If award-winning Crown Royal doesn’t put the words ‘fall rye’ back in your mouth, potential yields of 200 bushels per acre might do the trick
Crown Royal Northern Harvest Rye Whiskey from Seagram’s Gimli distillery grabbed Canada’s attention by winning the Jim Murray’s Whiskey Bible 2016 World Whisky of the Year Award. The fact that Northern Harvest is distilled with 95 percent real rye no doubt drew the attention of some prairie farmers. After all, rye whiskey seems to be […] Read more
Ron Lyseng
Stories by Ron Lyseng
Drought: the slow death
CALGARY — For a plant living in a prairie field, death by drought lurks just around the next El Nino The physiological trauma that occurs within that plant during drought is a bit more complicated than “it just ran out of water and dried up.” A plant cannot put itself into the “hold mode” for […] Read more
When pesticides go missing
CALGARY — In the “Case of Disappearing Pesticides” the farmer applied a herbicide with a 45 day active life. Three days later it was gone, nowhere to be found. This happened repeatedly. The disappearing chemical caper took place not long ago, says Colorado State University re-searcher Raj Khosla, speaking in Calgary earlier this year. “We […] Read more
Dryers have staying power; pick the right one for the job
It’s not uncommon to swap combines every two or three years. But a grain dryer might last the length of a farming career, which is why due diligence in the buying process is important. A poor decision made in haste because of short-term weather conditions can become expensive to correct when the new dryer doesn’t […] Read more
Big red box carries load of fresh ideas
The new Jaylor D series dump wagon features a number of innovations based on conventional European design merged with fresh Canadian technology, all aimed at reducing turn around times. When you’re pulling 85,000 pounds of trailer down a public road, safety has to be your overriding concern, says Jaylor engineer Trevor Sutcliffe. He says safety […] Read more
Cleanliness next to godliness in engines
Federated Co-op is putting its money where its mouth is when it comes to touting the advantages of premium diesel over plain, old-fashioned fuel. The company’s new premium diesel returns fuel-gobbling engines to normal consumption levels by ensuring that injectors stay spick and span and reducing fuel burn by as much as five percent, says […] Read more
Two new heads may be better than one
Row crop heads are expensive, doubly so if you buy a second head for a different row spacing. Geringhoff’s response is to introduce new heads capable of harvesting multiple configurations. The German company has a new manufacturing facility at St. Cloud, Minnesota, and has announced a new product line named Independence heads. The line rolls […] Read more
Field tests show tracks consume up to 15 percent less fuel than tires
Much of the tracks versus wheels discussion over the past 25 years has focused on compaction and working in wet conditions. But what about fuel consumption? The underlying assumption has always been that it must take more diesel to pull a big heavy rubber track through a rotation than it does to rotate a round […] Read more
Solar vs. wind: A tough call
Farmers who look on the internet for an easy solution to the question, which is better, solar or wind generation, will not find it. Natural Resources Canada has a good solar potential map with bright colours and useful measurements. It’s considered to be a good source of solar information. Unfortunately, there’s no comparable map for […] Read more
Laser beam focus on soil moisture
Scientists at the University of Kansas have started using a new tool to help understand how water moves, or doesn’t move, in the soil. Daniel Hirmas and his team of soil hydrologists are using a Multistripe Laser Triangulation (MLT) scanner to measure the size of pores in soil horizons. “We hand dig seven foot deep […] Read more
