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Ag and Extension

USDA reminds Lyon County farmers and ranchers to vote

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has started mailing ballots for the Farm Service Agency (FSA) county committee elections to eligible farmers and ranchers across the country. To be counted, ballots must be returned to the Lyon County FSA office or postmarked by Dec. 6.  “FSA county committee members provide valuable knowledge and judgment as decisions are made about the services we provide, including disaster and safety-net programs,” said David Schreiber, county executive director for Lyon County. “Please take a few minutes to review your ballot and make your selection ...

Ag Briefs

Cottage Food Producer Food Safety Training webinar and online course available Do you get rave reviews on your homemade breads, cakes and cookies? Are family and friends asking to buy your yummy home canned salsa and pickles? Join University of Minnesota Extension Food Safety Educators, Kathy Brandt and Suzanne Driessen at a Cottage Food Producer Food Safety Training webinar or take the online course. Both the webinar and online course meet the Minnesota Department of Agriculture food safety training requirements to register as a Minnesota Cottage Food Producer. Once registered, ...

Curbing damage

As fall starts to turn to winter, gardeners are always looking for ways to curb animal damage to our plants. We should also include other forms of damage that can occur such as heavy snow load, ice damage and salt damage too. For the most part, the U of M Extension recommends the use of either all white tubing or tree wrap for those more sensitive plants that we worry about, which generally are those trees that are less than 5 years old. The use of black tubing is never a good idea as it can heat up the bark on one side of the tree, which will cause the bark to crack and break, ...

Insecticidal soap

Managing our gardens is very important in order to keep diseases under control as well as insects. This summer, while many of us did quite well with our vegetable gardens and our perennial gardens, we did see a higher than usual number of certain insects in our gardens. As we all become more familiar with the need to protect pollinator insects, we have recognized that insecticides will kill all insects, good or bad. We are all learning that indiscriminate spraying of pesticides will also kill bees and other insects that we want to keep. This has brought many of us to rethink pesticides ...

Lyon County is eligible for FSA emergency loans

Lyon County was declared a primary disaster due to drought and heat using the streamlined Secretarial Disaster Declaration process. Under this designation, if you have operations in any primary or contiguous county, you are eligible to apply for low interest emergency loans. The streamlined disaster declaration process issues a drought disaster declaration when a county has experienced a drought intensity value of at least D2 (severe drought) level for eight consecutive weeks based on the U.S. Drought Monitor during the crop year. Emergency loans help you recover from production ...

High Tech Robotic Dairy Field Day on Sept. 22

University of Minnesota Extension will host a summer field day at Golden Sunrise Dairy, 31328 290 St SW, McIntosh on Sept. 22. Golden Sunrise Dairy is owned and managed by Tim Rolf and his son, Derek. In 2020, they moved into a new high technology, automated cross ventilated barn featuring the latest in dairy technology. Calves are fed on automatic calf feeders. Cows are milked with Lely A5 milking robots. Cows and heifers are fed with an automatic feeding system that weighs, mixes and delivers the correct diet to the correct group of animals. In addition, all manure is removed from ...