Danville/Chatham Area Day Trip - Candice Dalton

Institute for Advanced Learning and Research 

      On our last day for the Regional Experiences in Agriculture Itinerary we first meet with Barry Flinn at the Institute for Advanced Learning and Research, he took us for a tour of the facilities. In 1999 the Future of Piedmont, wanting to reinvigorate the county with the strengths the county has such as agriculture and motor sports. There are two wings of the institute; one side is administration and classes and the second is research. They do basic research and applied research.
    They have done projects with "High Value Horticulture/Forestry Crop and Development & Genetic Enhancement of Biofuel and Bioenergy. They worked with Virginia Nursery and Landscape Association, they are the ones that bring the questions and projects the institute has worked in. Some of their projects worked with Azaleas, Hellebores, Triploid Daylily, Goji, and Impatiens and many more. They do tissue culture media with the Hellebores and Triploid Daylily that don't produce seeds have longer growth and high quality but have to reproduce, through embryo rescue.
    They work with Virginia Tech, they produced 40-50,000 plants of the VT Spirit flower that they did through Triploid. In the labs at the facility they work with microbiology and gene expression studies using PCR. They are also looking at disease resistance to develop a tissue culture to have resistance to Impatiens. They worked with crops in this region to be used as biofuel while working with Kemtex works with them to grow and produce biofuels. The main grasses they are producing for biofuel and bioenergy are switch grass, miscanthus x giganteus (that are triploid and doesn't produce seed), Jerusalem artichoke and Pine (Pinus). For the miscanthus x giganteus they were studying to find the yield per acre compared to switch grass. This is the third year of field trials and have recently opened a separate plant with Dan River Plants where they have 12 to 15 employees and they produce and sell their own plants.

    One of their most interesting projects they have done is with VIR. VIR's famous tree had fallen in the past year due to weather and they are regrowing the tree through tissue cultures. In another part of the facility they are working with Smart Tables or also known as CNC tables that have only been running for three weeks. These tables have allowed them to capture images of the plants to see their life span through images taken each day. The tables help detect plant stress, can do photosynthesis analysis and check for CO2 levels. Students all over are able to plant plants and watch them grow by going online and seeing their plant grow by the photographs.

Whitefall Farm 

    Our second stop for the day was to Whitefall Farms with A.J. Nuckols. He showed his different fields for bioenergy using four different kinds of switch grass on fifty acres of land rented and owned personally. The four kinds of grass he grows and harvests are Blackwell, Alamo, Caving Rock, and Canelo.  He burned his fields to get better growth of switch grass for a forage crop. After burning the crop it immediately grew back in two days. He burned his first crop of eight acres in two hours. Switch grass is a perennial crop, therefore it comes back each year. It makes it difficult to get rid of the crop and Mr. Nuckols' has not tried yet to get rid of the crop. This is good to be on the native soil that have a pH of 5 to 5.5 level. Mr. Nuckols only fertilizes only after two to three years, using 24D.
     The Bioenergy study is through Virginia Tech to study the Yield virus Nitrogen levels. The plots have fertilizer of zero to one hundred tons of nitrogen. There is 4.5 tons of dry matter per acre when the switch grass is harvested. Uses the switch grass for hay to his cows. This crop works well with wheat, so Mr. Nuckols no tiles the switch grass with the wheat when planted. He sows the seeds in the end of June, due to growing so well in hot temperatures especially at ninety degrees. The roots of switch grass have been known to grow to 30 feet deep. In January he will mow for the Virginia Tech study plots of bioenergy. Normally Mr. Nuckols can get three cuttings from the switch grass a summer. In some of his pastures he sowed some seeds for strip grazing purposes.

Van der Hyde Dairy Farm 

    We toured the facility with Roy Van der Hyde. In the area the cows live and eat they use alley scrappers to collect manure, that runs every thirty minutes. The manure scrapped gets pulled through gravity flow to the digester. The manure is transported underground to the lagoon and containers. One of their three lagoons holds one million gallons of waste. 30,000 gallons of waste is run each day in the digester. The manure processed in the digester helps produce power and the power runs the facility and other homes. The power goes through Dominion power. On average it produces approximately a half a megawatt per hour per day of energy. The digester separates the liquid for the solid where the solids are reused as bedding and nurseries for fertilizering the plants, but the liquid part goes back to the lagoons. They started using the digester for power in 2009, it took $2.5 million for all the equipment and digester to be done on the farm. The solids have no phosphorus, ten pounds of nitrogen, and eight pounds of pot ash, making it all organic. The engine that runs the digester has to have the oil changed every month and spark plugs replaced every other month. The engine runs twenty-four hours a day.
    They use a carousel parlor with 36 stalls but 4 do not hold cows. They run 250 cows an hour to be milked. There are fans and sprinklers for the cows during milking, but are sprayed cross way to not contaminate the milk. Each cow has an electronic I.D.to identify what cow comes in and out of the parlor, how much she produces, and when she milked. They work with 1200 cows three times a day in the parlors, for 18 to 20 hours a day. The carousel needs was put added in March of 2003.
     On the facility they had numerous calves. They stay in the houses for six to nine weeks. They are fed pasteurized milk and stay on bedding that drain the moisture out of the floor. There were four calves born last night and more were to be born today. If bulls are born then the calves are sold three days old at $210. The calves are raised in greenhouses for easy access and better air flow by raising and lowering the sides.

Hammock Dairy Farms 

    Our last stop for the day and for our E-term class was to the Hammock Dairy. They have 800 to 900 acres of corn silage to feed the cows. Nathan Hammock (owner) told us they do not grow any crop that doesn't go through the cow, they grow oats, wheat, rye grass, and more.They are no tile crops and use equipment that must pay for themselves, such as their sprayer that has 90 foot booms and doesn't over spray or under spray. They built their own pond for irrigation purposes that is a 14 acre pond. They use it to irrigate 400 to 500 acres of irrigation. Five creeks/springs run into the pond and they own all the land that the creeks are on. The pond is approximately 20 feet deep and took six months to fill. Currently working with Mr. Fiera from Virginia Tech on population rates of corn. There are 22,000 plants per acre on the Virginia Tech testing plots, with thirty inch rows and nine inch spacing. On these corn plants some are using irrigation and non-irrigated for research purposes.

