It’s no secret that Flagstaff County – with one million acres of fertile farmland – is steeped in a rich farming tradition. But did you know that Flagstaff County is home to the most Alberta Century Farm and Ranch Award recipients?

To date (March 11, 2021), Alberta Agriculture has recognized 87 families in Flagstaff County for the impressive distinction of continually owning and actively operating the same land for a minimum of 100 years. No other municipality in the entire province can claim to have more Century Farms!

Lamont County is second with 81 Century Farm and Ranch Award recipients. Camrose County is third with 78, followed by Red Deer County with 77. Rounding out the top 5, there is a tie: the County of Vermilion River and Vulcan County, both with 68.

The oldest Century Farm in Flagstaff County was established in 1902 (Seiferman Family).

The Alberta Century Farm and Ranch Award is an award that farm families have to apply for. To help determine eligibility for an Alberta Century Farm and Ranch Award, the Alberta Government has set forth the following criteria:

• At the time of application your land has been continuously owned and actively farmed for a minimum of 100 years.
• You can provide evidence clearly demonstrating the kinship ties between you and the founder of the farm, ranch or homestead.
• You can provide the date of homestead of farmland establishment.
• You can provide the current ownership land title.
• The current size of the original homestead of land base should be at least 160 acres of land.

Click HERE for more information on the program.

Once you hit the 100-year milestone, you can start working towards the 125-year milestone. For more information on that program, click HERE.

You can contact the Alberta Century Farm and Ranch Award Program by calling toll-free 310-0000 then 780-968-6557, by e-mail at susan.lacombe@gov.ab.ca or by writing to 4709 44 Ave., Stony Plain, AB T7Z 1N4.

By Harry Brook

The provincial agriculture department recently released their survey for wheat midge in the province. Guess where they predict a hot spot for 2021? The north part of the county! They conduct this survey by taking soil core samples in the fall then sorting out all the wheat midge larvae in the soil. This is a pretty good indication of the prevalence of wheat midge in an area. After sorting through way-too-many soil samples, they generate a map of the numbers of larvae they found. They also inspect the larvae for any parasitism (which is a good thing). Next spring, the larvae hatch, move to the surface and pupate. Adults emerge in late June, early July, and adults start laying eggs in wheat flowers.

A wheat midge is a very small, delicate fly that hatches in the spring. Wheat midge lays eggs inside the wheat flowers in late June, early July, just as wheat heads emerge and flower. The eggs hatch and larvae feed on the developing wheat kernel. Their feeding can abort kernels and cause damaged, shrunken kernels, looking like frost or drought damage. Tolerance in wheat grading for damaged kernel is low, with #1CWR wheat being 2% or less, #2 – between 2% to 5% and #3 being 5% to 10%. Feed wheat has no maximum levels. It can get very expensive losing one or two grades due to midge damage.

Wheat midges are not good fliers and the actual time available for them to lay eggs in the wheat head is short. Female midge actively lay eggs when the temperature is above 15˚C and winds below 10 km/hr. Females are active usually after 8:30 p.m. You’re looking at a very narrow window where you can scout and effectively spray for these pests. It needs to be done in the evenings when the air is still or moving slowly and the wheat midge can be seen flying above the canopy. Daytime spraying can’t get chemical on the midge as they shelter at the bottom of the canopy. Once you see the yellow anthers protruding out from the wheat head, the wheat is no longer susceptible to midge damage. Any spraying at this time, is a waste of money.

Worse yet, if you spray late, at full flower or beyond, you run a great risk of spraying out the naturally occurring parasitic wasps that keep the midge numbers in check. This can make it worse in following years. When scouting, check several places in the field. Midge numbers may be highest along field edges, close to where wheat was grown the previous year. If high numbers are found throughout the field, the whole field may need to be sprayed. You need to scout various parts of the field. Adults look a bit like a small, orange mosquito.

