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Mike Howell (00:08):
The Dirt with me, Mike Howell, an eKonomics podKast where I present the down and dirty agronomic science to help grow crops and bottom lines. Inspired by eKonomics.com, farming’s go-to informational resource, I’m here to break down the latest crop nutrition research, news, and issues helping farmers make better business decisions through actionable insights. Let’s dig in. Well, hello again, everyone. Welcome back to The Dirt. Today, we’re going to visit with Brady Goettl. Brady is new professor of Soil Fertility at North Dakota State. Brady, welcome to the Dirt.
Brady Goettl (00:49):
It’s great to be here, Mike. I appreciate you taking the time to have me join you on your show.
Mike Howell (00:53):
I look forward to our visit. Brady, if you will, introduce yourself to our listeners and let them know how you got where you are today.
Brady Goettl (01:00):
Sure thing. Well, my story of getting where I am today isn’t quite the straight line and as most people I think experience in their lives, I never really expected to be sitting in the chair I am today. But as you said before, I am a new assistant professor of extension soil science at NDSU, even though I’ve been at NDSU for about five years now. So grew up on a dairy farm in Wisconsin. So I’ve been involved with agriculture pretty much since the day I came home from the hospital, worked in agronomy for a number of years as a CCA and crop consultant, focusing mostly on nutrient management planning. And in the state of Wisconsin that’s kind of a required thing, especially with all the manure we apply.
(01:37)
So I really cut my teeth in fertility management on the side of manure applications and helping dairy farmers manage that. After a few years of working there, finishing up my degree at the University of Wisconsin River Falls, I really started thinking about continuing on my work in grad school, really with the goal of moving into an extension role. So that pursuing of grad school is what led me to NDSU to work with Dr. Abbey Wick and Dr. Dave Franzen on an interesting project that kind of coupled soil health and soil fertility together. So that would’ve been in 2019, 2020.
(02:14)
Had the opportunity to take a research technician role here at NDSU, working under Dr. Abbey Wick, which allowed me to stay around, finish up my PhD under Dr. Dave Franzen, and then eventually move into the role that he held for over 30 years. So I definitely have big shoes to fill, but I’m excited to be here and continue working with all the great people in North Dakota that I’ve met over the past five years.
Mike Howell (02:37):
We are definitely familiar with Dr. Franzen. We have had him on the show a time or two in the past and had some great episodes with him. Brady, you talked a little bit about starting off in manure management and that’s one thing that we haven’t spoken a whole lot about on the program so far. Give us a quick rundown what growers need to be aware of when we’re talking about manure management.
Brady Goettl (02:55):
There’s a couple of different ways to think about it. I mean, first of all from agronomic side of manure management is just trying to balance that fertility that you’re getting from the manure. So most of what we worked with was cattle manure and trying to balance that manure you can’t satisfy all of your nitrogen requirements with just manure, with getting into issues with phosphorus and over application. The history of dairy farming in Wisconsin, we have a lot of fields that are exceedingly high in those phosphorus levels.
(03:25)
So continuing to apply manure to those fields can start leading to issues with phosphorus loss and that type of thing. But then also since you have this great resource, you want to apply it as a nitrogen source. So really trying to apply that manure where it’s going to be most economically useful, and then balancing that with the fertilizer as well. So I enjoyed it from the part of it. It’s a puzzle what works best for the farmers from a logistic point of view, but what also is going to maximize the value we’re getting from that manure. And really shifting the mindset away from manure is a waste product. We need to get rid of it to this is a way that we can actually reduce our costs by using this manure as a fertilizer source and taking that economic into consideration.
Mike Howell (04:09):
Well, that sounds like a potential topic for another episode down the road. We could probably talk for several minutes about that one. Brady, let’s move in and talk a little bit about some of your previous research. You mentioned that you got your PhD there at North Dakota State and you also worked as a research associate, so I’m sure you’ve had quite a bit of research experience. Anything you want to talk about in your research work?
Brady Goettl (04:29):
I think there’s a lot that could cover, but again, how many minutes do we have to do it? I think the one thing I’d really like to highlight about my previous research, and I think this alludes a little bit to moving forward too, is nearly all the research I do is very applied. It’s to answer a question that producers have in North Dakota and really my goal for my career and everywhere I’ve been working up to this point is really to serve the farmers and the stakeholders and the crop consultants with what they need in order to do the job the best that they can.
