Producer Features

Peachland, North Carolina: It’s quiet, it’s picturesque, and it’s the home of Brent Stegall Farms and their unexpectedly successful alfalfa operation.

A long time back in 1620, a Baptist minister with the last name of Holmes moved away from England to find religious freedom. He and his sons ended up on a 900-acre, land-grant farm at Cream Ridge, New Jersey.

At the American Forage and Grassland Council’s annual meeting in mid-January, 75-year-old Ted Hughes, a self-professed “grass farmer” and beef cattle producer from Georgia, competed in the annual Forage Spokesperson contest.

A plungerless baler, on-the-fly bale monitoring for small balers, tedder/fluffer modifications, bale wagon strapper, improved hay loading equipment … basically, if a piece of equipment sits at Randi B Farm very long, it will never be safe from tinkering. It’s going to be tweaked and improved. That’s a fact.

A producer who is producing a quantity of hay can’t continue to produce 30-pound bales at 100 bales an hour; that producer can’t meet demand.

Last winter, a university ag economist told a group of producers in the Midwest he wouldn’t advise his students to pursue studies that fulfill their personal dreams.