   They have been in the dairy industry for twenty-seven years and are the fourth largest dairy in the state of Virginia. They have seven heifer fields that are grass and silage fed. The heifers are artificial inseminated with a 90% conception rate of first time heifers. The houses the cows stay in are on sawdust with lime or sand. They will be adding a sand separator to reuse the sand from the manure compost. The sand separator will be done passively by gravity to get the sand. While we were on the farm we were able to observe a calf being pulled, which was so interesting and amazing. They milk cows three times a day with 100 cows an hour in a double ten parlor that holds twenty heifers at a time.
When entering the facility they are prepped with pre-dip foam, strips her for milk let down process and check for mastitis. They are then followed by washing and towel dried. Once milked the milk has to be cooled down with water and glycol to a temperature of 34.7 degrees Fahrenheit before loading onto the truck. They have direct loading practices for the last three years. Each trailer will hold 5400 pounds of milk. They shipped 1.5 million pounds of milk in the month of April of this year.


At each farm today we saw different, interesting things in areas that I am from. Each of which are sustainable but are constantly becoming more productive and growing. The dairies are really my focus for my career and studies at Ferrum College due to wanting to become a Veterinarian. Since we were able to see a calf being born was really related to my major. The biofuel and bioenergy was very interesting and unique. They truly are a sustainable resource for remaining constant and using approaches of agriculture to help with the quality of production in their facilities. This was one of the best, most interesting day due to it being local to me and having it right in my back door and never knowing it was even there.

 

Virginia Tech Day Trip - Candice Dalton

Virginia Tech Plant Tissue Culture Lab    

 Our trip for the day at Virginia Tech, started off at Virginia Tech's Plant Tissue Culture Lab. Parker Laimbeer and Kendall Upshaw were our tour guides for the "Potato Kingdom" as Mr. Laimbeer called it. They focus on tissue culture which is the maintenance to grow plants from tissue or cells. The lab does tissue cultures to grow plants to maturity quicker and take cuttings to clone plants instead of through the process of going through the seed method. Facilities germination of low percent seeds. Such as bananas and seedless watermelon are sterile and has to go through tissue culture to be produced if not these fruits would have produced seeds. They also look at Anther Culture with is the redirecting of pollen to form an embryo. At Tech they use Genomics/Bioinformatics which is RNA-seq which is messenger RNA sequencing of molecular mapping. This process is not done as often as the others due to being so expensive.
       In the labs they worked on tomatoes, potatoes and other plants, primarily potatoes are their focus now. Their current focuses are first, Potato Genome Sequencing Consortium, they work with fourteen countries in the focus of sequenced potato genome. Second, is Iron and Zinc Acquisition and third focus is Anthocyamins that look at the colorful antioxidants. In the labs they are culturing numerous plants, as well as, in the Growth Chambers that are automatic watering system and temperature change. The plants in the chambers must stay at twenty degrees Celsius during the day and changes to sixteen degrees Celsius at night.

Virginia Tech Plant Disease Clinic 

     Our second stop for the day was to the Plant Disease Clinic, where they work with the Extension Agent personnel and we were able to do a hands-on lab. Mary Ann Hansen and Elizabeth Bush was there to help us with our labs and gave us a brief information session of pathogens that affect plants. Some pathogens that kill plants are biotic and abiotic. Biotic pathogens can be fungal, bacteria, viruses, and nematodes. Abiotic pathogens are non-living factors such as extreme temperatures, environmental such as pollutions, animal damage and insects. Insects are the most common abiotic problem. Regular patterns are normally known for abiotic problems but random patterns indicates biotic problems. Symptoms are not a one to one disease and disorder way of knowing what it is. There are similar signs and symptoms for different diseases but some are known. If the symptom is a Mosaic or Mottle it is an irregular pattern of  indistinct light and dark green areas therefore shown as a virus and tests can be run to figure out which virus is causing the plant to problems. We were able to look at four different kinds of plant disorders and learn about common plant disease and disorders in our area.

Insect Diagnostic Lab

     Our third stop for the day was to the Insect Diagnostic lab, where Eric Day toured us of their facilities and insect collection. They work with the Extension Agencies by doing diagnostic backup. They look at pests on various plants such as cotton and fruit trees. They look at Port Samples from different ports, the most common insect is the Wood Beetle that is carried on the crates that are transported on the pallets at the ports. Common problems in the area are the Thousand Canker disease on the Black Walnut especially in the Richmond area but they are not sure yet of the extent of damage in Virginia but they are very harsh in Colorado. Stink Bugs are a problem for farmers that raise grains, especially the Brown marmorated stink bug. The other bug that has become a common problem is the Kudzu bug that is state wide and kills kudzu and soybeans are especially harmed. 

      We toured the insect collection at the Price Fork Research Center that started in 1890. The collection has 700,000 insects and 1000 new specimens are added each year. They keep the insects in cabinets to prevent any sun damage. They had numerous Napthalene due to being parasites to other bugs. They identify the insects using previous identified insects. On the Tech campus we observed Ash trees that are endangered due to the Ash Burrow Beetle. 

Nematode Assay Clinic 

    Nematodes are unsegmented microscopic ground worms, 99.1% of nematodes are microscopic. The longest nematode was twenty-one feet long. Nematodes can be beneficial and harmful, insect and plant parasites are considered to be beneficial because they kill other harmful insects. In plant parasites they have a special structure called stylits. All plant parasites have stylits and are known for them but fungi and insect nematodes can have stylits. Soil does not always contain nematodes, but in the lab their purpose is to do soil assays. 