Economic thresholds for midge affecting yield, is when there is one midge for every four or five wheat heads. For grade considerations where #1 wheat is common, a threshold of one midge per eight to 10 heads would warrant spraying but only before full wheat flowering and in the calm evening.

Early seeding of wheat may reduce the problem of wheat midge but a lot depends on the individual variety. If greater yield is linked to longer periods of head emergence, it can still be a big problem. Another useful tool is seeding a midge-tolerant wheat variety. However, it must be used carefully to avoid resistance showing up.

Flagstaff County is the predicted location for an outbreak of wheat midge this year. Careful crop planning and scouting can prevent severe losses to your wheat operation. Forewarned is forearmed. The videos below have more information on wheat midge and control.

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Harry Brook is Flagstaff County’s Agricultural Fieldman. He can be reached via email at: hbrook@flagstaff.ab.ca or by phone at: 780-384-4138. 

By Harry Brook

Alberta Agriculture has changed their website and moved a lot of good information around but there are still some very useful tools available to producers. You just have to look a little harder.

There is a long-existing application called the Soil Information viewer on the government pages. It has proven invaluable for real estate agents, plumbers, oilfield reclamation, farmers and anyone else who needs soil information. It is a compilation of all the soil surveys done over the years in the agricultural parts of the province. There are a number of functional tools that allow you to measure areas, mark up the photos and export them to either the printer or as a computer file.

The link to this program is https://soil.agric.gov.ab.ca/agrasidviewer/. Soils take a very long time to change so this information is still very valid. The program also gives detailed soil reports on the different types of soils present in an area, the percentages of those soils, where they are found and even a layer-by-layer breakdown of the soil. A search feature can be used to select particular types of soils.

Another link that is pretty handy is the Alberta Climatic Information Service (ACIS). This is a site where 450+ weather stations are available with near, real time weather data. The number and pattern of weather stations tries to ensure there is a station within 20 miles of any place in the province. Interested in finding out the average frost free growing period for a particular area? It is available. Looking for historical weather data going back to 1961? For any part of the province? You can find it here. There are over 26,000 weather maps available with features focusing on growing degree days, corn heat units, wind, temperatures and precipitation.

From an agricultural point of view, knowing where, when and how much the wind was blowing is very useful if you are investigating a potential spray drift issue. Using 50% frost probabilities can give an idea when, over the long-term, it is safe to seed and minimize risk from a killing frost. A number of the weather stations even have soil temperature and moisture probes which can prove helpful when looking at times to begin seeding. Of course, knowing what is happening on your own land is preferable, but these stations give reliable information. There are links on this site to give the current radar and a forecast for your area. You can reach ACIS at https://acis.alberta.ca/. Actually, ACIS is now an app and can be downloaded to your phone and set to the station closest to your location.

There are other tools still on the internet that can help with volume measurements, seeding rates, financial management and fertilizer application and utilization. These are all available at https://www.alberta.ca/agriculture-and-forestry-decision-making-tools.aspx#toc-0. All of them can provide useful information to the producer to help them manage on the farm. There are a number of small programs that can help in estimating bushels of grain in a bin or the amount of silage in a pit. Check it out. Information is power. They can make life easier. If you need any help with these programs, please don’t hesitate to contact me. You can reach me at 780-384-4138.

As this is the last column for 2020, may you have a Merry and healthy Christmas.

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Harry Brook is Flagstaff County’s Agricultural Fieldman. He can be reached via email at: hbrook@flagstaff.ab.ca or by phone at: 780-384-4138.

By Harry Brook

Ownership of anything is really only temporary stewardship. Farm land may be owned for generations but sooner or later, someone else will eventually decide what to do on the land and with the land. Some of you might want to preserve particular areas of your land that have a greater, personal significance to you. You may not be able to take it with you but there are ways to ensure pieces of land will remain as you left them or are limited to the uses put upon it by the title.

