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School, farmer-led watershed group collaborate on cover crop education

A farmer-led watershed group has teamed up with a Wisconsin high school agriculture class to encourage the next generation of farmers to try different cover crop methods.

Auburndale ag educator and FFA advisor Mark Cournoyer tells Brownfield the FFA and Welding-2 classes will build what they need on a donated three-point toolbar. “We’re going to build a ten-foot six-row cultivator with Lilliston row units in it to basically, like a rotary hoe, to work up the ground when the corn is between V4 and V8 which is basically ankle to knee-high, and then we’re putting grain drill boxes on top of that which are going to drop seed down in between the rows.”

Cournoyer says the Farmers of Mill Creek and the Friends of Mill Creek groups have led the way and want the students to try different things to see what works. “These kids in the next ten years are going to be making those decisions, and lets give them some tools and let’s give them some range to go out there and do some really interesting things in that cover crop.”

Cournoyer says the students will use the toolbar they helped build on the school’s fields and can use it to help their families and some after-school farm employers try something new. The students will be assembling the cultivator and seeder during the spring quarter.