A couple weeks ago, a colleague sent me a link which described an event open to the public to be held at the UMass Crop and Animal Research Education Center:  UMass Agricultural Field Day. “Sounds like fun,” I thought to myself and RSVPd that I would attend.  So shortly after 9 this morning, with the day promising to be sunny and hot, I left my office and drove north on 116.  Immediately after I crossed the Connecticut River in Sunderland, I turned right onto River Road; a few miles up the road was the sign for the farm:

Although I come from a long line of agricultural laborers (guys, come on, everybody was a farmer, not so long ago), I’m not even a gardener and can barely keep house plants alive.  I didn’t know what to expect from the day’s activities, but as it happened, I really enjoyed learning about the research being carried out on this experimental farm.  The event planners had scheduled two tracks for the morning session, then lunch and speeches, then an afternoon session.  I went with the “cover crops and vegetables” track in the morning, then stayed for all but the final panel in the afternoon session on barley.

I took notes during the presentations, but as I’ve found with my previous blog posts, it’s difficult to interpret my cryptic scribbles even when I’m transcribing them only hours afterwards.  Here’s my best effort at summarizing the talks.

Fatemeh Etemadi spoke on “Nitrogen Management of Sweet Corn Production by Planting Fava Beans”:

Julie Stultz Fine spoke on “Integrating Forage Radish Cover Crops and No-Till for Sustainable Early Sweet Corn Production”:

Faculty Adviser Masoud Hashemi takes the mike to answer a question:

Susan Scheufele, Katie Campbell-Nelson, Lisa McKeag, and Ruth Hazzard spoke on “Evaluation of Conventional and OMRI-Approved Insecticides to Reduce Cabbage Root Maggot Damage”:

Emily Cole spoke on “Enhancing Soil Health with Hardwood Biochar”:

Emad Jahanzad spoke on “Using Cover Crop Mixtures to Reduce Nitrate Leaching and Fertilization in Potato Production”:

Samantha Corcoran spoke on “Dual-Purpose Double Cropping with Winter Grain and Early-Maturing Corn”:

Katie Campbell-Nelson spoke on “Mustard as a Biofumigant Cover Crop”:

At this point, we broke for lunch under the big tent (pizza!) and listened to remarks by the executive-type people.  I didn’t take notes, but here’s one factoid that should impress you:

In October [2014], US News & Word Report published their ranking of the top agricultural universities, and UMass Amherst ranked 8th in the World and 3rd in the United States.

No matter about third: as Professor Geunhwa Jung said earlier today, UMass is first in our hearts!

In the afternoon, Caroline Wise (to the left of Professor Hashemi) spoke on “Impacts of Planting Date, Nitrogen, Cultivar, and Zinc on Barley Malt Quality”:

We also heard Dr Robert Wick speak on “Head Blight of Barley” (I don’t seem to have a photo of him), then Ms Wise spoke again in front of another experimental barley plot:
With the kind of summary I’ve presented, I’m sure you haven’t learned anything.  I feel like I learned a lot, but I felt that a one or two sentence summary of the research would not be adequate, so I didn’t even try.  These words and phrases are sprinkled throughout my notes: cover crop, cash crop, tillage, planting date, seed size, winter-killed, organo-phospate insecticide, biomass, soil aeration, nitrogen leaching, yield per acre, low inputs, cultivars and crosses, soil pH, protein content, two-row vs six-row [barley], percent moisture, specialty crop, disease resistance, fusarium, fungicide, heading to harvest.  If you’d like me to provide links to references, please leave me a comment.

So plants are great, right?  I’ll end this post with some plant close-ups.  First, cabbages:

Now fava beans:

And my favorite images, of the barley.  This was the first time in my life that I saw barley growing in a field.  At first I thought it was wheat (that’s how much I know), but perhaps I can be forgiven, as barley is also a member of the grass family.  Here in the Pioneer Valley, and also in Worcester County, barley is cultivated for brewing beer.  Cool!