Farmers and landowners who live in Henry County will be visiting two Washington County farms as part of a field day organized by the Lower Skunk River Watershed project.

The tour will include an operation and implementation tour of cover crops at Steve Berger’s farm in Wellman and a tour of an established bioreactor site on Rob Stout’s farm outside of West Chester. Project Coordinator Miranda Haes talks about Stout’s bioreactor, “He’s going to give us some data, some feedback over the last few years that it’s been implemented, and the nutrient reduction that’s occurred by having this practice installed. He said that so far there’s been 90% reduction in runoff. So the bioreactor itself is special in that it has prairie planted on it versus most of the time, people will put cool-season grasses planted on top of a bioreactor, but he has prairie planting.”

A tour of Berger’s farm was requested by several farmers, as Berger has spoken at previous forums about cover crops. Haes says she hopes people will come away from the tour with greater knowledge about using cover crops and the water quality and soil health initiative. The field day will be September 7. A free charter bus will be transporting attendees from Mount Pleasant to both farms. You can register for the field day and reserve a bus seat by contacting Haes at 319-385-2824 ext. 3 or miranda.haes@ia.nacdnet.net by 4 p.m. on September 5.