Kutztown Young Farmers
Submitted by Ken Sanner, President

The Kutztown Young Farmers have had a very busy winter. In January we had presentations on bio-solids and our advisor, Jon Stutzman, presented his annual pesticide update meeting. We also had our new county agriculture coordinator, Sheila Miller, discuss her new position within our county government and how it will affect us as farmers. The month wrapped up with our high school ag teacher, Celeste Ball, giving us a review of her trip to Japan where she learned about agriculture in that country. In addition to this the winter conference committee was hard at work planning for the state meeting held in February.

In February we took a few weeks off from meetings to concentrate on the conference. We thank everyone who attended and very much appreciate the nice comments many of you had about our efforts. On February 14th, the men took their ladies out for the 8th Annual Valentines Night Out. We thank President Linda Krall and her husband Glen for celebrating the occasion and for taking a welcome break from the all the hard work with us.

The last 2 weeks in February we learned about the Midwest custom harvest business as an Oley farmer went out to work with the crew for 6 months. We also had a Lehigh county extension agent speak to us about his trip to an Asian country to learn and share his experiences about potato production.

We wrapped up the month of March with a program on cover crops and John Berry, extension agent, presenting a program on the rising costs of crop production. We also have a spring tour planned for the Philadelphia racetrack and our annual banquet with our FFA chapter in April.

After all these months of learning more about our industry we are reading to get back into the fields this Spring and start planting crops.