(Continued from Pago 1)
after three years of tests
showed that not only could
com be planted as early as
mid-April, but some of the
best yields came from crops
planted in April.
Some of the early experi
ments also searched for the
right combination of seeds
and soils.
“We had a method where
we’d run four sections with
12 or 14 hybrids staggered to
get away from soil problems,”
Rumbaugh said.
In those years farmers
could have good crop yield
seasons and bad crop yield
seasons. Rumbaugh remem
bers one year when the corn
was well ahead of “knee-high
by the Fourth of July.”
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PMCGA’s First
summer turned to dust, and
the crop produced only about
eight bushels an acre.
Rumbaugh remembers
that he was harrowing oats
one spring day when his wife
told him some gentlemen in
State College had tele
phoned. They wanted to form
a state com growers associa
tion, and they knew
Rumbaugh from his early
work on running the com test
plots with the extension ser
vice. They asked him to lead
the foundling association and
he agreed, serving for three
years as the first president of
PMCGA.
Dr. Joe McGahen, a retired
professor emeritus of Penn
State University’s College of
Agriculture whose specialty
was crop production, was one
| Smarter Farming]
President A ‘Student of Corn ’
of the men who encouraged
Rumbaugh in his experi
ments.
“I visited his farm. That
was my position at the time
to visit corn producers
throughout the state” as the
extension service’s corn spe
cialist for Pennsylvania,
McGahen said. “We had this
com program the one-acre
com contest but I didn’t
like the connotation of a con
test. I thought there were
more benefits than just a con
test.”
According to McGahen,
Rumbaugh was instrumental
in getting other farmers in
Armstrong and Indiana coun
ties to participate. The pro
gram went from being a con
test to a study that looked at
the cultural practices of pro-
:s
Corn Talk, Laneaater Farming, Saturday, October 10, 1998—Page IS
during com.
The real educational part
of their cooperation was that
the farmers got together for a
“crops day.”
“People were talking with
their neighbors about what
they did with their crops,”
McGahen said.
Results of seed experi
ments were shared with asso
ciation members, and awards
were presented each year to
top growers. Originally the
association’s prizes were
awarded at the state Farm
Show, Rumbaugh said.
Rumbaugh himself is the
isiL
€®lM fivlLl NSWS
PENNSYLVANIA MASTER CORN GROWERS ASSOC., INC.
proud owner of one of those
trophies. In one of the first
years of competition he was
named the corn growing
champion with a five-acre
average yield of 170.7
bushels per acre using
Pioneer 3773 a yield that
would be more than
respectable even today.
“And this isn’t prime corn
growing country here,” he
said.
In the early days
Rumbaugh’s family operated
a poultry business on the
farm and grew com for chick
en feed. Later they also
raised sheep and Angus cat
tle.
But today the Rumbaughs
are strictly crop farmers
“deer and groundhogs” are
the only livestock on his
farm, Rumbaugh said and
this season they’re growing
oats and hay in addition to
about 90 acres of com.
They sell their crops main
ly to neighboring hog and cat
tle farmers. A small amount
of their hay has been sold for
mulch in Armstrong County’s
underground mushroom
farms, and in past years
some of their hay fed thor
oughbreds at The Meadows
harness racing track in
Washington County.
’Hie Rumbaugh experi
mental corn plots have been
posted with signs advertising
the use of Pioneer Funk
Agway, Doebler’s, and other
brands of seeds as the
Rumbaughs searched for the
right combination of seed and
(Turn to P»8» 16 )