(04:58)
So all of my research projects aren’t necessarily aimed at answering abstract questions, but rather we’re having this issue, let’s try to solve it or we see this issue coming down the road, what new management or tweaked management can we do to help those folks out? And I think a good hallmark of that is the research that we completed last year looking at nitrogen rates on malting barley, specifically two-row malting barley. Traditionally, it’s always been six-row type varieties that have been grown in North Dakota.
(05:29)
All of our recommendations up until that point were based on six-row systems. So as the malting producers are making contracts for two-row barley and starting to become the dominant crop, we really saw that need to provide our producers with up-to-date regionally, scientifically based for nitrogen recommendations. Over four different site years, we established some just basic NRATE studies and what we did different with this and what’s unique to the North Dakota system right now is we base those barley recommendations on economic optimum nitrogen rates.
(06:03)
So it’s been done a lot with corn. Sunflower currently has some economic rates as well as does wheat, but we’re one of the first areas to then apply the same thing to barley. And that has gained a lot of interest from different barley groups as well that we’re really looking at the economic side of things and also applying the fertilizer that’s going to make us the most money.
(06:25)
In a lot of cases, it’s also going to be potentially at a lower level making sure that we’re maximizing the efficiency we’re getting from that as well. So it’s kind of a win in both worlds when we start thinking about the demand and the interest and making sure we maximize nutrient use efficiency is if we maximize that economic efficiency, we can also look that we’re not over-applying and that we’re trying to use our fertilizer as efficiently as possible.
Mike Howell (06:51):
Brady, you mentioned two row barley and six row barley and we don’t grow a whole lot of barley here in South Mississippi. I don’t know that I’ve ever been in a barley field. If you will tell us what you’re talking about on the difference between two row barley and six row barley.
Brady Goettl (07:04):
Yeah, absolutely. It really comes down to the plant itself. So it doesn’t have anything to do with the way it’s produced or the way it’s planted. When people think about rows, the mind almost entirely goes to how many rows are planted. But if you were to take stock of barley and if you look straight down from the top as they’d be growing in the field on a six row barley, there’d be six rows of kernels growing vertically around that head.
(07:28)
With the two row, then there’s only two rows of that barley growing on the head. So it’d be a structure similar to a rye or something like that would have. I talked a little bit about how the demand is shifted from that six row to the two row by the malting folks, and a lot of that has to do with that structure of the head.
(07:45)
So with a six row barley, you have two outside rows and then a row of grains that’s kind of sandwiched in between and those are generally going to be a little bit skinnier kernels or different shaped, and that’s going to then affect the malting process. So when we think about malting, the grain is soaked in water, it’s sprouted. And if all the kernels are different shapes, different sizes, that rate that it takes up water and sprout is going to be different. So with the two row we get more consistent size from it and then generally the quality of two row barley is a lot more favorable for the malting process.
Mike Howell (08:18):
You learn something new every day and that’s what this program is all about is trying to educate people and learn new things. So Brady, another thing you mentioned was you’re looking at different issues that are going on in North Dakota. What are some of the biggest fertility issues that producers in North Dakota are facing?
Brady Goettl (08:34):
I think one of them is that economic issue. As margins get tighter, a lot of folks are looking at cutting fertility and you can only cut so far before it starts cutting back a little bit. So really advocating for soil testing. There’s been work done by economists in conjunction with soil fertility folks that talks about how nutrient sampling and soil sampling can pay off in the long run. So that’s something I’m really advocating for is making sure what we know we have available in the field and then matching those recommendations to what’s out there, making sure that we don’t cut back on fertility too far, that it starts really reducing our yields and causing issues there.
(09:11)
So I’ve had a lot of conversations with farmers over the last year, especially on where cutbacks can be made. If we have to decide between one application or another, which direction should we go with it? And we’re starting to see more issues with K deficiency across the state, which traditionally hasn’t been an issue, but with so many years of having to cut back in order to make those bottom lines meet, we’re starting to deplete what we had available and now we got to think at strategies on how we can replace that and at what rate it’s going to need to come back in order to bring those yields back to the same levels we were before.
(09:46)
Another thing is just the changing weather patterns we’ve been seeing across the state. We’ve had everything from incredibly dry years to incredibly wet years and that’s affecting the way the residual nitrates are remaining in the soil. So traditionally in North Dakota what we would soil test in the fall for nitrate levels, we could expect it to be about that same thing in the spring.
