ocn-ss_05132014
DESCRIPTION
ÂTRANSCRIPT
Cover story: Bureau County farm family works together to invent the “tillage cart.” – Page 6
Tuesday, May 13, 2014 A supplement to Sauk Valley Media
Submitted
Ag in the air Unmanned aerial vehicles
have numerous uses – Page 2
Country auctionHazelhurst Sale draws thousandsto annual bidding wars – Page 4
Cows love it, tooRobotic milking system boosts
dairy profitability – Page 11
typed in Cosmos extra bold
PAGE 2 Today’s Farm May 13, 2014
AG TECHNOLOGY | DRONES
MAZON – It’s about one foot in diameter, made from white plastic, propelled by four small blades, and looks more like a children’s toy than a marvel of 21st-century machinery.
Manufacturers have named it the “Phan-tom,” but farmers Matt Boucher of Dwight and Dan Wilkinson of Mazon are calling it the next big thing in farming technol-ogy.
“Some people call it a toy,” Wilkinson said dur-ing a recent interview. “I
call it a $3,500 tool.”The Phantom is just one
model of unmanned aer-ial vehicles – more com-monly known as drones – that will be hovering above a handful of Grun-dy County farm fields this summer.
The drones will be scouting crops, locat-ing tile lines, and pro-viding thermal images of livestock – and saving farmers a lot of time and money in the process.
“It’s similar to the tech-nology in the remote control airplanes you see at the mall,” Boucher said.
“But of course, it’s way more advanced than that.”
The drone is a small helicopter-like vehicle that can be flown manu-ally or preprogrammed to fly autonomously.
Attached to the bot-tom of Boucher’s drone is a small GoPro camera, secured to the Phantom by a gimbal, which bal-ances the camera to pre-vent blurry photos and shaky video.
WITH THE CAMERA-equipped drone, Bouch-er can take high-quality video of his fields, allow-ing him to quickly assess crop performance and locate pest problems.
In about 20 minutes, a farmer can scout about
650 acres of farmland, a task that would take sev-eral hours by foot and cost $400 an hour by air-plane.
“We can do crop scout-ing very quickly and very efficiently, which means we can make decisions based on that data very quickly and efficiently,” Boucher said.
The Phantom also is equipped to gather ther-mal imaging that can be loaded to a tractor’s GPS system within 30 min-utes of flying the field. With the data gathered by the drone, farmers can allocate fertilizers and resources more quickly and precisely, Boucher said.
Agriculture takes to the airFarmers use unmanned aerial vehicles to scout crops, more
DRONES CONTINUED ON 3�
Jessica Bourque/[email protected] farmer Matt Boucher holds the unmanned aerial vehicle that he will use for crop scouting this summer.
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Thermal imaging also will show the body tem-peratures of livestock within a few degrees so farmers can quickly tell whether any animals are ill.
Wilkinson, the owner of a local agricultural tile company, Precision Farm Drainage in Mazon, said he will use his drone to find and analyze tile lines when he is constructing new drainage tiles.
Boucher and Wilkin-son are among the first local farmers to purchase the technology and will be putting the flying machines to work this summer.
Boucher is careful to use the term “UAV” – short for
unmanned aerial vehi-cle – instead of “drone” because he is fully aware of the controversy sur-rounding the machines.
Weaponry drones used by the U.S. military have been widely criticized, and talk of using drones domestically has sparked concerns as many people are uncomfortable with flying cameras roaming the skies.
“There is going to be privacy issues, and there is going to be trespass-ing issues,” Boucher said. “Right now, legally, we can only fly 400 feet high, and we have to stay with-in line of sight.”
In Illinois, as in many other states, drones can-not be flown commercial-ly, meaning they cannot be used to make a profit.
This is frustrating to
farmers such as Wilkin-son and Boucher who have their hearts set on opening crop scouting businesses.
But by 2015, the Federal Aviation Administration has promised to roll out detailed and consistent
regulations regarding UAVs, but rules vary state by state in the meantime.
“As with any new tech-nology – there’s good and there’s bad,” Boucher said. “I’ve talked to my neighbors, and they’re not concerned about me
spying or anything. They all thought it was really neat.”
Boucher has crashed his drone a handful of times, but aside from a cracked propeller and a few scuffs, the Phantom has held together.
Still, a drone is not the most sturdy piece of farming equipment, and there is always the risk of crashing the $3,500 gad-get in a field only to have it crushed by a combine.
“If you have a drone, it’s going to happen,” he said. “Everyone is going to crash at least once.”
While there are new drone models being released every week, most – including the Phantom – are susceptible to dam-age from wind and rain.
Wilkinson said the Phantom and most other
drone models he looked into are so easy to fly, crashing them is rare. The Phantom in particular has an auto-landing but-ton in case the operator does not feel comfortable landing it.
