North Fork Red River Conservation

May/June land and pond management calendar. Part 1: Pasture Management Delayed Haying: Haying native pastures in late June is good for wildlife and improved hay... quality. Summer Fire: growing season prescribed fires should be planned out and the fire breaks completed. Spraying Weeds: Johnsongrass, Bermudagrass, sericea lespedeza and perrilla mint can be controlled in early summer. Brush Piles: The safest months to burn brush piles due to high humidity, low winds and lush pastures. For the full calendar, click the link http://bit.ly/LandPondOSU

Cover crops at work holding water!

Climate change and the new normal. (First published in the Southern Plains Perspective Blog, May 14, 20210) In case you missed it, we are now living in a new normal when it comes to temperature and precipitation. Last week the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) published their U.S. Climate Normals (you can find a release from NOAA about this here- https://www.ncei.noaa.gov//noaa-delivers-new-us-climate-no) and to no surprise, the U.S. is becoming w...armer and in some cases wetter. Every 10 years NOAA releases its climate normalsweather data based on a look back at averages over the last 30 yearsand this time around the data is pointing to a warming trend throughout most of the United States with temperatures increasing from half a degree to a degree through most of the Southern Plains states of Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas. The greatest increases for the region are (to no surprise) south of the Red River with increases of around a degree in pockets throughout the state, including a large part of far West Texas with most of the rest of the state seeing a bump of a little more than half a degree. In Oklahoma and Kansas, the change isn’t quite as dramatic, although most of Western Oklahoma sees better than half a degree increase. When it comes to moisture, the part of the region that got hotter also, for the most part, also got drier: Western Oklahoma and West Texas both show a drying trend with far west Texas seeing significant decreases in average rainfall. Eastern Texas, Eastern Oklahoma and Central Kansas all saw slight increases in moisture, however. What all this means is that what the experts have been saying now for several years is starting to play out in the data. The climate IS changing. We have to come up with strategies to deal with this reality because ignoring the situation will not make it go away. Here is how the new temperature changes look compared to past averages: This isn’t all that surprising when you consider that the last decade had the seven warmest years ever on record. The climate is changing folks. It’s already impacting your farming and ranching operation weather you realize it or not. If you aren’t preparing for this and putting some thought into how to both adapt to these changes while helping mitigate some of climate changes root causes, you need to start. You can put your head in the sand, but you need to realize that the rest of you is still out in the open and exposed to the elements. The change has come. It will continue to change. Get ready

We have a new blog post up at the Southern Plains Perspective! In this post we talk about the fact that a lot of good is already going on in agriculture when it comes to climate change mitigation, water quality and the like. One of the challenges is that we don't always look for it. . Check out the post for more info---... https://southernplainsperspective.wordpress.com//theres-a/

Jimmy Emmons, Soil Health Mentor Coordinator, hosted Indigo Ag lead by Darrin Unrue in a field day May 25, 2021. The field day was in coordination with the unve...iling of his soil's taxonomic name change. Mark and Annette Thomas and Tom Cannon (other Soil Health producers in Oklahoma,) along with soil scientist and professionals joined Jimmy to help communicate the science and practices behind the development. Jimmy has been assisted by the NRCS for the last 10 years in adopting and adapting the 5 soil health principles on his farm. Through the process of using these principles, he has been able to change his soil's organic matter percentage and depth and therefore change the topsoil’s color and profile description. Jimmy's soil taxonomically is now a Mollisol and before was an Entisol. Please read more information about the soils change and importance of what has happened, in our Soil Health monthly newsletter. You can sign up at the link below. https://www.ok.gov/conservation/ See more