This is possible by using a Conservation Easement placed upon the title.  It stays with the title regardless of who buys the land.  There are three types of Conservation Easements, each for a specific purpose. There are environmental, esthetic or agricultural reasons for a conservation easement. Conservation Easements are also commonly being used as a tool in tax and estate planning while preserving the values the owners believe in. In all cases, they are used to protect, conserve and/or enhance certain features on the land. They do not have to apply to a whole quarter but can apply on small parcels in a quarter that have value to the owner.

We’ve seen this happen south of Calgary, where foothills ranches have used Conservation Easements to preserve the land use for grazing cattle and protect it from being developed into rural subdivisions. It is a way to protect certain property rights while at the same time allowing for the land to be continued to be used. The Easement is usually granted to a charitable organization, such as the Nature Conservancy of Canada or else a municipality to administer. Flagstaff County is an organization that is allowed to administer and monitor Conservation Easements in the county.

Environmental reasons can be landscape features like treed areas or land adjacent to creeks and rivers. It may be used to preserve a view, limiting development. This limiting of use does come at a cost, however. For agricultural purpose it may prevent certain, native or treed areas from being broken and annually cropped. It can also outline permitted uses for either small patches or for a large segment of the land.  When you limit the use of a piece of land, it removes some value from that land. The market value will reflect this. As the landowner, placing the easement, you can be eligible to a tax receipt equivalent to the loss of value from the easement. This is usually issued by the entity that holds the easement. Land trusts, Nature Conservancy of Canada or a municipality can manage the easement.

Once an easement is in place, it must be monitored on an annual basis. A regular inspection and contact with the landowner(s) are essential. Recordkeeping is also a must. However, this is the responsibility of the group that holds the Conservation Easement. Sometimes there are opportunities to make changes to parts of the easement but that is dependent on the original intent as expressed in the letter by the initial landowner. As the landowner, placing the easement costs significant value in the land. Think carefully what your purpose for the conservation easement is and what you want to achieve.

Conservation easements are not for everyone, but they are a way to control land use beyond your ownership tenure. It’s up to each individual to determine if the value you forego in the sale, is worth the value you are trying to preserve and the legacy you leave behind. If you are interested in looking at using this tool as you look to transition from farming the land, please don’t hesitate to contact Flagstaff County.

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Harry Brook is Flagstaff County’s Agricultural Fieldman. He can be reached via email at: hbrook@flagstaff.ab.ca or by phone at: 780-384-4138. 

By Harry Brook

Plastic grain bags and silage bags are great ways to provide temporary storage for agricultural crops at a reasonable price. With larger farms, and land being dispersed over a wider area, they are a practical way to store the crop. If the land is rented with no bins on site, a grain bag can solve short-term storage issues.

The problem arises when the bags are emptied and you have to find a way to get rid of a large amount of plastic. This has been an ongoing problem in the province since grain bagging arrived here. There has been a lot of discussion on potential solutions. Now there is a plan to deal with the sheer volume of the problem.

In conjunction with Cleanfarms, the Alberta Plastic Recycling Group is operating a, three-year pilot project to recycle empty grain bags and twine. This is possible due to funding from the Alberta Government. One of the 20 sites selected for this project is Flagstaff Regional Waste Management.

Bags are handy but getting rid of the plastic afterwards can be an environmental nightmare. Some producers, in the past, have resorted to burning their bags, illegally, and creating pollution issues. There has been a couple of places willing to take plastic bags periodically, but not consistently.

This new pilot project will involve the local sites, like the Flagstaff Regional Landfill, collecting the bags then loading them and sending them to one of the two processors in Southern Alberta. Grain bags and plastic twine can both be recycled. However, they need to be reasonably clean.

Shake the bags to remove as much dirt and spoilage from the bag as possible before rolling. If bags arrive too dirty or are loose and unrolled, the bags may be rejected or subject to a landfill tipping fee, or worse, returned to sender. Once cleaned as much as possible, roll the bags tightly with a mechanical bag roller. Under the Canadian Agricultural Partnership there are funds available to help in the purchase of a grain bag roller. It is one of the allowable projects with the Environmental Stewardship and Climate Change projects. Some collection sites may have a grain bag roller available to borrow for that purpose, as well.