(10:09)
We have the fortune or misfortune of a lot of months of winter up here where essentially we’re pausing everything that’s happening in the soil and when we’re getting later winters, warmer winters, more spring rains. It’s really changing the amount of residual nitrogen that we have in the soil and that’s causing us to rethink our strategies for cropping. So out west for example, they’re dealing with much higher residual nitrates than they’ve had in the past, which is starting to cause issues with soybean yield, having too much nitrogen as you rotate in the soybean and other parts of the state.
(10:41)
We’re losing that bank that on other years that we expect to have and that kind of, not to lap back around too much, but that’s some other research that we’ve done looking at as we add more cover crops into these systems as well, how is that going to affect our nitrogen cycling? Are we capturing it and being able to use that nitrogen in future years? Is it disappearing? And it’s a black box that we haven’t quite cracked yet.
Mike Howell (11:07):
Brady, we have done several episodes talking about reducing fertilizer rates and people having to do so because of eKonomics. And we often refer to the soil as that bank for nutrients. And just like our checking account, if we’re constantly pulling out of that one of these days, we’re going to hit that point where there’s nothing left to pull out. So what do growers need to keep in mind if they’ve been cutting some of these rates back and maybe starting to see some deficiencies like you mentioned. How can they correct that before it gets too late?
Brady Goettl (11:32):
I think the first step is just to look at your cropping rotation and at a minimum apply what you expect that you’re going to remove from that year. That would be the smallest amount of fertilizer that we should be applying in order to make sure that we don’t deplete those levels. If you’re already at a depleted level, it’s going to take above and beyond what that crop is going to remove in order to bring that bank account back up to level where we have a little bit of wiggle room. But I think at minimum just every year being applying what you’ve removed, if you can, if you have to skip a few years because of eKonomics.
(12:03)
Hopefully that level is high enough that it’ll be able to flow chill on. I’m definitely not advocating for going out and applying a lot of fertilizer at once in order to bring those levels back up, but definitely small additions over a number of years is going to hurt the pocketbook the least amount and help to bring us back to where we need to be.
Mike Howell (12:21):
One thing I want to point out, and we don’t want to get too deep off into this, but we all know that fertilizer prices went really high a couple of years ago. Fortunately when that happened, we had some great commodity prices to go along with it. We don’t have the same level of commodity prices we did a couple of years ago. Hopefully, we’re going to get that turned around here before long, but we’ve also had some reduction in the cost of fertilizer prices and I heard somebody talking the other day, we look at how much the grain prices have came down versus how much the fertilizer prices have came down, and it’s really not a fair comparison to look at that and it’s really a good time to start putting out some of these fertilizer nutrients that you may have skipped in the past few years.
Brady Goettl (12:59):
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you got to take advantage of the situation while you can and definitely the supporting the soil is going to help us support our cropping systems in the long runs.
Mike Howell (13:09):
Well, Brady, we know you’re just getting started there at North Dakota in your new role. What are some of your plans that you have as you’re getting started?
Brady Goettl (13:16):
Well, anytime somebody comes into a new role, I think we have more ideas than we have time or money to make it happen. But I feel really fortunate that I’ve come in with a strong foundation underneath me, a good understanding of the state and a lot of folks that have had a lot of success in the state before. I have a lot of good mentors as well. So that’s helped me really build a network in the state of North Dakota between the farmers that I know out here, the different crop consultants and that type of thing. So that kind of leads me to my first goal of coming into this new position is having conversations with those folks and really understanding what they need from extension. What research can we do? What outreach can we do to really serve the needs of the state?
(13:58)
So I have intentions to do a needs assessment to have those types of conversations throughout the winter in conjunction with the different workshops and such that we’re putting on. Also, working with several other new folks here at NDSU. Dr. Rob Prue over in ag engineering along with Dr. Carlos Pierce. He’s the soil health specialist who started about the same time as I did.
(14:19)
We’re looking at developing a North Dakota on-farm research network, and the goal of that is going to really to empower farmers and producers to do on-farm research to help them answer questions very specific to their operations. So as more of these different types of soil amendments and additives and crop growth enhancers come onto the market, we’re really encouraging producers to look at that in replicated studies on their farm to see if it’s going to work in their location. North Dakota, we’re very diverse in soil type, in climate, in the different crop rotations we have throughout the state that it’s very difficult for us to make a blanket recommendation across the state and with the ball rolling so quickly on some of these products, really setting up that network of farmers to look at them themselves to see if they’re going to work for their particular operation, I think going to be the best way that we can really make sure the farmers are doing the best that they can for their operation.