“They’ve made them p r e t t y i d i o t - p r o o f , ” Wilkinson said.
Aside from being imag-ing tools, Wilkinson said, drones have “endless” functionality for farmers.
The thermal imaging can be used to scout out hazardous situations for rescuers or to find people lost or injured in the field.
Both Boucher and Wilkinson also are excited about using their drones as educational tools, tak-ing and sharing video of daily farm operations to show non-farmers how a farm is run.
Farmers prefer to call them UAVs, not dronesDRONES
CONTINUED FROM 2W
Jessica Bourque/[email protected] are using drones like the Phantom (pictured) to scout crops, find tile lines, and take thermal imag-es of livestock.
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PAGE 4 Today’s Farm May 13, 2014
RURAL TRADITION
POLO – A perfect spring day greeted winter-weary bidders last month at the annual Hazelhurst Spring Consignment Sale.
An estimated crowd of between 5,000 and 6,000 descended on the 30-acre site.
Each visitor took the time to walk by rows of farm machinery, cars, and a miscellaneous mix of this and the occasional “What the heck is that?”
Lyle Hopkins owns and operates Public Auction Service, Polo, with his wife, Sheryl.
“We had a real good turnout,” Hopkins said.
“No one was able to get out and work in the fields yet, so we could not have asked for a more beauti-ful day.”
Temperatures in the high 50s, sunny skies, and a 60-year-plus tradition helped bring the crowd to the sale site on April 5.
“With all the weather we’ve had this year, we really lucked out,” Hop-kins said.
The sale has been held west of Polo near the tiny
hamlet of Hazelhurst ever since Sheryl’s moth-er and father, Ruth and Ellery Shank, hosted the first sale on their 30-acre farm site in the 1940s.
It started as a venue where local farmers could buy and sell farm machinery.
Now, in addition to farm machinery, the sale includes a variety of other items, including cars, trucks, lawn trac-tors, all-terrain vehicles, snowmobiles, snow-blowers, lumber, tires, and other miscellaneous “finds.”
Vehicles, primari ly pick-up trucks hauling trailers of all sizes, were parked side-by-side on last year’s corn stalk stubble in farm fields that had been trans-formed into parking lots for the day.
The first sale ring start-
ed at 8:30 a.m. By mid-day, three more rings were going strong.
One crowd of bidders, some decked out in bib overalls, followed one ring as it went up and down a row of farm trac-tors, plows, and rakes – some antique and some
not so new.T o t h e n o r t h e a s t ,
tires, wheels, landscape trees, fencing, and even a s leeper compart-ment extricated from a semitrailer cab awaited would-be buyers.
By the thousands they came to HazelhurstBidders and onlookers alike crowded into 30-acre annual country auction
AUCTION CONTINUED ON 5�
Earleen Hinton/[email protected] Lenny Bryson auctions off a 1966 John Deere tractor at the Hazelhurst Sale on Aprll 5. The tractor was donated by the Bocker family. Seventy-five percent of the $22,000 sale price was donated to the Polo Lions Club, with the remaining 25 percent donated to a charity of the purchaser’s choice.
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In the center, Polo Lions Club members were busy grilling and selling ham-burgers, pork chops, bratwurst and hot dogs at the auction’s main con-cession stand, while on the west end, the Ogle County Beef Producers
served their specialty – ribeye steak sandwiches.
To the northwest, two rows of used cars, trucks and boats were lined up, ready for new owners. Some came equipped with handmade signs like “New brakes, new rotors, runs great, good work car” taped to their windows.
An old rusty Nash auto-mobile with only springs
left for seats drew the attention of some pass-ersby.
“Well, it is either a 1925 or 1927, and the license plate is from 1934, so,” quipped one onlooker.
Hopkins said he thought the Nash brought around $2,000.
“As a whole, I think everything sold real well,” he said.
AUCTIONCONTINUED FROM 4
W
Buyers emerged for used cars, trucks, boats, and even a rusty old Nash auto
Earleen Hinton/[email protected] skies and mild temperatures greeted bidders at the Hazelhurst Sale on April 5. Here, an auctioneer and a spotter take bids on a star-wheel rake.
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PAGE 6 Today’s Farm May 13, 2014
AG TECHNOLOGY | TILLAGE CART
MALDEN – If necessity is the mother of inven-tion, Calvin Standley is the father.
A lifelong farmer, Stand-ley saw the need for something that would save time and fuel in the fields, as well as benefit the environment.
Deep in the heart of Bureau County, between Princeton and Malden, farms cover the land-scape. One of those is occupied by Standley, his wife, Beth, and their chil-dren, John and Hannah.
“Farmers are well-known for adapting,” Standley said in a recent interview, and he felt the need to make some changes to how things are done at harvest.
That led him to develop what is likely the first and only tillage grain wagon in existence.
