Scott Newport, Farm Business Farm Management Specialist
The 2020 growing season got off to a slow start with frequent rainfall during the planting season. However, most of the corn and soybeans were planted timely but experienced excess rainfall in May and June followed by a lack of rain in late July ...
So why do local farmers grow so much corn?
Field corn has been the county’s top crop for more than a century.
But why do we grow it here? It’s not because farmers can’t find anything else to grow. It’s because DeKalb County, Illinois is one of the best places to grow ...
Farmers plant crops going on the second year of the Covid-19 pandemic.
It’s spring, which means corn and soybeans are being planted in fields all around DeKalb County. So what’s different this year from last year?
Farmers are still essential workers.
We count on farmers to do their jobs of growing food to ...
About half of DeKalb County’s top crops of corn and soybeans are fed to livestock. The leading livestock in the county are pigs and cows.
Local farmers market over 954,000 hogs each year. Now that’s a lot of hogs! At any one time there are 276,000 hogs and pigs on farms.
The second largest ...
With the spring season comes lambing season. Local farms are welcoming new lambs to their flocks.
But spring lambing is sort of a misnomer because lambs are born year-round, according to Julie Barr. “Some lambs are born in the spring (March-May), but many are born in January and February or in ...
Farm fields are covered in snow so what impact does that white blanket have on farmland? How does this winter compare to other winters?
As you shovel snow from your sidewalk you’re probably not thinking about the value of snow. It does provide benefits to both your lawn and farm fields.
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A century ago…
While men generally handled a majority of the fieldwork women traditionally kept the household going. Women typically grew the gardens. They canned produce, baked bread, did the laundry and cared for the family and home.
Women and children usually raised the chickens: gathering the eggs, nurturing baby chicks, and ...
About 90% of DeKalb County is farmland and 98% of the farmland is classified as prime by the USDA. Prime farmland is land that has the best combination of physical and chemical characteristics for producing food and crops and has the soil quality, growing season and moisture supply needed for growing high ...
Santa will be very busy this Christmas Eve visiting people all over the world. DeKalb County has 2,300 farms, all of which Santa and his reindeer will deliver presents.
Rudolph and his fellow reindeer love visiting DeKalb County where 3,800 acres of hay are grown. Hay is the 4th largest crop in the ...
At harvest, farmers use a combine to pick corn and cut soybeans. The combine is the main harvesting machine that powers through the county’s top crops from September through November.
On the front of the combine is an attachment known as the head. The head is powered by the PTO (power ...
