Grower interview

For our next speaker.

Thank you, doctor Ransom
for- for your presentation.

Our next speaker is
McKay Morgan,

who is a grower in southern Utah.

They're going to show- share
their experience,

gaining optimal small grain
forage production.

(...)

McKay: Can you hear me?

Interviewer: We can hear you,
and we can see you.

>> Okay, well, first of all,
I would like to just say,

hi, to all our fellow agriculture people.

And thanks to you from USU
for putting these top skills on.

McKay: And... have
I got a picture up on the screen?

>> We do.
We now see your presentation live.

>> I've got two pictures to show

That one is a picture of my father,
and I'll explain that.

That's crop of grain that we grew
just a few years back,

I think that was in 2015.

And the other picture is just another
and John showing it being cut. But,

would you take them off and I'll,

start out by just telling you a little bit
about my background.

I, I grew up in an Circleville,

following my father around my whole life.

I, my dad tells the story of
when I went to kindergarten,

when I was five years old, I came home
and got on the tractor with him, and he.

He asked me how school was,
and I told him just a half a day wasted.

And so
I think that all throughout my life, I,

I didn't get a whole lot from schooling.

I had to learn what I learned from the
school, hard knocks it seems like, so.

So now I'm, you know, 48 years later

and and I don't have a lot of knowledge
even yet.

But when we started out, you know,
I followed him my whole life.

We flood irrigated and...

we, my dad,

you know, he followed his father.

They both run a shovel all the time.

My- my grandfather would rather shovel
a ditch than do anything.

And, and he always made them
look quite, quite nicely.

And my, my dad was similar to the same.

And, as I grew up,
I enjoyed everything my dad enjoyed.

And he, he loved farming and, and dairying
we were dairymen also.

And I later went on my mission and

and after returning from my mission,
I went to Utah State for a year.

Studying dairy herd and, and,

after that, I returned back to the farm.

And when I returned, my father

was milking about 120 cows
and we were farming

three or 400 acres, all that by shovel
and flood irrigation and

and we started to expand a little bit,

From that.

And, and currently today
we're, we're farming about

2500 acres
and, and milking over 3000 cows.

So we've expanded from that and,
and enjoyed

every minute of it.

When speaking of small grain,

I was always told that the Circleville
could-

could grow good grain.

And over the years, we,
we always tried to go grow corn and,

and love the, the corn feed and, and,

we, we,

as I grew more into it,
I realized that we weren't

getting the quality out of the corn,
nor the tonnage that that it should do.

We did a little custom harvesting,

back in 2003 or thereabouts.

And, and as we went around the surrounding
area harvesting corn,

we realized that our corn was doing about
half what everybody else's was.

And that led me to
to want to plant more grain.

And so we started...

we started planting some fall critically

and found out
that it was producing more tons

and about as good
a quality is as our corn was.

So we decided that we would

plant more grain and less corn,

and we went away from corn
for several years

and decided to try it again,
to prove to ourselves once again that it

we just aren't good enough farmers and
not in the right climate to grow the corn.

So currently,

we rely on our friends over the mountain
to grow corn for us.

And and they, do such a good job that we,

we get our corn supply from them,

and we grow grain in our valley

back in about 2008 is

when we, we discovered
that we could grow this winter grain.

Rather well. And

some of the first crops
that we grew produced,

you know, eight, nine,
right under the acre,

back in the the main variety

that we were planning
with the variety called pica.

And after a first year or two,

we started venturing out
into some of the other varieties,

and we planted several of them
over the years.

The seed salesman started to send a plan,
three way and four way and,

and even a six way at one point.

And I started to notice that

we weren't getting, the tonnage out of,

out of the, other varieties.

And when I tried to get back to the pica
variety,

I was no longer available,
that we could find.

And so this past year,
I was able to find some pica variety,

came from Canada, and

and I hope it's the same genetics
that we had back in those years.

And we're we're hoping

we'll know
more as we grow this, this crop this year.

But we we bought some in 2019

and had, some grown for us in 2020.

And it's been harvested and we planted
in the fall of 2020, which we just past,

so to go along with that
and some of the other conversations

and I, we, we still try to venture out
and try new varieties.

One of our friends there, Dustin,
Christian and, you know, I did soil

run a test last summer
on different varieties of grain.

Morgan: And we,

were able to put some of this pica
seed in that test.

And, and another variety named Thor,

was the highest yielding variety.

And so we planted some of that variety
this year

along with, with our pica,
and also some 7-19.

Just see how it performs.

To go along with that,

we we learned from some of the friends

over in the Enterprise Valley,
a few years back

that they were trying to plant grain
in their alfalfa stand.