  The lab uses a Semi-Automatic Elutriator from North Carolina State to be able to separate nematodes from the soil and collect all the nematodes. In the Elutriator they use 500 sieve so the nematodes will not go through. It takes four minutes to run to collect the nematodes. Once collected are put in test tubes and ran for five minutes in the centrifuge that runs at 1800 RPM. They remove the solution and add a sugar solution and run again for one minute to separate nematodes from soil density. There are characteristics to extract nematodes from soil such as size, density, and mobility (gravity) when the nematodes are very active. 

      In the lab they use a Scanning Microscope, there are three on Virginia Tech campus. It scans the surface of the nematode. The nematode has to be dry before going in the microscope which can be done by air drying, freeze drying, or critical point drying that takes the solution that is a liquid to a gas without changing the states. When the microscope is running it clears other molecules from the beam to be able to go to the specimen and not to bounce off of the other molecules. We were able to observe Partitala Root Knot nematode, that come from pecan trees. It is derived from South Africa where the Partitala Root Knot nematodes is on every pecan tree. The stylit on the Partitala Root Knot was 16 microns long.

    The plants and knowing their disorders is only helpful to my career and studies at Ferrum by nutritional aspects for livestock. My career is focused on animals but having the knowledge of plants that can potentially cause problems in animals will help with my diagnosis of the problem. My family raises vegetables for our consumption and knowing the diseases and disorders that can affect them will help us to prevent it and eliminate it if possible. To be sustainable by Merriam-Webster dictionary "is a method of harvesting or using a resource so that the resource is not depleted or damaged." Virginia Tech is trying to maintain a resource and not deplete or damage plants that helps to not eliminate them or their resources so there effort are sustainable. 

Day 4 of the Shenandoah Valley

     Our last day in the Shenandoah Valley we first attended the Mt. Crawford Creamery. It is a family owned farm and they purchased the farm in 1924, they started the dairy in 1952. They milk their cows twice a day at 4:30 in the morning and 4:00 in the afternoon. They own 68 cows that are Hereford and Hereford/Jersey Cross. They raise their own cows by artificial insemination followed up by a bull.  The calves stay in separate pens for 90 days and they are separated to not contract diseases from youngest to oldest. The calves are bottle fed, and use fresh milk then move to a milk replacer. Once old enough to move they will be on rations similar to the other cows. The cows are taken to a counter slope that is scrapped three times a week to remove the manure. They are fed corn silage (which the cows do better on), rye, hay and supplement protein in.
       During milking only twelve cows can be milked at a time and they have a swing milker where they do the first six then swing the machine to the other six. They keep records on a board and in a notebook, they have keep records in this manner since their first cows. The milk is then transferred to the tank to be filtered. The milk they do not use for there own purposes goes to the DFA and they get paid a class 3 or 4 price. They are able to get fifty-five pounds  of milk per cow. They pasteurize their own milk but do not homogenize. They make there own milk, buttermilk, cheese, and butter. For milk processors one gallon of milk is cost dependent upon the type of store minimum price is lower for small stores compared to the larger markets making it harder on the small farmers. The companies are wanting quantity over quality.  The milk they process is as close to raw milk as a costumer can get, the buttermilk is 3.5 to 4% fat content. Their whole milk sells better than 2% in stores. There milk is in fifty stores. They said to buy local, it tastes better!
     Our second trip that day was to the Houff's feed and fertilizer business. It was a family run business in the beginning and in the 80s and 90s got into the trucking business to haul their fertilizer and grains called IDM Trucking. They also use railroads for transloads or more loads to trucks. They are retail distributer for Pioneer seeds. They are the only distributer in Virginia that distributes Pioneer. The building is 40,000 square feet and holds numerous bags and containers of seeds. They cover three counties, Rockingham, Augusta, and Rockbridge county. They deliver all over the state especially corn where they transport 75,000 bags across Virginia. They treatment their own seeds, this began four years ago. They started with 16,000 bags to begin and now are at 35,000 bags. They pride themselves with delivery in 24 hours where ever the location is desired. They coat the seeds with insecticide, fungicide, biological and growth stimulate. The coating/treatment process takes about ten minutes. They have 550 boxes and $250,000 invested in boxes and $200,000 in equipment to do the treatment.
      In 1993 they began a liquid fertilizer plant and it is still running today. They have tractor trailer and three pot trailers, six or seven applicator trucks that haul the fertilizer to the fields. They will soon be moving into dry fertilizer and building will begin in August for the facility to store it. They use GPS and mapping areas to spread the fertilizer without having to disturb the farmer. Their plant has an automatic mixer that helps mix the product accurately.
      Houff's also has their hand in BioSolids which is sewage sludge and food processing sludge. They spray this on fields as a fertilizer and has to wait for three years before spraying again. They BioSolid form food companies comes from soybean milk, milk and other companies such as the Hershey Chocolate processing plant. To be put on pastures there are restrictions for food processing sludge you have to wait 30 days before allowing reentry for grazing or harvesting. They serve a dozen venders and have 110-120 employees that must know how to distribute this material and have to wear waterproof boots, gloves, and eye protection.
       Our third location for the day was to an agrotourism farm known as Back Home on the Farm. The farm has been in the family since 1959, they started off as a cow-calf operation. Then in 1978 they used a greenhouse in strictly whole sale and in 1995 became retail. In 1996-1998 they had a fall festival in a parking lot that it got so big they had to move it back to the farm hence the name. They have few cows still but have the greenhouse and agroentertainment. You may tour the farm and enjoy their attractions for $8. They have a corn maze that is six acres big and are known for their 60 foot long slide. The have 5000 students in the fall from Pre-K to 3rd graders visit the farm. They are the first agrotourism business in Rockingham county. Their field trips here are primarily in the fall for their games and pumpkin patches with is nine to ten acres. Their average attendance is 25,000 people.
   The building on the farm is five years old and has been used for Cargill Training sections, Tea parties, Christmas parties and much more. They have expanded over the years they have improved over the years through advertisement with Facebook and more. They have 4,000 likes on Facebook and are wanting to increase the number. For the corn mazes they work with two companies to build and mow them using Maze Quest and The Maze in Utah, they have a new maze design each year. Some attractions they have each year is the rubber ducky race, pig races in the Fall, Carrousel that has each horse painted a different theme from the state of Virginia's history.  

