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Northwest Minnesota farmer says fall has been close to ideal for cover crops

A northwest Minnesota farmer calls this fall nearly ideal for cover crops.

Blair Hoseth of Mahnomen says a hot dry summer resulted in an early harvest for soybeans, allowing more time to seed a cover.

“We’ve had such good heat, and we’ve got good heat again coming on through the weekend with this rain. It’s really germinated nicely and it looks good.”

He tells Brownfield the cover crop will be used to feed his cattle.

“It’ll be some of that, and then the land that’s further away from the cattle area that we don’t pasture is lighter soil, and we just use (cover crops) for soil health and just to retain that sand so we don’t have so much erosion and just to try to build the organic matter on that part of it.”

Hoseth says he’ll also turn livestock out on stalks once the corn harvest is finished.