The implement is essentially a grain har-vest wagon with a disc mounted in front and a chisel plow on the rear end. It is pulled, by trac-tor, alongside a combine
during harvest, much the same as a simple grain wagon would be.
The difference? It not only collects the harvest, but tills the field as well, all in one pass.
“Before this, you’d have the combine operation going with a grain cart in the field, and there would always be a grain cart just sitting there wasting time waiting,” Standley said.
“Then, too, it was frus-trating that we never had enough help to keep the chisel plow going at the same time, or something would break down 10 miles away, and we’d lose time going to deal with that.”
Those frustrations led Standley to his invention.
“My son and I came up with the idea to combine the grain cart with the chisel plow, to have them married all the way across the field,” Standley said.
Daughter Hannah “gave us a lot of moral sup-port,” he added.
Standley came up with the design, aided by his son, John, who brainstormed with him on modifications and improvements. After the design was developed, “I did a patent search, and it turned up nothing as far as other implements like this one.
Haul grain and till soil at the same timeBureau farm family invents ‘tillage cart’
TILLAGE CART CONTINUED ON 7�
SubmittedTake one grain wagon, attach disc blades to the front and a chisel plow to the back, and you’ve got a “tillage cart,” as invented by the Calvin and Beth Standley family of Bureau County. Photo courtesy of the Standleys.
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“Then we went to a pat-ent attorney, who did a second search, which also turned up nothing,” Standley said. “We had to convince him it was worth his time, so we explained it to him, and he really liked it.”
The patent was then officially filed.
The original prototype model was built last year.
“Our designs and plans were taken to McHenry Machine Shop in Prince-ton where John Williams actually put it all togeth-er,” Standley said.
“I was there pretty much all summer working on it with him.”
The machine was put to use for its first test last fall, with Beth operating the cart behind the com-bine.
“It ’s been a fam-ily affair,” Standley said. “She’s had so much fun
with it, I haven’t even gotten to operate it yet.”
The tillage cart far exceeded their expecta-tions, and Standley grew increasingly excited as he talked of the results, plus other benefits that were discovered after the fact.
“Last year, we finished the chisel plowing the same day we finished the combining,” Standley said. “We’ve never been able to do that before in 35 years of farming, and last year was a really big year for yields.”
Use of the new cart pro-vides potentially large savings on fuel costs.
“The tractor that pulls this cart will use slightly more fuel than just pull-ing a standard grain wagon,” Standley said, “but it still saves money because of its one-pass operation. You’re not running it again later on to chisel plow and disc.
“There will also be much less soil compac-tion, because you’re driv-ing heavy equipment over the field only once instead of several times. It’s better for drainage and absorption of nutri-ents.”
Invention exceeded expectations in fall testTILLAGE CARTCONTINUED FROM 6
W
INVENTION CONTINUED ON 8�
SubmittedThe back end of the grain cart had to be modified several ways in order to attach the chisel plow. “We doubled everything [bolts, etc.] to make it stronger,” Calvin Standley said. “We didn’t have any breakdowns last season. It performed beauti-fully.” Photo courtesy of the Standleys.
Dave Fox/Special to Today’s FarmBeth and Calvin Standley pose with the tillage cart in their storage building. “At first it was scary,” Beth said, laughing. “Here was this brand new grain cart in the shop, and they just started cutting into it and welding it. The end product was well worth it, though.”
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PAGE 8 Today’s Farm May 13, 2014
In addition, the cart can greatly reduce fertilizer and soil nutrient costs. By culti-vating at the same time as harvest, much more sol-uble potash and nitrogen are being put back into the soil than if cultivation took place several weeks later.
“It has three video cam-eras,” Beth said. With
those, the operator can watch monitors to ensure the disc and chisel are both working properly, in addition to being able to monitor when the cart is nearly full of grain, all without leaving the seat.
Another feature is “uncommon tires” (two different sizes) between the cart and the chisel, offsetting the pull and drag between the two implements, ensuring a
smoother and more sta-ble operation.
Hopeful for the future, Standley said the next step is to work on an actual production model.
So far, two different companies have come to the farm for live demon-strations, “and there will probably be more this year,” he said, smiling, “so we want to build an actual production model, and we’ll go from there.”
Two companies interestedINVENTION
CONTINUED FROM 7W
SubmittedThe invention of the tillage cart by Calvin and Beth Standley and their children, John and Hannah, was “really a family affair,” Calvin said. “John brainstormed with me a lot on ideas for the design, Beth operated it during the first harvest sea-son, and Hannah gave lots of moral support.” Photo courtesy of the Standleys.
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WINTER WHEAT
BY DAN GRANTFarmWeekNow.com
SHABBONA – The bru-tal winter left its mark on some wheat fields, partic-ularly in northern Illinois.
Russ Higgins, Univer-sity of Illinois Extension crop sciences educator, reported significant win-terkill on some commer-cial wheat fields.