  Our last stop in the Shenandoah Valley was to the Valleyview Farm, where Mike Phillips (farmer/owner) uses rotational grazing for his cows. The farm has been in his family for many generations. He does no tile fields and he believes the land is his money maker therefore no "fancy" equipment is used. He is able to work his cows by himself. He has pound cows and will be reducing his cows to the land he has to be able to continue using rotational grazing practices. For the rotational grazing he wants to build up the soil quality to be able to do it year round. He has 82 cows and wants to try different forages for the cows to consume. Mr. Phillips has won several forage awards for his different varieties of forages raised on his farm. Mr. Phillips told us he does not believe in Sustainable Agriculture, he does not want it to be sustained he wants it to be improved!
     For his summer annuals he has a mixture of plants that tolerate the heat very well. He also raises poultry to use their litter for fertilizer on his fields. Mr. Phillips loves to experiment that is why he has 21 different types of forages on his farm being tested. His 140 acre farm has a forage quality of 14% and he wants it at 18%. Mr. Phillips best forage is alfalfa, corn silage, and fescue with high quality for forage. He does strip grazing on his farm that takes him 20 minutes to mow and move the cows to improve his soil quality and pack the grass to cool the soil. The manure and urine from the cows helps his nitrogen levels in the soil.
    The entire day was so informative and relative to my career and coarses at Ferrum College, due to the management of livestock and agriculture. I am planning on becoming a veterinarian, at theses facilities I would be able to work with those animals and the farmer one on one to help with any problems presented by the animals. These four facilities are sustainable even if some don't want to be they are able to manage a farm and livestock to improve agricultural practices and make a profit off of them therefore making them sustainable.

Day 3 of the Shenamdoah Valley Agriculture Tours

     On day three we attending four different facilities and farms. I really enjoyed this day it seemed to the most educational and interesting of them all. Our first stop for the day was at one of Cargill's farms where they raise turkeys. Mr Wentzell and Mr. Myer were our tour guides. We went through one of Cargill's 180 contract farms. they have twenty-two millon birds a year come through the houses. The primary market is on the East Coast but some is transported to Texas and Arizona. In one barn it can hold 23,500 birds thes are only hens due to if there are males in the houses their heads are a different color then the females and will be pecked causing them to feel ill and not eat which can kill the bird. The livability of the birds are at a 94.5%.
       The houses are kept on a choretonic controller that operates the entire building. This helps with the bird scales of water consumption, lighting, and the feed consumption. This information can be pulled up on the owners cell phone to know if any problems have occured. The CO2 and Ammonia levels are monitored, as well as, the humidity levels which must stay at a constant 60%. In the houses Space Ray Radiant Brooder heats the birds to be incubated when they are young. Nipple Line Waters are raises and lowered for the height of the turkeys through out their life span. Cargill and the farmers raise the birds from eggs and hatch them for their use. The shavings for the turkeys to rest on are five inches thick compared to other facilities that raise turkeys only use one inch. They use peanut hulls and Pine for the bedding or shavings the birds rest on. The birds get four hours of darkness a day for a rest period even though Mr. Wentzell says they are still active at that time. The turkeys have a lot of room to move around, stretch their wings and dust themselves, most imagine a turkey house to be cramped and the turkeys have no room but Cargill prides themselves with achieveing that amount of space for the birds.
     We moved from the farm to the food ingredient and food manufacturing facility. Cargill allowed us to tour the manufacturing facility, where they process 20,00 tons of turkey meat a day. They process numerous brands of turkey but they are known for Shady Brook and Honey Suckle White. The target weight for the birds are at forty pounds. 85,000 birds go through the facility a day, 20,000 of them are Toms (male turkeys), and 10,000 are heavy hens that are grade A birds, 50-60,000 are hens. The facilities are separated on the sides of the street one side is for slaughter the other is the chill/processing side. The plant is sanitized and shut down each night. The process of killing the birds is to be fixation by CO2 then hung on the line to go through the facility to be shocked, throats slit for the blood to drain, scalded, feathers plucked, and the processing of the meat can begin.
       There are three shifts at Cargill, 1200 workers are on each shift. Cargill has workers that have been there for over thirty years and the women that work there for that amount of time, the robots that process and package the turkeys receive the ladies names. Cargill has a diverse facility of 16 to 19 different spoken languages and people from 53 different countries. Cargill was built in 1950 and added onto in 1985. Most do not know that Cargill is known for more then their turkeys, they process other livestock and they manufacture high fructose corn syrup for companies such as  Coca-Cola and Pepsi. There is 90-95% of US products manufactured by Cargill and 70-75% to other countries. They are eleventh in the biggest industries in the United States and in the sales of the top ten. We visited plant 18 so on packaging there should be a p18 that will indicate its processing and you know it came from a safe facility.
       Our second farm we toured for the day was to White Oak Lavender Farm, located on White Oak Ridge in the Shenandoah Valley. Julie the owner and our tour guide informed us that she has 9,000 lavender plants and wants to grow to 12,000. Her facility is considered Agrotourism and that specific part has been open for five years. The oldest plants on her farm are nine years old. They prune the lavender shrubs in the fall, but due to the harsh winter this year she has lost more plants then ever since her average loss is ten plants a year. They harvest lavender for dry culinary purposes and for spa purposes such as aroma therapy, distill the oils as an essential oil for lotions and creams. The lavender shrubs grow up to twenty years old and there are different sizes and different colors. She has a variety of lavender plants such as Melissa that is pink and Royal Velvet that is a rich, dark purple. Lavender needs lots of sunlight, sweet soil of a pH level at 7 to 7.25, and good drainage. She does not use fertilizer for her plants.
       At her location there is a "Discovery Area," that contains a petting zoo of miniature horses, Welch ponies, quarter horses, Goats, Rabbits, ducks, chickens, alpacas, sheep and a turkey named George Washington that is over fifty pounds. The barn on the property is historical, built in 1901. To get the essential oils they distill the lavender, the process takes an hour and the first thirty minutes gives the best oils. To keep the oils you must use dark glass jars. Lavender can be used a pest determinant for insects, deer and other bugs. The purpose of the facility is to help relieve stress and anxiety also allowing people to relax.
     Our third trip took us to the Eastern BioPlastics, we toured there facility and observed some of their products. This was the first year they allowed groups to tour their facility. They have five patents. They take pride in their washing area of the feathers that they built themselves. The feathers are processed with plastics to make different products. The process begins with a fifteen minute washing which is a very important step because all biological material must be removed from the feathers. The feathers are then dried by a press and they do not want any water during this stage. The feathers are then grinded and can be mixed. The facility runs on half days and only 2000 feathers are processed a day. The plastic that is mixed with the feathers is a pellet form. The feathers are a great absorbent. They use their Granular Absorbent Pellets to absorb oil spills. They also manufacture pads that contain feathers and they also absorb oil spills. They sell their product to ports and airports for drippings from trucks and aircrafts. They eventually plan on selling to other retail stores but want to build a market place with a variety of products.
     Our last stop for the day was to the Powell farm that gave us a USDA-NRCS tour. The farm is 41 acres and the concern was water quality for their cows. Valerie from the Soil Water Conservation
 District informed us that 75% cost share of ponds or a water overflow must be fenced off to have a proper water source for cows. Thy used solar panels instead of an electric line, drilled the well and pumped to a reservoir. On cloudy days the pump will move a little slower then on a sunny day. It does not freeze during harsh temperatures for the cows to always have accessible water. They do not have a backup battery it relies only on the solar panels. There is a gravity system that has to have five to ten drop off system but Mr. Powell's is a fifteen drop system. This is not a maintenance free project! There is a ten year contract to keep the fence around the water source such as ponds and streams, after ten years they can remove the fence but after ten years of maintaining the water the farmer just leaves the fence. There is a thirty-five foot buffer acting as a filtration for runoff to go in the pond.