With the twine, remove as much debris as possible and bag it in a clear, plastic bag. Poke holes in the bottom to allow drainage and secure the bag with twine or a zip tie. Don’t knot the bag closed. These bags are also available at the collection sites, at no cost. The program only applies to clean and dry twine in recycling bags and the mechanically rolled and compressed grain bags.

Some things that aren’t accepted in this program are silage tarps, unrolled bags, hand-rolled grain bags, net wrap, sisal twine, nylon rope or bale or silage wrap. If you have questions about this program, please call the Flagstaff Regional Landfill (780-384-3950).

This program should help increase the lifetime of the landfill as those plastics will not be buried. You won’t be burning plastic, causing a stink and pollution, and you can’t put a price on the feeling of doing the right thing. Recycle those grain bags and get them off your property.

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Harry Brook is Flagstaff County’s Agricultural Fieldman. He can be reached via email at: hbrook@flagstaff.ab.ca or by phone at: 780-384-4138.

By Harry Brook

There is now proof that leaving sloughs and poor areas in grass and trees benefits the bottom line for farmers. A landscape ecologist has proof that leaving the wet, poor areas in perennial vegetation can boost yields in the rest of the field. These sites provide a place for pollinators and beneficial insects that contribute to yield. Those are your hidden, unpaid work force.

This is not just a lab result. A case study in Saskatchewan came to the same conclusion. It involved a field of about a square-mile in size. It had saline patches and low areas of about 50 acres, in total. Yield in most of the field was 60 bu./acre of wheat. Land adjacent to the saline areas only produced 25 bu./acre. When they planted the low and saline areas to perennial grass, they lost some yield but it improved their overall finances. Costs to seed both the good land and the poor soils was the same. Overall yield per acre increased as you dropped out the land where it was losing money.

On the production side, overall yield per acre was up. In all crops and cases, the loss in gross revenue from not farming the worst areas was far outweighed by the cost reductions. In all crops, this was the consistent result.

There are other benefits to be gained by seeding problem areas into perennial forage. Usually, these poor areas are a haven for weeds like kochia and foxtail barley, weeds that can tolerate higher levels of salinity. They can be a persistent problem in a field. By seeding perennial, salt-tolerant grasses in those areas, they can be removed or out-competed by the grasses, thusly dealing with the weed problem.

Over time, the forage can reclaim the saline area by drawing down the water table in the saline areas and rain slowly washing the salts out of the topsoil. This won’t happen unless you have permanent cover on the soil.

Another thing to consider is using a grassed area at the field entrance. There is clubroot in the county and by using a grassed entrance, you can help prevent the spread of clubroot from field to field by machinery. Most clubroot found in Central Alberta is found within 100 meters of the field entrance as infected soil is moved around by farm machinery. A grassed area at the entrance can contain the soil-borne infection and stop it being transferred through the field.

As you can see, there are many good reasons, both financial and agronomic, to seed saline and low production areas in a field to perennial forage. Save yourself the expense and reap the rewards of including grass and bush areas in your crop fields.

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Harry Brook is Flagstaff County’s Agricultural Fieldman. He can be reached via email at: hbrook@flagstaff.ab.ca or by phone at: 780-384-4138.

By Harry Brook

Do you feed the same minerals to cattle, year after year? As feed quality and feed supplies vary from year to year, so too the mineral package needs to be adjusted. Using green feed, swath grazing or silage as the primary winter feed requires different mineral packages than a hay, grain and straw winter ration. Also, stage of pregnancy, age, condition and class of cattle will require different minerals. It all starts with testing your feed supply.

The major minerals needed by livestock included calcium, phosphorus, sodium, chloride, potassium, sulfur and magnesium. I’ll deal with micronutrients in a future column. Calcium and phosphorus are essential for bone production. Calcium is also needed for enzymes, hormones and muscle development. And, of course, milk production for the lactating cow. Phosphorus is needed for energy and reproduction, among other processes. Cattle need a calcium to phosphorus ratio of at least 1.5:1 but 2:1 is safer. Imbalances can lead to production or even reproductive issues.

