We lease 172 acres of Crow's Nest to a local farmer, Frank Hartung, who has farmed this land for many years, as his father Ken did before him. He plants a conventional rotation of field corn, soybeans, winter wheat, winter rye, and hay.
The farming is done following a Conservation Plan prepared by the Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS), a cooperative project of the Federal government and Chester County. The crops are laid out in strips that are parallel to the contours of the terrain, so that soil does not wash away down a row, and so that no more than 100 feet wide of slope is in a single crop. Seasonally dormant crops such as corn alternate with winter-growing crops such as winter wheat, for example, so that erosion in one strip is stopped by the next.
The field corn is usually harvested by combine. The kernels are loaded onto a truck for animal feed, and the stalks are chopped and left on the land as a mulch to reduce erosion and return organic matter to the soil. (In a drought year when corn ear production was severely reduced, some stalks were harvested instead for sileage, another kind of animal feed.)
The soybeans are also harvested by combine, as in this photo, which also shows the crop strips. Winter wheat and rye are cool-season crops that are planted in the fall and harvested in the spring when they mature and set seed. The seeds are stripped off, again as a grain for food, while the hollow stems are baled for straw and used for animal bedding.
Hay is a perennial crop, largely alfalfa, that is grown in one place and harvested for several years by cutting in late June and perhaps again in August. The cut grasses are left to dry in the sun for a couple days, then twirled into windrows and baled. Hay is used as the fiber in large animal feed.
Frank works cooperatively with other farmers in the neighborhood, sharing specialty equipment and storage space.