Day 2 of the Shenandoah Valley

       On our second day at the Shenandoah Valley we traveled to the Shenandoah Valley Bee Supply where Fred Hollen spoke with us about the facility, supplies for beekeeping, and how to manage bees. Their facility was opened four years ago and had to increase their inventory two folds every year to keep up with the demand. The business is the only beekeeping supply store with a storefront in the Shenandoah Valley. Competing companies such as Dadant doesn't have a store to buy your equipment like the Valley has, you have to order from Dadant and it comes from their main headquarters to the branches that customers can go to. The Valley Bee Supply has one of the seven machines that can manufacture the wood supers that holds the bees. Mr. Hollen said that colony collapses can be due to pesticides sprayed on fields close to the hives that gets on the bees pollen and nectar. There have been certain parasites such as the Buroa mite that affects the brood and causes a weakened or deformed bees. The mite was brought here by introducing the Eastern Russian bees coming to America with them. Bees are not native to America and different breeds were brought here from different countries. Jamestown
was the first settlement to have bees in 1620, and they were Northern German bees.

     Bees only sting to protect their hive. African bees are known for their harsh attacks due to their swarming and large numbers stinging you. A population of one hive contains one queen, 100s of drones, and 50,000 worker bees and these are sterile females. If the bees raise queen bees they will feed them royal jelly to the larvae the entire time, if a worker bee then it is fed royal jelly the first three days, the honey and pollen throughout until the last three days where they receive royal jelly. Once a queen bee has emerged she will kill the other queens. Valley Bee Supply receives their queen bees from the other companies that specifically breed them. Minnesota University breeds queen bees called Minnesota Queens the Valley have received queens from them before. For beeswax production the bees secrets the beeswax from plates on their abdomen. It takes eight pounds of honey to make one pound of wax. Also, two supers of honey will hold five gallons of honey.

       Our second stop for the day was to the Mountain View Farm and Vineyard and Dr. Megan Seibel, she manages all sprays due to her background in Chemistry and she manages the labor due to her background with Spanish. The farm has been here since 1962, but they built and planted there grapes by hand in 2000. The farm use to be a dairy and now has became a hay, pasture for beef, and vineyard. They operate 120 cow-calf operation. The vineyard yields 85 to 100 tons of grapes and their are only 256 Vineyards/Wineries in Virginia and Virginia is the fifth in grape production. Dr. Seibel sales mainly to companies such as King Family, and are sold in state and to Pennsylvania. The Vineyard has seven different varieties of grapes. She does not grown Champagne grapes it is called Sparkling grapes in America due to the Champagne name from original producers of Champagne. Grapes are self pollinated therefore there is no need for bees. She sprays the pesticides every ten to fourteen days at time of budding and blooming or they will face bad mildew problems. The pruning of the grapes can be done two ways one is Cane pruning and the other is Spur pruning which Mountain View Farm and Vineyard uses. During harvest time they pick nine to twenty tons of grapes a day. Grapes are able to tolerate heat very well but not a lot of water.
          Dr. Seibel had had problems with bear, deer, and especially birds. The deer were prevented by having deer fencing put up around the vineyard. The birds on the other hand still have problems due to them flying and puncturing through the netting and eating the grapes. Her crew personnel come from Waynesboro. She has had problems with Grapevine Yellows that comes from a shooter to get rid of this disease you have to take up the plants that are affected. Ladybugs can be a major problem especially to taste since they affect the juice. The plants at the Vineyard came from certified grape nurseries. The cows on the farm are able during the winter to graze in the vineyard but wire is low enough on the vines for the cows to not harm the plants. The vineyard's name was very accurate due to the beautiful "Mountain View."