The test plots at the U of I Northern Illinois Agron-
omy Research Center near Shabbona also suffered major winter damage.
“A good portion [40 to 50 percent] of our vari-ety trials didn’t survive the winter,” Higgins told FarmWeek.
The annual field day at the agronomy research center in June was can-celed because of the loss of numerous plots.
U of I researchers plant-
ed the test plots at Shab-bona early (Sept. 25), compared to many of the commercial fields that were planted in the sec-ond and third weeks of October.
But an early start to winter cut the fall season short. A wave of subzero temperatures followed the early snow last fall and likely caused much of the damage.
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AG EDUCATION
BY KAY SHIPMANFarmWeekNow.com
Illinois faces a criti-cal need for agriculture education graduates to instruct the state’s next generation of agrono-mists, animal scientists, agribusinessmen, farm-ers, and ag teachers.
“Unless we develop a strong supply of ag teach-ers, we will have prob-lems,” said Ellen Thomp-
son, coordinator of the National Teach Ag Cam-paign and a former ag teacher.
Illinois boasts a healthy 322 high school agri-culture programs that instruct more than 29,200 students statewide. More than 390 teachers teach agriculture and serve as FFA advisers to 17,640 FFA members.
Over the past 5 years,
the state has averaged 48 ag teacher vacancies a year, reported Jess Smith-ers, coordinator of Facili-tating Coordination in Agricultural Education.
“Secondary agriculture education is a difficult job,” said Erica Thieman, University of Illinois agri-culture education assis-tant professor. “It’s also one of the most reward-ing.”
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AG TECHNOLOGY | DAIRY
MENDON (AP) – The cows are lined up for milking at the Shupe Dairy Farm north of Mendon.
R o d S h u p e k e e p s watch as the cows move through, one by one, but he’s no longer doing the milking.
That’s left up to a robot-ic system, in place on the farm since Septem-ber, that handles the job around the clock.
It’s a high-tech system for a farmer who admits he’s not a high-tech guy.
“I’m pretty good at what I do, but this thing is bet-ter than me,” Rod said. “I don’t like to admit that, but with this technology, you can’t get any better when it comes to milking technique.”
The promise of feed pel-lets and the desire to be milked draws the cows to the milking area. A gate shuts behind the cow, then the system scans her electronic identification tag, determining whether she’s ready to be milked.
“Say a cow got milked at 6 and comes back 4 hours later. Depending on pro-duction, the computer
robot knows, ‘I kick you out because you have to wait an hour or two more to have more milk’ or ‘I keep you because you’re milking so well,’” Rod said. “That’s what makes the decision, the robot. It’s unbelievable what it can do.”
The cow eats a ration of feed pellets as the robotic arm attaches to her udder and does the milking while tracking her milk production and feed intake. The milk
then travels through an insulated pipeline into the farm’s storage tank, which is emptied every other day.
“It really changes how the dairyman manag-es his cows,” said Curt Heimer with Kaeb Equip-ment, which installed the Lely Astronaut robotic system. “It really gives him a different lifestyle. He doesn’t have to be there at 5 a.m. and 5 p.m. each day. There’s some flexibility in how he man-
ages his cows.”“What you’re not doing
is spending what would have been 3 hours a day, twice a day, because it’s milking time,” Rod said. “When you’re trying to cut hay, you don’t have to stop and come back and do 3 hours and go back. You can get done earlier doing everything else. It frees up labor time.”
He said the system also boosts milk production.
“You’ve got to have
a good feed program, a good nutritionist, to make it all like a domino. One leads to another,” he said. “The profitability goes up. The savings of labor goes up.”
Work on the new system began in April 2013. Hesse Builders did the construc-tion work, then Kaeb installed the system in a new building between the feed barn and the former milking barn.
A 3-week “training” period helped acclimate the cows to the new system. They walked through the new milking area for a week, then the brothers started closing the gate, pouring pel-lets into the feed box and simulated the milking process.
“We were using a long-handled brush and brushing the udder while she was eating,” Rod said.
The first milking with the new system meant “training” the laser for each cow, with Rod posi-tioning the milkers.
“I was in there 14 straight hours the very first milking, but on the third milking, I counted 23 cows in a row waiting,” he said. “They were pret-ty hip to what was going on.”
Cows generally act bet-ter with the robotic milk-ing systems.
“They get used to rou-tine, and it’s the same every time. It’s not like there’s different people milking all the time,” Rod said.
Robotic milking system boosts profitabilityAnd the cows just love it
AP Photo/The Quincy Herald-Whig, Steve BohnstedtRoger Shupe checks the robotic milking system he and his brother, Rod Shupe, use on their dairy farm near Mendon. The system operates around the clock, milking and feeding the herd along with tracking information about each indi-vidual cow.
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