Vol. 20. No. 31 Robert Hummer, walking, is one of the state’s few turf farmers. He has some 75 acres of Kentucky bluegrass Newsmen Gather For Milk Price Explanation by Dick Wanner Newsmen from Southeastern Pennsylvania spent tbeday discussing'the baffling complexities of miik pricing on Thursday at the Downington Motor Inn. The occasion was a seminar pot on by the Inter-State Milk Producers Cooperative. At the seminar, the media people heard from a number of milk pricing experts, among them Joseph Shine, market administrator for Federal Order 4, Paul Hand, Inter-State’s economist, Daniel Martin, a Manheim dairy farmer and vice president of Inter-State, and Lin Huber, a Franklin County dairy farmer and a retiring member of the Pennsylvania Milk Marketing Board. Also present were two officials from the New Jersey Department of Agriculture and a farm banker from York County. Shine and Hand explained the mechanics of federal order milk pricing to the group. The purpose of a milk marketing order, they said, is to guarantee' farmers a market for their milk, and to guarantee consumers a stable supply of that com modity. To achieve those objectives, the market ad ministrator and his staff must determine a price for class 1 (bottling) milk. Correction Last week’s story on the Lancaster County manure management tour mentioned a 30’ z4B’ concrete silo on the farm of Jay Garber. That silo was a Honey Store silo built by Weaver’s Star Silo, Myerstown. The article incorrectly placed the manufacturer in Terre Hill. sod growing on his farm just north of Manheim. There are two steps in volved-in the class Iprice determination. The first step is determining the price paid for manufacturing milk by some 350 plants in Minnesota, and Wisconsin. This price is the class 2 price for all 56 federal market orders throughout the country. To find the class 1 price, a transportation differential is added to the class 2 figure. This differential is the cost of hauling milk from the Minnesota-Wisconsin area, and in Order 4 is equal to $2.78 per hundredweight. Which means that if the class 2 price were $7 per hundredweight, the Order 4> class 1 price would be $9.78. In response to a reporter’s question, Hand said that the Dyan Hale, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. George Hale, 1509 Poplar St, Lebanon has been an active 4-H member specializing in arts and crafts. Serving The Central and Southeastern Pennsylvania Areas Lancaster Farming, Saturday. June 14, 1975 Minnesota-Wisconsin series was desired to reflect a national milk market and not just local conditions prevailing in those two states. “There’s been a lot of criticism about the Min nesota-Wisconsin series. But it’s the best thing we’ve got at the moment. It does reflect a national market, because the milk products that are produced there are sold nationally. They represent some of the biggest food concerns in the country.” Farmers get paid ac cording to how their milk is used. In Order 4, some 66 percent of the milk is bottled and is therefore considered class 1 milk. The other 34 [Continued on Page 20] Turf Farmer Here One of Few in State by Dick Wanner Robert Hummer has the nicest lawn in Lancaster County - and it covers 75 acres. Hummer needs five full-time and just as many part-time workers to help him care for his grass, which is really a full-time business. Hummer owns and operates the Sporting Valley Turf Farm north of Manhwtn. He is one of only a handful - less than 20 - turf farmers in Pennsylvania. “Sod is a nice crop,” Hummer told Lancaster Farming when we visited him this week. “It can be planted any time of the year and it can be cut as long as the ground isn’t frozen. But it is a lot of work. There’s plenty of manual labor in volved, especially in har vesting.” Hummer explained that while a machine cuts the sod away from the soil in s’xl6” strips, those strips must still be loaded by band onto wooden pallets. Each pallet holds 500-square feet of sod, which is perhaps the only crop that is sold by the square foot. In This Issue FARM CALENDAR 10 Markets 2-6 Sale Register 69 Farmers Almanac 8 Classified Ads 37 Editorials 10 Homestead Notes 38 Home on the Range 43 Organic living 47 Junior Cooking Edition 41 Country Comer 38 Growing Degree Days 15 Chester Dairy Princess 64 Women’s Feature 42 Berks Dairy Princess 14 Lancaster Dairy Princess 13 Dyan Hale Lebanon Co. 4-Her Active in Craft Projects by: Melissa Piper Dyan Hale is a young lady who has seen two different sides of 4-H, having been involved in the program while living in Illinois and by being an active 4-Her in Lebanon County for the past 18 months. Dyan began her 4-H work in Illinois and became in terested in home economics projects including cooking and clothing construction. She also started projects in crocheting and needlework which she has developed quite a craftsmanship for. When Dyan’s parents, Mr. and Mrs. George Hale, moved to their present residence on Poplar Street in Lebanon, the young lady Hummer gained his ex pertise with grass by studying turf management at Penn State, working at golf courses and working for six years with a turf com pany in Philadelphia. He sells his crop mostly in wholesale lots to golf courses, builders, garden stores, athletic fields and swimming pools. His biggest customers are professional landscapers. A field of sod begins as a very finely worked seedbed, with 5-10-10 fertilizer worked into the top few inches. Then the field is seeded with one of five blends of grass seed. Although some fescue may be included in the blend as a nurse grass, the harvested sod will be 100-percent Kentucky bluegrass. As the grass is growing, it’s kept cut very short to encourage root develop ment. Weeds are kept in check by spraying, but Hummer said he rarely needs to spray more than once for each crop because Young Farmers Discuss Buying Certified Seed by: Melissa Piper Buying and producing certified seed for small grains was the topic of discussion at a meeting of the Elizabethtown Young Farmer’s that took place Thursday evening. Guest speakers for the evening were Henry Heist of Heist Seeds, Mt. Joy and Don Stesslow, a representative of the State Seed Certification and Analysis Division of the started her new career in 4-H work by joining the Falcon’s Home Ec Club and a county community club. Now with a year of 4-H work behind her and a new season of projects beginning, Dyan has noted some dif ferences in the programs and commented on them during a visit with Lancaster Farming on Tuesday af ternoon. “Here in Pennsylvania, there seems to be more of an emphasis on State and regional activities more so than in Illinois.” “It was quite difficult to enter state competition there unless you had won high (Continued on Pace 201 $3.00 Per Year the thick mat of turf chokes out any weeds that may germinate. A special fer tilizer with a slow release nitrogen is used. It feeds the crop for about 90 days, before another pass with the fertilizer spreader is necessary. “Young sod is healthy sod,” Hummer pointed out. “We try to cut it after it’s been growing for about a year. Sometimes it may go 18 months until we get a crop harvested, but I don’t like to let it go much longer than that.” September is the biggest month for seeding at Sporting Valley, although some grass does go in in the spring. Hummer owns some irrigation equipment, but uses it wily in very dry weather to help get the crop established. Sod is not grown year after year on the same fields. Charles Hummer, a brother, operates the home farm, wfakfa is just a few miles from the turf farm. [ Continued oa Par 17] Department of Agriculture in Pennsylvania. Stesslow, opened the meeting by showing a slide presentation on the work of the State Seed Certification Division and the current topics of discussion now underway. Commenting on the im portance of reading all the tags which accompany seed, Stesslow explained that there is currently a move to standardize the information presented on the tags from all states. “We did try to have all the information including germination, standardized for all the states however, that did not come about.” “Some states label only for genetic purity,” Stesslow commented. The certification representative further ex plained that taking the time to read the tags was not a waste of the farmer’s time but could be of great ad vantage in preventing the wrong type of planting. The three tags which accompany seed bags are the certification tag, the seed analysis and the treatment notice. The certification tag tells the farmer that the seed has come from a registered dealer and assures its purity. The treatment notice lists any chemical treatment that the seed has undergone, if any, and the seed analysis (Continued on Pane l&L
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