2018 Wisconsin Farm Tech Days, UW-Extension
Tuesday, June 19th, 2018 -- 10:31 AM
-In three weeks, the 2018 Wisconsin Farm Technology Days will get underway in Wood County.The event, happening from 9am-4pm, July 10th-12th at D&B Sternweis Farms, along with Weber’s Farm Store-Heiman’s Holsteins, on County Highway H near Marshfield, will feature over 600 exhibitors, innovation square, field demonstrations, virtual farm tours, delicious food and much more.
There are a large variety of events, activities and demonstrations happening over the 3-day event. During the recent Media Day for the event, I spoke with Matt Adkins and Richard Halopka with the Extension/Ag Committee and they talked about the different item UW-Extension will have at Farm Tech Days
"There will be four different themes, there's an animal/livestock theme, a forage and crops theme, a Master Gardner's display, they have a lot of plants. And there's a cover crops theme. So, they all center around those. The one I'm involved in mostly is the livestock one. We'll have displays of different byproduct feeds and how farmers can use those in their rations to reduce costs. And different animal handling techniques and how to trailer animals. That's our focus this year."
Richard talked about some outdoor plots at the event as well.
"So in addition to those themes that we have inside the education tent, we'll have a number of outdoor plots. The one thing that may be of interest for some rural people or some urban people is we're having a backyard chicken display. Where they can raise poultry for eggs or meat, whichever you'd like to do. We have an alfalfa plot, we have a no till corn plot, various cover crop plots to show people the different species of cover crops we can raise. In addition, we're working with NRCS and we're going to have three plots of different control grazing mixes. So, the uniqueness of the outdoor plots is that a person, a farmer, an urban person can come in and ask questions one-on-one. We'll have tools of the trade per say. Sweep nets. These different things so you can take a sweep net into a small alfalfa plot, capture some insects, identify them and we can talk about that. We can count the number of plants per square foot. In a no till corn, you can see how a no till corn performs in this area of the state. And then we're going to do some inter-seeding of cover crops. And then the other thing would be to go into the cover crops, just to see what these plants look like when they're grown. So, that's what our theme is inside and outside."
Once again, Farm Technology Days is happening from 9am-4pm, July 10th-12th at D&B Sternweis Farms, along with Weber’s Farm Store-Heiman’s Holsteins, on County Highway H near Marshfield.
Feel free to contact us with questions and/or comments.