In general, having cereals as the main forage in the ration will require more calcium than phosphorus in the mineral package as cereal feeds have a calcium ratio of 1:1 or less. There is also a need to supplement magnesium as it is in short supply in cereals. Using a 2:1 or 3:1 mineral can make a lot of sense. If there are significant amounts of legumes being fed in a hay, the demand for calcium may be reduced as legumes usually have high levels of calcium. A rule of thumb is that legume or grass legume hay is usually high in calcium. Cereal silage or green feed tends to be higher in phosphorus than calcium. Grains are very high in phosphorus and inadequate in calcium.

Some people may have a mistaken belief that cattle are able to sense the minerals they need and will eat enough of the right minerals to stay healthy. Actually, cattle aren’t that much different than people. They eat what tastes good. A lot of minerals are rather bitter and that makes it difficult to get sufficient minerals into them if you rely on free choice to meet their dietary needs.

Mineral licks or tubs are one way that minerals can be supplemented but it isn’t a great way to do it and it can be very expensive. Using molasses in the tubs makes the minerals more palatable, but you can still have huge variations on individual animal intake. Some may take double or triple the amount they need, while other cattle may hardly touch it.

The one thing cattle will eat is salt. They must have it and it can be mixed in with the mineral to get more mineral uptake in the cattle. This isn’t an easy answer either. If you have high sodium content in the water supply or the feed, there may be little salt intake. However, it can be an effective way to get the minerals into the cattle if there is not too much salt in the water or feed.

There are a lot of different forms of minerals available. Some are chelated and others just in their mineral form. Knowing what the feed contains is the first step in providing adequate minerals to keep your animals healthy and productive this year and into the future. With information from the test you can supplement minerals they need without breaking the bank.

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Harry Brook is Flagstaff County’s Agricultural Fieldman. He can be reached via email at: hbrook@flagstaff.ab.ca or by phone at: 780-384-4138.

By Harry Brook

This time of year you may often find county staff wandering around your fields. They are identifiable by their safety vests and county trucks parked at the side of the road. They aren’t doing this to irritate you or for the exercise, they are conducting surveys.

There are a number of agricultural field surveys being conducted throughout the summer and early fall. These are often done on behalf of Alberta Agriculture to enable them to get a clear view of the severity of a problem disease or insect. This is part of the Agricultural Service Board responsibilities we incur as counties. These pests are often listed under the Pest Act (such as clubroot of canola or Dutch elm disease). As legislated pests, they must be tracked by your local Agricultural Service Board. Surveys are also done to monitor for any new pest, be it insect or disease.

A requirement of all surveying is to use appropriate protective equipment prior to entering any land. Disposable covers for footwear is a must, to prevent the spread of any soil-borne diseases. Any tools used on the land are also sterilized between fields. These safety measures are part of any survey protocol.

The number of insects and diseases that can be surveyed is large. They include things like Bertha armyworm, flea beetle, numerous cutworms, diamondback moth, clubroot of canola, blackleg on canola, sclerotinia, root maggots, pea leaf weevil, fusarium root rot of peas, ascochyta, lygus bug, wireworm, cereal leaf diseases, grasshoppers, the list goes on.

Insect surveys are done with pheromone traps or sweep nets, checking so many insects per number of sweeps. With these numbers, it can be checked against the economic thresholds. Disease surveys are carried out with individual plant evaluations in multiple sites to get a good, representative sample.

To get a clear picture to forecast future outbreaks or even define the present situation, it requires a small army of people out in the field checking. The more surveys that are done, the more accurate the local and regional forecasts and situations are.

One of the biggest surveys done every fall is the clubroot of canola survey. Due to the sheer number of surveys needing to be carried out, it is impossible to contact all landowners prior to surveying. Please be patient with these surveyors if you see them out in your field. 

