Field demos lined up for Wisconsin Farm Technology Days Show
MADISON – The biggest and best farm machinery will be on display Aug. 25-27 during field demonstrations at Wisconsin Farm Technology Days at Statz Bros. Inc. between Sun Prairie and Marshall. But there’s also some machinery that may be suitable for mid-sized to smaller dairy farms.
Junior Manthe, a De Forest farmer, is co-chairman of the field demonstrations committee at this year’s Farm Technology Days in Dane County. He says hay mowing and merging is planned for morning and afternoon each day. Hay chopping will be featured each afternoon and chopping corn silage will be featured each morning.
The demonstrations are scheduled from 10 a.m. to noon and 1-3 p.m.each day.
The Statz farm has ample land surrounding the 75-acre Tent City to allow the farm machinery to work. The host family has 135 acres available for corn and 120 acres for hay-making demonstrations.
Corn silage will be made on fields north of Tent City and all hay demonstrations will take place south and southeast of Tent City.
“On day one we’ll also have tillage after wheat and on days two and three we will demonstrate tillage after corn silage is taken off,”Manthe says.
Manthe says this is his third “swing at the bat” as a volunteer for Farm Technology Days. He worked on the show when it was previously held in Dane County at the Treinen and Rauls farms near De Forest in 1986 and he also volunteered his time to help the Columbia County version of the show when it was held at the Klahn and Manke farms in 1994.
“Technology in things like choppers and mergers has changed so much since then,” he says. “There’s so much more information available to farmers like on-the-go moisture testing and the ability of the choppers to tell you how much is being chopped.”
Dave Smithback, who co-chairs the committee with Manthe, is especially excited about a machine that will be novel to visitors at the show. It is an all-in-one forage chopper/wagon from the Netherlands. He says it could be ideal for a smaller dairy operation where the farm might have two of them to get their crops in.
Smithback, who farms near Utica and who has been organizing a tractor pull there for 28 years, says this machine from Europe “is about as new technology as you’re going to get. For the medium- to smaller-sized dairy guy this might be the answer. This chopping wagon is pretty cool.”
The machine that farmers can see at the show can be used for either corn silage or haylage, he added.
The hybrids planted on the Statz’s fields were chosen so they would mature earlier so the corn silage could be harvested for the Aug. 25-27 show.These committee volunteers are also in charge of trams that get visitors from Tent City to the fields where equipment is working.
“We have 24 trams lined up and we’ve lined up retired farmers to drive and they are all recruiting friends to serve as spotters,” Smithback says.
One thing he isn’t worried about is rain. “We are on high ground. People will still be able to enjoy Tent City even if it rains.”