Mike Howell (15:15):
Well, Brady, that sounds like an awful lot to get going here in the short run. We wish you all the luck getting those programs going, but sounds like you’ve got a plan in place and that’s the first step to getting off to a successful start. So Brady, we’ve talked a good bit today about what your plans are and what’s going on. Is there anything that we’ve missed or any closing comments you want to leave our listeners with?
Brady Goettl (15:33):
I think I’d like to send out my appreciation to all the folks in North Dakota that have supported me along the path and North Dakota has a really strong extension network. We have a very rich agricultural history and I’m very happy to continue being involved in that and hopefully improve it for the future.
Mike Howell (15:51):
Well, Brady, thanks so much for joining us today. We wish you all the best in your new role and if we can do anything to assist you along the way, don’t hesitate to reach out. Listeners, we appreciate you tuning in this week. If you will, please hang around for just a couple of minutes and we’ll move right into segment two.
(16:06)
Listeners, I hope you enjoyed the first segment of today’s show. If you did, please take a minute and give us a rating on your favorite podcast channel or app and give us some feedback as well. We want to hear from you to help make the show even better and don’t keep it to yourself. Please share these episodes with coworkers, family, friends, anyone you think may benefit from the information we’re sharing here.
(16:28)
Don’t forget to visit our website, nutrient-eKonomics.com to help find the latest crop nutrition news and research information as well as market updates, a growing degree day calculator, a nutrient use calculator, a rainfall tracker, and much, much more. It’s all at nutrient-eKonomics.com. Most episodes of The Dirt are now available for CCA credits. Visit our website and click on the agronomics tab, find these CCA credit opportunities. And if you have a question you can ask one of our agronomy team members, simply ask your question and one of us will get back with you. Thanks for listening. Now, segment two of The Dirt.
(17:14)
Listeners, welcome back for segment two. As you are well aware by now, we are continuing our tour across North America looking at different research farms associated with agriculture and talking about what these research farms do to benefit producers in the United States and Canada. Today, to help us do that, we’ve got Greg Koller with us. Greg is with the University of Maine. Greg, welcome to The Dirt. Greg, if you will introduce yourself to our listeners and tell them a little bit about what you do and introduce the experiment station we’re going to be talking about today.
Greg Koller (17:44):
Sure. My name is Greg Koller. I am the farm superintendent at the University of Maine, Highmoor Farm here in Monmouth, Maine. Highmore Farm, a research universe station, we do primarily focus with apples, vegetables and small fruit research for the state. We do research and we also have an extension component where we do outreach with growers. The farm sits at about 300 acres of land. We have 15 acres in orchards. We do about 10 acres of vegetable trials, three to four acres of small fruit trials, and we have actually six acres of an alfalfa project going on here too right now.
Mike Howell (18:17):
Sounds like quite the experiment station there. Most of the farms that we visit are growing row crops, cotton, corn, soybeans, the rice, that kind of stuff. This one’s a little bit different and we’ve had some that grow fruit trees and blueberries, things like that. So trying to get a diversity of everything. What types of research are going on on the fruit trees and the vegetable crops you’re talking about there?
Greg Koller (18:38):
Sure. With our fruit trees, we do some pesticide trials, chemical trials. We look at insecticides, fungicides, thinning sprays, and we do a lot of variety trial work too where we get new varieties and try out new varieties and see how they’re doing this day. We also do a lot of rootstock trials too on the apple trees, looking at the different dwarfing rootstocks and see how they can survive the main winters.
(19:00)
Right now our [inaudible 00:19:02] has started a peach breeding program and peach cold hardy research program because we’re at the limit of growing peaches for our climate here and there’s some new cold hardy varieties that show some promise. So she’s got a half an acre of peaches that she is working with. Each year we’re looking at growth, we’re looking at fruit quality, fruit size, and if they survive the main winters. And how cold tolerant they can be. Two years ago, we didn’t have a peach crop because we got down to 18 below for a weekend and that killed all the fruit buds.
(19:31)
So last year we had no peaches, but this year we might have a decent crop. The apples are more known for this region, so it’s more looking at new varieties and seeing just what kind of yield and what kind of disease pressure they have for the tree fruit.