So now you know the why and wherefore there are county people out in your field. The information they collect helps agriculture both locally, as well as provincially to keep us up to date on threats to our agricultural production. There is a reason for someone out standing in your field.

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Harry Brook is Flagstaff County’s Agricultural Fieldman. He can be reached via email at: hbrook@flagstaff.ab.ca or by phone at: 780-384-4138.

Don’t worry if you missed any of the LIVE Facebook broadcasts in our #FlagstaffOnline Showcase. Links to the videos from each of the four day-long events can be found below.

Discover local entrepreneurs, creators, and experiences in the Flagstaff Region with virtual tours, how-to’s, opportunities to #ShopLocal and much more.

#FlagstaffOnline #SucceedingTogether #ShopLocal

Week 1

• Special Guest – Curling legend Kevin Martin
• Coutts Home Hardware
• Rustics Stars and SPEED Demons
• Fizzy FUNtastics
• Main Street Medley

Week 2

• Quirks Bakery
• Cointreau Stables & Tack
• Flagstaff County – What is Flagstaff Crafted?
• Crafty Creations Quilting Gallery
• CS Creations by Erin and Charity
• Wooden Spoon Cafe and Cakeshop

Week 3

• Battle River Alpacas
• Big Willy’s Bar at the Heisler Hotel
• Sweet Three Designs
• Prairie Soap Shack
• Rustic Re-Creations
• Flagstaff Scottish Club

Week 4

• BAM Fitness
• Flagstaff County with Brent Hoyland
• The River Jacks – live lunchtime concert
• HOM of Wellbeing
• The Rusty Daisy Gift Co.
• Elegant Event Rentals

Bonus Videos

• MP Damien Kurek discusses what it means to shop local
• MLA Jackie Lovely discusses the importance of shopping local
• Edmonton blogger Lindork (Linda Hoang) visits the Rusty Daisy Gift Co.
• Edmonton blogger Lindork (Linda Hoang) visits Big Willy’s Bar at the Heisler Hotel
• Edmonton blogger Lindork (Linda Hoang) visits Cointreau Stables & Tack

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By Harry Brook

Driving around the county, there is a disturbing amount of encroachment into the county road allowance. This can be the case where the ditch is being farmed to within a couple of feet of the actual road, or spray booms having over-sprayed the crop and killed out the grass in the ditch. It also includes the farming of undeveloped road allowances.

County road allowances are surveyed to be exactly 66 feet wide. In most cases, the roads themselves are 6 to 8 metres wide. That’s about 26 feet. That means there is about 20 feet on either side of the road that is county property.

Some producers cultivate and crop right up to within a foot or two of the road surface. This undermines the integrity of the road base and causes problems when we are having to work on the roads. It causes problems with drainage, mowing, weed control and issues with road maintenance and rebuilding. How would you react if your neighbour was farming your land without your permission? You might be a little more than upset. In this case, it interferes with the county’s responsibility of providing safe roads to the public.

On the weed side, there is nothing worse than seeing field sprayers extend their booms into the ditch. It has taken years to establish a good grass catch along the road. A thick, healthy stand of grass prevents weeds from getting established. Accidentally spraying out the grass leaves bare soil, an invitation for weeds to germinate and spread. This becomes a problem both in the ditch and in the field. It’s a case of inattention during spraying giving long-term issues for both the county and adjacent land owner.

Be aware that a road allowance, developed or undeveloped, is the property and responsibility of the county. To preserve the integrity of the road and drainage, a MINIMUM of 1 metre of undisturbed land is needed from the toe of the slope of the road. Any undeveloped road allowance being used for grazing or cropping must still be available for access purposes.

When encroaching on the road allowance, be mindful that there can be many unintended negative consequences. It’s not just you that is affected.

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Harry Brook is Flagstaff County’s Agricultural Fieldman. He can be reached via email at: hbrook@flagstaff.ab.ca or by phone at: 780-384-4138.