The annual 2-day Purdue Farm Management Tour kicks off Wednesday in Clinton County and those on the tour will see some good crops this year. The Brown farm near Mulberry is the last stop of day one and also the host site for the evening Master Farmer banquet. Ty Brown says a great spring has those crops in great shape.
“A little bit late but not too bad,” he told HAT. “We started planting corn on May 8th and we’ve had a wonderful spring here. We had 9 inches in April, so extremely wet but then May dried out and we had a nice window from early May through the 25th of May, so we had a nice window to get our corn and beans in. We ended up with a little bit of excessive rain at the end of May and the beginning of June, but all in all we probably only lost 3 acres of crops and I couldn’t be happier with our crop right now. It looks really good.”
The tour at the Brown farm starts at 3:00 PM with a brief presentation and question and answer period followed by four mini tours.
“One of them will be on risk management. One of them will be a self guided tour of the shop and office facilities. The third tour will be of the hog barn which was converted into a shop and we’ll also be taking a look at the fertilizer storage facility which is a dike. The fourth mini tour will be on cover crops and conservation.”
Although the Brown’s won’t go into a lot of specific detail about their operation because of time limitations he thinks there will be enough that farmers can walk away with at least one idea, and that can be enough to make the visit worthwhile.
“We’ve been on these farm management tours as a participant and all you need to do is pick up on one idea. Farmers have a tendency to want to be open and share and I’ve always picked up something. Hopefully there will be one idea, maybe just something they see, and that makes the tour worthwhile. We’re just going to be hitting some basics of what we do, not that it’s right or wrong. It’s just what we do and everybody can be the judge if they see any value in any of it.”
Brown farms just over 5,000 acres with his wife, mother, and father Hal. They are also a dealer of Drago corn heads and have become a dealer for Horsch planters and tillage tools.