Day 1 of the Shenandoah Valley

    On day one of the trip to the Shenandoah Valley we visited Novozymes Biologicals, Inc. We spoke to senior scientist, Jarrod Leland. He discussed that the biological solutions at Novozymes create necessary balance between better business, cleaner environment and better lives. History of Novozymes is the world leader in individual enzymes, microorganism and globally 2010 sales were 1.77 billion. Novozymes moves more than seven hundred products used in 130 countries within more than thirty industries. Novozymes employees 5,200+ people worldwide. For sustainable agriculture at Novozymes the products are to improve industrial performance and safeguard the world's resources. Novozymes at the Virginia location is considered closer to the pharmaceutical industry then to the agricultural industry but microorganisms are used for the agricultural applications purposes. Approximately sixty percent of their business is related to primarily agriculture. Their global headquarters are located in Denmark and Europe, Denmark is the enzyme business for Novozymes. Novozymes are related to my coarse work at Ferrum and my career by their use of probiotics in animal feed to help the growth and productivity. Mr. Leland stated that they focus on the the individual customers by delivering high value to produce food, feed, and fiber.
      Bio Ag products are in three parts that is Biofertility, Biocontrol, and Bioyield enhancement. Biofertility is a supply of nutrients to plants and they use the product JumpStart to acquire Phosphorus in the soil to be applied directly to seed before planting. They also use Tag Teamto acquire Phosphorus and Nitrogen in the soil. Biocontrol helps with control of insects, diseases, and weed pests. They use/produce two kinds of products Met 52G/Bio 1020 controls weevils, thrips and more. The second product for biocontrol was Taegro helps with soil born disease on vegetables. There is up to ninety percent of the applied Phosphorus is unavailable to plants in the Phosphorus cycle. Penicillium bilaiae helps to increase the Phosphorus uptake and yield for four to ten percent in a range of crops this helps the farmer yield more. The Nitrogen in plants are a limiting factor for the plants growth.
     We moved to the lab and greenhouse at Novozymes, at the greenhouse their specific crop area are legumes. The greenhouse we toured was just finished last January and it is the largest in the state. They track organisms within the soil connected with Ferrum College. The greenhouse makes their own soil for their plants. Each of the rooms in the greenhouse can adjust their heat and the lighting for each specific plant. One of their current crops in the greenhouse is corn that are mainly grown in sand. Pest prevention is the use of sticky traps for white flies and aphids, as well as, ladybugs to prevent the aphids.

      Our second trip was to Polyface Farm that was bought in 1961 it is a family owned farm with four generations currently living on the farm. Their slogan is "Many faces of agriculture." Joel Salatin, our tour guide and the owner of Polyface farms showed us one of his nine farm locations. He raises 800 chickens, 1000 cows, 3000 broilers, and 700 pigs. Mr. Salatin considers his farm "neighbor friendly," due to no smell and and no harsh conditions for the visitors or his livestock. Our first stop on the tour was to his Egg Mobiles that hold 800 chickens. The chickens are moved everyday behind the cows when they are rotated. The chickens are considered free range since they have the ability to scratch in the cow manure for fly larvae. His chickens were Plymouth Rocks and Rhode Island Reds. The water is gravity feed and they do not receive GMO feed. The chickens main supply of food is fifteen to twenty percent off of the pastures and the rest is from the feed located inside the mobiles. Chickens are moved in November to the hoop barns where they collect their manure and used as compost.
       Cows are able to graze four times on his fields before moved to another location. Mr. Salatin said that his pasture production is how much a cow eats on an acre in a day, his cows averaged 400 cows a day per acre. His cows are not fed grain they go from the pasture to the slaughter house. He does not have a veterinarian bill therefore my major/career would not be allowed on his farm. Polyface farms' products are only sold to the individual customer. We moved from the cows to pigs where he had forty-five pigs to an area that was a forest area of Ash trees. The pigs were rotated when needed and that was key due to the time causing a disturbance and that disturbance can be too much causing damage. Mr. Salatin receives his pigs from another individual and keeps them for six months. He takes the lambs, beef, and pigs to the slaughter houses and they slaughter the chickens, turkeys, and rabbits on the farm. There were lots of mixed information presented throughout the tour but he is a running, operating, sustainable farm.

Day 3 of the Eastern Shore - Candice Dalton

    On day three of our adventures for our E-term we traveled to the Cherrystone Aquafarm where they produce clams and oysters. the farm is 31 years old and the largest culture growing on the Eastern Shore. The Bower family own the business and in 1940 they bought the farm on the Eastern Shore and expanded from clams to oysters. in 1964 one brother bought a camp ground that is the biggest on the Eastern Shore, that is when the brothers split one took the camp and the other took the aqua farm. Cherrystone Aqua farm has 150 on salary and 150 on coop employees. They are not a seasonal farm, they maintain a year round harvest. Aquafarms or seafood has dominated the economy for 400 years. For the clams to grow and hatch it takes two to three years. The Nursery process lasts for eight weeks. To spawn these clams they must increase the temperature to approximately sixty degrees.

The first home outside in the juvenile stage is then moved to water out in the bay and they cover them to prevent predators such as crabs and frogs eating them. Cherrystone is sustainable by raising clams and oysters that improve the quality of the waters they grow in. A single oyster can clear more than 25 gallons of water a day and by feeding, shellfish increase the water quality by filtering sediments, phytoplankton, and their associated nutrients in the water.

There are five steps for clams the hatchery that is the most critical and they are three months in there normally spawning in May. Then the on shore nursery followed by the off shore nursery, and they grow out eighteen months to two years before packaging and moved to the costumer. When in the nursery at nine months old clams are as big as your finger nail. Five years ago Cherrystone were loosing their spawns because of a parasite in a crack in the piping, since then they put new piping in each year for $25,000 which is cheaper then loosing all of their spawns.