Mike Howell (19:45):
You mentioned the cold weather and affecting the peach crop. We have a little bit of the same thing. I’m in South Mississippi, but we don’t get 18 below zero very often, but our problem comes in the spring after those peach trees have started budding out and then we get that late frost and kill those little buds in there. We can lose a crop in a hurry from that, so they’re pretty sensitive.
Greg Koller (20:04):
That’s what happened to us last year. We had the cold 18 below which the apple trees can withstand that, but spring came around and then we had a late frost right during bloom. There was a few peach blossoms that made it through that winter. Not many, but the frost got those and then 60% of our apple crop got affected by the frost last spring.
Mike Howell (20:24):
Greg, tell us a little bit about the history of the station. When was it established and why was it established?
Greg Koller (20:29):
Sure. Back in the early 1900s, the main apple growers were having issues that they wanted the university or the state to come up with a research station to help with the apple crop and the further research. So a state in 1909 gave the university, I think it was right around $10,000 to buy what is now Highmore Farm. Highmore was built in the 1860s. It was a horse farm, but they had a few apple trees on it.
(20:50)
In 1909, the university purchased the farm and they had about 5,000 apple trees on it and began doing the research there. Throughout the next 115 years, apples have always been the main focus, but in the 40s and 50s, more vegetable research was being done down here and also small fruits. So that became the need for the university. The university has four research farms and each one has a specific focus, but ours has been always small fruit apples and then vegetables eventually there.
Mike Howell (21:20):
Well, Greg, if you will talk a little bit about why this station is so important. What’s the benefit to the growers? Why do they need this experiment station there?
Greg Koller (21:28):
We have two components here that are on this farm. We have a research side and we have an extension side. A lot of our researchers and a split appointment between research and extension. So while they’re also doing research, we do a lot of things that directly affect, well, the growers can get information from. We do a lot of variety trials, especially with our vegetable work. It changes from year to year what our variety trials are. This year we’re doing radicchio, eggplant, celeriac and celery, and pumpkins, and sweet corn.
(21:56)
What we look at, we get new varieties that are coming out. We’re growing them under the worst, sometimes the worst condition. We limit what we do just to see what kind of yield we get. In our eggplant trial, there’s 18 varieties of eggplant. They’re all planted replicated trials, so they’re harvesting, collecting data, and then each year we have a winter meeting for the growers to attend and then they can give them access to the data that we got, how each variety did, what the yield was.
(22:19)
We’re looking at the fruit quality, storage quality. So the growers were directly given that information every year what we’ve done for that year. They’re getting what’s going on here at the farm so they can help make their decisions for the next year. So a lot of projects have always been ongoing like sweet corn, and we do every year, be it all the new varieties of sweet corn come out. And then pumpkin is a crop we do every year because there’s so many small farm stands around here that the fall is how they make a lot of their income is from they want to know how they’re going to grow.
(22:47)
And so we can effectively get that information right at the grower, whether we’re doing also variety or sometimes it’s different mulches, treatments, different irrigation, different fertilizers treatments. That information is going directly right to the growers at the end of the season. And throughout the year, we do a twilight meetings too that they can come see it throughout the season, one in the spring once we plan it. One in the summer sometimes, and then in the fall they’re at harvest, so that way they have access to the farm so they can see what they’re doing here.
(23:14)
Apples don’t change as much. We do a lot of IPM programs out here, so we’re [inaudible 00:23:19] pests and stuff for the growers and new varieties of apples do not come that often. So it’s more looking at pruning techniques and chemical trials and information, how what worked and what didn’t work.
Mike Howell (23:28):
I imagine it would take several years to change an apple variety that have to take out one planting and get them reestablished. How long does it take an apple from the time you plant the tree until you can start harvesting?
Greg Koller (23:39):
With the new dwarfing root stocks that are out there and forcing them early. From planting, you’re looking at three years. You start getting your first crop as light crop. Fourth, fifth, you start getting a more stable crop off of them. It used to be eight years or more, or longer for old standard rootstocks that used to be planted all throughout New England, but now with the dwarfing rootstocks, you can get your production way sooner. Three years you’re picking apples.
Mike Howell (24:02):
That’s a lot quicker than I thought. Greg, one thing, and this is our final question, but I’m asking this of everybody we’re talking to this year. We know the future of agriculture is changing. We’re seeing new technology in agriculture coming out every day. We know that urban sprawl is a big problem. We have people coming closer and closer to our farms and that’s presenting new challenges as well. What are these research farms going to have to do to keep up with this change in pace of agriculture and stay functional and benefit the producers in the next 50 years?
