I often run across results or recommendations in tables in PDFs. Unfortunately doing anything with PDFs apart from reading or printing them is awkward. Some common tasks such as calculating the sum or average of specific rows (e.g. what’s the average yield of 10 particular varieties of canola) would require retyping the PDF or trying [...]
When taking pictures that show a field from ground level, panoramic photos are often quite useful. I’ve been using the software that came with our digital camera and it’s been working pretty well. I’m sure that as I get more photos I’m going to run into some issues where the photos don’t stitch together too [...]
There are still a lot of possibilities out there for manure management. 7 Creative Uses for Poop isn’t directly about manure management but it shows that there are a lot of possibilities out there. It wasn’t that long ago that manure was seen simply as a waste product. Many livestock producers would have liked to [...]
Manitoba Pork Council has a checklist of Steps To Take When Closing Down A Hog Barn For An Extended Period Of Time (PDF). Shutting down a barn isn’t something that anyone wants to do, but many producers are finding themselves in that situation. This checklist can help make the shutdown a little smoother.
AIC Notes pointed me to an Ammonia Loss Calculator by Alberta Agriculture and Rural Development. What I found interesting was not the dollar values themselves, but the way that they are affected by the different factors in the calculation. Change from broadcast to injection and you are suddenly losing half the nitrogen you were before. [...]
Last week I attended the Manitoba Soil Science Society‘s 53rd Annual Meeting. I felt that I learned the most from the first two speakers. Henry Janzen of Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada Lethbridge’s key point was “What will our descendants wish we had recorded or started?” He gave examples of studies in the late 1800s and [...]
If organic farming interests you, the Guelph 2010 Organic Conference Proceedings are available for download. I’m not convinced of the value of organic farming by itself. You avoid chemicals and fertilizers, but the energy input seems awfully high. On the other hand, by avoiding the “easy ” answers of more/different chemicals and fertilizers organic farming [...]
We had a few of our Garmin GPSmap76 units unable to find satellites. It was pretty obvious that they were out of whack – the date was wrong, the time was wrong, and the unit was beeping plaintively that it could not find satellites. Here’s what I did to fix them. Turn the GPS on [...]
