Day 9: Soo Brook Farms by: Lauren

 Today we visited the Soo Brook Farms in South Dakota as our second stop. Unfortunately, when we arrived, it was raining very heavily, and we couldn’t really do some of the stuff we had originally planned. We spent the time waiting for the rain to pass talking to the family that works on the farm, consisting of a grandmother, her two children, and their families. We enjoyed discussing more differences between how FFA and Ag works in our respective states, particularly considering the different population sizes affect us so much. We chatted a bit about how their farm operates in this time, from their cattle and smaller sheep operations to how they grow crops. Their farm grows Corn, Oats, Wheat, Flax, and Triticale. Their house is almost at its 100-year mark, with multiple generations being raised in the same house. They started flax in part to diversify their crops, and to help loosen soil as they operate on a no till system. This is because the strong wind in the area called a “derecho” is like the winds of a hurricane, with long lasting strong windstorm causing significant damages and power outages, and the strong winds in the area can erode the soil and cause large dust storms. 

   As soon as the rain passed, we went out to view their fields, performing an experiment to test water penetration. It involved hammering a metal ring in the ground (or in some cases stomping) and then leaving the remainder two inches above ground. Then after pressing down the surface, we placed plastic film wrap down, poured in an inch of water and removed the cling wrap to allow the water to meet the surface at the same time. We did this in two fields and timed how fast it took for all the water to sink through. We will admit, it was drizzling at the time. However the expected results were yielded, the ground that had less cover crops, and did not remove dead plants at all, had less water penetration. We discussed how the plant decay in the dirt loosened the soil, and almost “fluffed” the dirt, removing the slate type texture, and invited worms into the area!  

   Afterword’s we took a hay ride out to look at the cattle and were provided some delicious snacks that contained flax seed grown on the farm. They had ≈ 2000 acres, and sheep that were Dorper Rambouillet crosses. They had a variety of cattle, ranging from Tarentaise cattle, which many of us have never heard of, British Whites, Limousin cattle, and Red Angus Charolais crosses. We got to feed corn cobs to a gorgeous cow named Duchess.  It was very interesting seeing some of the cattle breed differences to what we look for in Florida.