Greg Koller (24:30):
We’re really going to have to look at less chemical use because the biggest thing when you get neighbors encroaching land goes for sale and then as soon as you get a new neighbor, if they’re concerned about the pesticide use. So we really concentrate on reduced pesticide use because when people see a sprayer go out and they can see it, that always gets their attention. So we do a lot of IPM work in the rate of pest management where we’re always spraying what we need to get spray, well because an economic threshold hits that we need to spray.
(24:57)
Getting that out there, it helps ease some tension. Maybe it’s kind of different because we don’t have as much urban development yet. I mean, the population of Maine is 1.3 million. For the whole state, which is one of the larger states in the union here. We have population centers in the farms tend to be on the outsides of some of these cities, so we don’t get the encroachment quite so bad up here.
(25:18)
But you do get some, and Maine farms too are, there’s not very sprawling big farms. Especially where it’s small fruit vegetable farms in this area. If you go up to Rooster County where you got the potato farms where you got thousand plus acres of farms up there and nothing but potatoes and you go down east where you got blueberries that are five to 10,000 acres of farms there. They have their different needs.
(25:38)
But with us, we have a lot of concentrated small farms that are multifaceted, that have apples, that have vegetables, that have animals. So we got to address that. We’re not doing a large scale agriculture for apples and small fruit vegetables here. So we’re concentrating all of our information for the smaller grower. A lot of farms are five acres or less up here. Again, you got some bigger farms, yes, but the majority are under five acres, so we’re centered to them a lot for our work, especially with the vegetables and small fruit, working with high tunnels to extend the growing season for that because our growing season can be painfully short enough here in Maine.
(26:12)
So we do a lot of work with that trying to get the market. A lot of them are going from right to farmsteads, farmer markets, growing for certain restaurants. So we help them with that. So I think that’s for us where we focus our research is going to be for the smaller farmer to get most bang for their buck, to keep them surviving. But agriculture today is, I always watch out west. I like to follow farms and stuff.
(26:34)
These big farms would always amazes me especially when you look to the size of the equipment and stuff, it’s always really neat to see that stuff. But ours is always so much more compact here and small. It’s hard to fathom some of that. I grew up in Northeast, Ohio. I had an uncle that had a dairy farm and an uncle that had an apple orchard, and I decided I didn’t want to milk cows seven days a week. I liked the apple side and vegetable side a little bit better, and so that kind of stuck with that.
Mike Howell (26:57):
It’s hard to get a vacation from that dairy.
Greg Koller (26:59):
It is.
Mike Howell (27:00):
I told you that that was going to be my last question, but I did come up with one other question while you were giving that answer. For our listeners, we’re recording this toward the end of September. It’s fall, officially fall now. And I know Maine is one of the travel destinations to go see the fall colors and everything. Greg, can you give us an update on the fall colors? Has it started to change yet? Is it still too early? When do we need to come to Maine?
Greg Koller (27:22):
It seems later this year. I mean, you’ll start to see trees turning, but in our area we’re only maybe 25, 30% in fall color. For US area, we’re at Central Maine between Portland and Augusta. We’re about 45 minutes away from the coast. But October is probably the best time of the year to come to Maine. I think up in the mountain area, up in Northern Maine, I think there are probably like 50 to 60% right now because they’re a little bit cooler than us down here.
(27:48)
Anytime in October is probably one of the best times to come to Maine. You got little bugs, the black flies are gone, mosquitoes are gone. You got the beautiful fall color. It’s a good time to come to Maine. You got the coast, you got Acadia National Park to go visit. Then you go inland up to the Moosehead region and it’s just beautiful up through there.
Mike Howell (28:04):
Well, Greg, I’ll have to get that on my calendar. I don’t think I’m going to be able to make it this year, but maybe next year I can get up there and see some of the fall colors.
Greg Koller (28:11):
Oh yeah. No, it’s great. If you come up in October, first week of October, Fryeburg Fair is one of the last fair in the state. It’s one of the bigger agricultural fairs in New England. It’s a really fun place. The amount of animals and stuff that they get there for that is really nice.
Mike Howell (28:26):
Greg, we sure appreciate you taking time to visit with us today. Listeners, we appreciate you tuning in and as always, if you need more information on anything we’ve talked about today, you can visit our website, that’s nutrient-ekonomics.com. Until next time, this has been Mike Howell with The Dirt.
