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