. There you can shop our products and sign up for our monthly newsletter that highlights a soap or ingredient, gives monthly updates about the homestead, and also lists the markets, festivals, and events we’ll be attending that month.