Featured Senior – Joe Hazelgrove – Dairy Farmer
This story is about a somewhat uncommon event for mother nature. A spring of above frost temperatures and no flooding, allowed the newly planted corn get a firm strong hold in the Virginia soil here in Cumberland County.
This will sound odd but Joe Hazelgrove, David Hazelgrove and all other family members are much relieved as more than half of their annual crop is being eaten tonight by the local racoons as it lays in a open in-ground silo tonight.
The silo pit is nearly full. This is the look of heaven to a farmer.
“They won’t eat too much,” says David. There is 50,000 bushels in this silo. Nearly 200 acres of corn. Evidently a good or average harvest yeild is 75 bushels per acre. This year they will be getting as much as 230 bushels per acre. Does that mean more milk? Having a lot of bad feed like last year will not help the cows but having lots of great feed will. Milk production should be up with this new feed.
It’s always tough on the farm.
Joe and the family needed a break too. Falling demand for milk overseas is hurting the farmer on price. As Joe told me, Milk is primarily sold to cheese producers. They buy more milk collectively. So you would think that if they could be the milk cheaper then the price of cheese would be down. If it is, I have not noticed. Joe is loosing money every month on his milk like all other dairy farmers right now.
Public demand for milk her in the U.S. is stable unless they get the price over $4.00 / gallon. People are going to drink and cook with milk. It is a staple. You need milk for butter and sour cream and cottage cheese too. There are a lot of people drinking and using milk.
You have to have faith.
Corn seed sells for about $200/bag. It took $50-60,000 of corn seed to plant 500 acres this year. Joe uses all his manure to pump up the nutrients in his fields and it shows. “Part of our fields got too much rain right after we planted. We had to re-plant. Once these new corn shoots get to be about a foot high they can withstand heavy rains, but, when they are smaller they will die,” David explained.
Year after year, generation after generation the story never changes. Mother Nature rules on the farm. There are times when a single rain can destroy a lot of profits. David said, “Joe moved the harvester to the low lands as soon as he heard the weather might bring rain later today. He wanted to do them last as they were the last planting and they needed a few more days to ripen. But it is better to get it now as if even a little rain falls further up the river, it will flood this lowland and then it takes weeks to dry out.”
The Harvest
Peek a boo. This machine is huge and it needs to be as this corn is more than 12 feet tall.
Watching the harvest is like watching a High School Marching Band or a flight of the Navy’s Blue Angles. Precision, formation flying and timing are the key ingredients for a successful day. These guys are in big trucks that are moving in a plowed field at 9 mph. They have to concentrate at all times or that silage will end up on the ground or worse someone could get hurt.
The harvester can take down eight rows of corn in one swath. The corn stalks are cut at about two feet from the ground by a rotary blade. Augers direct the stalks into a shoot where they are chopped and sprayed with a chemical that will promote fermentation. Then it it discharged from the chipper out the shoot and hopefully into the truck.
I timed it and a truck was filled in about six minutes. It takes four trucks to make sure this expensive piece of equipment is not left sitting idle on the field. The trucks have to transport the silage about a mile to the in-ground silo.
At one time the farm did this work with a dozen men, four two row harvesters and three trucks. It took two weeks to take it all down. Joe made the decision several years ago to sell all of the harvesters and hire this contractor every year. As David explained, “last year the contractor was late getting here. It was hot and the corn was burning up. We had to hose it down in the silo and when we feed it to the cows. But, it was just one more bad thing that happened last year, the weather was really dry and being a day late should not have made such a difference. This is beautiful.”
Tractor speads and compacts the silage. It's a tough job in that A/C cab but someone has to do it.
As a city boy, learning about the country and farming, I am appreciative of Joe inviting me to the corn harvest. As a kid, my grandparents lived in the country but not on a farm. During a few summers growing up, I was enlisted to help bail hay and one girl friend’s father conned me into castrating pigs. I wish I could go back and be 16 again. Of course, I want to keep the knowledge that I now have too.