Their oyster production is tumbled due to them attaching themselves to one another allowing them to sell them individually. They sell six kinds of oysters and move to seaside only two are wild kinds. Oysters are adaptable to their environment and take on the flavor of their environment. They received oysters from another country and they were extremely salty after a few weeks on the Eastern Shore they began to take on the flavor of their normal product. There are 2000 oyster growers in the state of Virginia. The oyster room is keep at forty degrees for FDA regulations and then

separated and packed in bags or other containers to be sold to the customers. Cherrystone has never had a recall on their products but they have practice recalls to ensure what to do if one ever happens. In Virginia there are sanitation regulations for aquaculture, requiring them to have and maintain a safe, sanitary environment for the facility, workers, and consumers. 

 

         Our second stop for the day was at Pickett's Harbor Farms, the farm use to be a track for horses and had a stable but it is no longer on the facility. On the farm they use plastic trickle irrigation, when they first started they had fruit trees and had four orchards but only have two now. Mr. Pickett had picks the peaches and started selling on his front porch now they have a facility that customers can come in a buy the fruit and vegetables. Pickett farms is known for their peaches and asparagus, but they also grow sweet potatoes, corn, collard greens and much more. He is a bee keeper to help pollenate his trees and plants. Some of his products go to the Senior Nutrition Program and he travels to Suffolk, Norfolk and more to sell to those communities less fortunate, where they use their food stamps or checks to purchase his produce. Mr. Pickett is also a participate in Farm School programs.

The farm has 225 acres and eighty percent of that is small crops or vegetables out of ten percent of his land. The Pickett's Harbor farm has been in his family for 100 years throughout generations. His big five products are corn, watermelon, peaches, cantaloupe, and tomatoes. He has a partnership with ODU to grow sweet potatoes and then they transport them to the area around the school. Mr. Pickett has blackberries that you can pick your own and a few years ago had cane blite that he had to let have new growth and come back after to cut it down to get rid of the blite. There is 28 acres of fresh water behind his home for irrigation use.

 

     Our third and final stop for the Eastern Shore was to David Longs, Potato Farm. Bill Shockly and David Long spoke with us about the potato itself and how to grow and produce them. A potato has nine eyes on a single potato. Small red potatoes bring good premium price at the market. A hundred pound of potatoes make twelve pounds of chips because of oil. On the Eastern Shore they can plant potatoes as early as February as long as the soil is warm enough. At approximately fifty degrees the potato plants will start coming up. In Florida it takes twenty-eight days to kill the vines for the skin to harden and not bruise by getting the potatoes up to early. Russet potatoes have a niche market and one acre of potatoes costs $3200. The fields require 150 pounds of Nitrogen, 110 pounds of Phosphorus and 150 to 180 pounds of Pot Ash. This helps the plants produce and grow quicker although the biggest problem with potatoes is the humidity. Other than the humidity the Colorado Potato Beetle killed lots of plants just out of the ground. The best way to get rid of the beetle is to burn the plant and the beetle, but Neonicotoid kills the beetle by simply walking on the plant and effects their body it is put on the plant through the dust.

The potato farms on the Eastern Shore are primarily for chip production. There is one grower on the Eastern Shore that grows for Lay's chips but Frito Lay does not take any potatoes from Virginia. They plant potatoes nine inches apart and they are dug the day the chip company wants the potatoes to ensure a fresh chip. The market for potatoes is a major importance and there is only one cooperate potato farmer on the Eastern Shore the rest are local farmers. The 15th of June to the 15th of August is the harvest time for potatoes and you can not leave the potatoes in the ground for a long period of time due them melting or becoming rotten.



Day 2 of the Eastern Shore - Candice Dalton

On day two of the Eastern Shore, our first stop was to the Eastern Shore Agricultural Research & Extension Center (ESAREC), they hare many crops they study such as tomatoes, potatoes, and small grains. The crops such as tomatoes are the third largest production in the US on the Eastern Shore. Third in poultry in the state, largest clam production for aquaculture with sales at $40 million, potatoes is sixth largest producer in the country, and soybeans are number one in the state. The Eastern Shore is a very diverse in production of agriculture, they have very few livestock productions such as cows. There is four to five thousand acres on the Eastern Shore that produces potatoes and five to six thousand acres that produces tomatoes therefore there are basically three farmers or companies that grow tomatoes on the Eastern Shore. Making it ninety percent are grown on the Eastern Shore of the state of Virginia is tomato production.
 
     Dr. Steve Rideout a Plant Pathologist helps with "truck crops" also known as vegetables for producers. Dr. Rideout gave some back ground of the facility the ESAREC, they merged with Virginia Tech in 1985  and it is fifty percent Research and fifty percent Extension and the Education for Grad School students. The extension center has 226 acres, approximately 100 are tillable and approximately two acres are organic. Then Dr. Rideout introduced Dr. Mark Reiter who focuses on soil quality and general fertilizer use. He passed around different fertilizers that help with improving soil quality and crop production. Potassium Chloride is one of the most commonly used fertilizers and chicken litter as a fertilizer is becoming increasingly common on farms. When the chicken litter is burned it becomes more effective and smaller to a ratio of 1:6 from a 1:1 ratio making it easier to transport and be sold easier. Lime  helps manage and adjust the pH of the soil, the pH needs to be at 6 to 6.5. We went outside and were shown how mapping a field can be done using the Varius Machine attached to a Ranger for the yield potential to make a soil mapping diagram for Precision Agriculture. The machine "culture" reads zero to one or zero to three feet of soil and a half inch correction and tells soil texture not soil type.

 

We moved back inside and Kyle Sturgis from Helena with Precision Ag discussed what Helena does and how mapping works. For precision agriculture it is whole farm management with the goal of optimizing returns on inputs while preserving resources. The sustainability part is the fact they use farming techniques to protect the environment, as well as, maintaining the environment by using GPS, Satellite Imagery and Georeferenced Ag applications for field and farm boundaries, soil and tissue sampling, and much more this is vital for all agriculture production to maintain and manage your livestock or crops if not there could be problems and then the need for veterinary assistance (where I would come in for my major) and extension services to help rebuild and manage the farm.

