Saturday, March 5, 2011

New This Week at the NCRS

So the research staff at the NCRS has a new face as of this week. He is Dan Janzen. Dan is originally from Oregon, but has lived in Michigan for a number of years. He grew up on a field crops and fruit tree farm, and got his Bachelors and Masters degree in agronomy from Oregon State. He has worked in University extension and in several orchard management jobs. So he has quite a lot of experience in tree crops which we plan to use here at the NCRS and eventually in the field. This is a huge market that we are just starting to crack, and Dan will certainly help. He is now learning about the family of Liquid nutrition and will be helpful once the research season starts. Dan and his wife live in Greenville. So welcome him if you get a chance. Here is what our new equipment barn on Farm 3 looked like yesterday. You can see that it is next to the fertilizer and chemical storage barn. They are coming along fast in spite of the less than ideal conditions.
My weekend visit to the NCRS was met with a lake in the parking lot as temps warmed up and it actually had rained all night. But the ground below the top couple inches is still frozen. So the water just sits there.
Here is the muddy mess off the East side of the main barn. Now its snowing again. What a contrast to my visit to the warm South earlier this week.