Morgan: and in, in our valley,
we rely on,

the, the snowpack to provide our water.

And probably around eight out of
ten years, we dry up, significantly.

And in July,
and we start to run out of water, and

and our crops always struggled. So...

going back, in about the early 2000s,
we started,

to go from, flood irrigation
to sprinkle irrigation.

And we found that
that was a much easier and better way.

And our crops even did better.

We picked up tonnage per acre
because of that.

And and so I've learned that

the, the,

the spring when try to get a winter trip
need water.

We have lots of water available
and it can handle cold water

where our alfalfa can't handle it as well.

And so we've, we've implemented that

and planning some winter trip
and or alfalfa stands.

And we have been enjoying that.

That's upped our production
a couple tons to the acre

which is quite valuable in in our area,

especially when we run out of water.

There's a few drawbacks in that.

First of all, the back in the,

the early 2000s,
we were still non roundup ready hay.

And and so it's easy
to spray out of patch

of hay and plant fall grain

and then follow it up the next summer

with another batch of hay or,
or even another batch of grain.

But we, I've found that now
it's a little difficult

because we need to get that fall grain
planted,

and it's hard to spray out that Roundup
Ready hay.

We, we have mostly roundup ready hay,
which is what we like.

And so we're trying to,

spray that pay out in the spring after

the grain is grew up high enough
and the hay starts to green up

and spray and kill the hay out of the,
the grain patch,

particularly on those
that we're trying to rotate.

Morgan; We found with the grain
in our hay,

that the tonnage goes up
and especially in the first crop

and maybe a little lower in the second,

but back to normal in third crop hay
and my third crop,

most of the grain is, is gone in the hay.

That's worked out really well for us.

We've been able
to feed that to our milk cows,

and with the extra tons of feed
that we're able to grow,

it's less tons that
we have to purchase to feed the cows.

And, there was,

well, the other thing that we've done...

Over the last 2 or 3 years,
we've been experimenting with this,

we found that if we don't plant the grain

in our first and second year
stands of hay

We can still try and control the weeds
because it is roundup hay,

and hopefully get those weeds under good
enough control that when we start

to implement
the grain in our hay stands, that

the weeds don't come as bad.

The weeds' our problem.

And that's something we're trying to
figure out how to manage better because we

at this point we are liking the grain
in the in the hay stands.

It doesn't seem to be affecting our stand
much,

and we're getting more tonnage out of it.

I don't know...

exactly what what I,
what else I should tell you about it.

Other than we're we're extremely happy
with,

the fall grain and all the other thing

that I would like to, you know,
if anybody has information on.

We're struggling with what to plant

behind winter critically

in the spring
after we've harvested our winter trip.

And we don't want to go back
to alfalfa yet.

We've tried sorghum and sorghum today,
and we've tried, oats.

We've tried...

corn
back when were trying corn

We can't find nothing
that grows really good and produces

a, you know, a good crop,
you know, along in

August, September time frame.

This summer, I'm planning on planting some
some summer trip

behind the winter trip and see if we can
get some tonnage out of that.

So with that
I guess that's all I have to say.

And I, thank you for the opportunity
to tell our story and,

and what's working for us.

And, and we appreciate it for all involved
and all of you.

And, yeah, that's all I have.

Thank you.

Interviewer: Thank you, Mr. Morgan

So we do have time for questions.

It looks like we do have one in the chat
box for you.

The question is, how heavy
are you planting grain in your hay crops?

Morgan: Okay.

The first the first couple of years,
we planted,

about 90 to 100 pounds
to the acre.

And we found that to be
maybe a little, too heavy.

This past fall,
I planted 80 pounds to the acre...

hoping that it will...

with 90 to 100 pounds
when we cut our first crop.

We probably had about

60 to 70% grain and,

30% alfalfa in the in the crop.

We're hoping to get it closer to 50/50.

We we do struggle with water.
So...

our whole goal is to get as much tonnage
as we can

in the early months of the
the summer to help with the months

we don't have water.

So that's what we've done.
We backed off to 80 pound.

I'll I'll have more information
on that next summer.

Interviewer: Thank you.

Mr. Morgan, are you confident enough
to answer questions in the chat box?

Morgan: I've got 20 here.

[inaudible]
and so we can probably figure that out.

Interviewer: Okay,
so I'll go ahead and leave it to that.

We'll go ahead and move on
to our next presenter, thank you

Mr. Morgan, for, letting everyone on this
meeting know about your experiences.

It's been very informative.

>> Thank You.

>> Thank you.