         

            Our second stop for the day was to a CSA farm known as Copper Cricket Farm. CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture, this is where the customers can come help with the farm and purchase the vegetables that are produced. There are two acres of cultivated land and six acres that are used for his chickens mobile lots, as well as, his bees. Mr. Upshure started the farm in 2007 and began selling to customers in 2008. They have weekly baskets that are delieverd on Monday, Wednesday, or Fridays. Delivery is once a week on one of the specific days and the payments are weekly for a basket. $20 for a two person basket, $15 for a individual basket, and $30 for a family basket, only have to agree for a subscription for the entire season and pay weekly. The costumer does not get to decide what goes in the basket, Mr. Upshure uses what is ripe and fresh for the baskets. There are approximately forty customers. To keep the vegetables fresh Mr. Upshure built a cold room for them using an air condition unit and a cool bot. He uses European equipment to manage such a small farm because American equipment is too large.

The bails of hay weight forty pounds and go around his plants as buffer. For irrigation he uses a drip tape and he does not use pesticides or herbicides. The compost used is a horse manure and bedding, he allows it to sit for a year to be broken down and allow the heat for aeration.

       Our third stop for the day was at the Tri-S farms, where they manage precision ag and large acreage production of small grains. They are predominately a grain farm that includes sorghum, corn, wheat and soybeans. Sorghum is a drought tolerant crop which helps during their dry seasons. They run a GPS, end row stops, and mapping on their equipment for records. They have approximately 1000 acres and other acres that aren't used for planting. Four hundred of those acres are planted in wheat each year. Last year Mr. Sturgis planted four and half acres of carrots for a company and they came up small. Mr. Sturgis allowed us to look at his equipment used on the farm, included a sprayer, combine, and a tractor and planter attached.

 Mr. Sturgis sprays his crops three times and to do a burn down. To burn down  he uses 15 gallons of round up. He does not use 2-4D on his tomatoes because it is harmful to the plant. The Planter he uses would cost approximately $20,000 to simply upgrade. For irrigation purposes when needed he uses hard hose irrigation systems. Mr. Sturgis uses many techniques to maintain and keep his farm sustainable for the each year to keep public health with his way of producing his grains.



Day 1 of the Eastern Shore - Candice Dalton

On day one of the trip to the Eastern Shore, our first stop was at the Southern Piedmont Research and Education Center (SPAREC). In there facility they have agents that attend to the different tobacco plants, livestock and forage. They are the 12th of 13 off campus research centers from Virginia Tech. Research done here helps the extension agents in the surrounding area suggest farmers and growers of a good, helpful way to make educated decision of what to plant and use for their crops and livestock. This is where my studies at Ferrum and its relevance to my career are intertwined due to becoming a veterinarian and studying animal nutrition at Ferrum how they need certain foods and forage to survive on farms.
        In the lab at the facility they test samples every two hours of vacuum packed grass to check the lactic acid from being in those bags and this shows there acid/nutrition level for the feed and forage of animals.

Here you see the Chemical lab where the tests are run and also the leaf litter is checked for carbon and nitrogen in each sample. At the facility they also have tobacco plants and seeds. The plants grow in a soil mixture, where it increases in the stigma Pete grown in a float system in water and the white grates. These grates are being changed to see if any improvement can be made on them to help with there growing and ability to not get roots and contamination on the next plants grown in the flats so they will change to alternative trays such as painted trays, biodegradable paper trays (the problem with these are degrading before time to plant), and a two part plastic tray for floating from Middle Asia (these last 20 years but are more expensive). In the green house the tobacco plants are give 20 gallons of water per tray and float in a shallow area for the roots to absorb the water. There are 288 plants per tray, they manage the trays by clipping the plants tops evenly to reduce the spread of diseases and to maximize the number of plants per tray.

       On the farm part of the center is planted wheat residue and strip killed twelve inches wide area for cover down the middle of the field called strip tiled. They grow flue cured tobacco and over 1000 acres in Virginia raises tobacco in this manner. Five to eight percent of tobacco in VA is organic for organic grown cigarettes. In the Forage area they have twelve 12th acre ponds to test environmental fades of pesticides but they are not used anymore. They are currently studying bailage and the fungus in tall grass such as fescue. To test this they are injecting the bails with Urea to change the ammonia which decreases the Urgoalkoloids. The white wrapping of the bails helps with the fermentation and benefits is to cut one day and it won't wilt over night which allows to keep the moisture on the inside. They wrap the bails in four layers normally but you can wrap more or less this helps with how long the bails last. There methods of keeping sustainable agriculture is very prevalent in the way they grown the plants and there farming techniques that protects the environment such as planting Serisia les Pastesea or AU grazer which helps the land and has less parasitic quality. This plant helps farmers with small ruminants. They maintain this area with Lime, Phosphorus and Potassium. The AU grazer is great for using in hay and grazing operations.
      
           Our second stop was at C&C farms, they maintain over three hundred acres of land with 6000 tobacco plants per acre. They grow tobacco, grains, and soybeans. He employees three or four workers, the rest are guest workers. Mr. Burney's farm has expanded from "box barns" and audited "star barns." They grow three types of tobacco flue cured, burley, and dark fired (smokless tobacco). New to their farm is a Leaf loader and no one has to touch a leaf by hand then are placed in a black tumbler to get out all the sand and to bail the tobacco.


In the barns they are computer controlled barns that connects to the farmers phone to know when or if something is wrong. The "book barns" use to have direct flame to the plants an now the farmer has placed the heater in a container that helps with heat exchange and helps with better management. There are control panels in the barn that have two bulbs, one wet and one dry the wet bulb indicates the humidity level. Mr. Burney has transformed buses into trailers that haul the green tobacco leaves from harvest. He has two types of harvesters one a Multipass harvester these hopper fill the school buses the Multipass has an individual collector where the second harvester is a Granville Stripper that has six collector that collects what is left from the fields and grinds the stems. Mr. Burney's farm helps maintain sustainable agriculture and productive agriculture he helps with the environment of plants products using farming techniques as shown below.