SVM_Todays Farm_071421

It’s not a bird or a plane — it’s a drone, and a growing number of farmers are using these eyes in the sky PAGE

More people are driving a country mile as agritourism’s popularity picks ups • Page 23 Do you want to serve on a county Farm Service Agency committee? The FSA is seeking nominations • PAGE 24 Grasses should be a perennial favorite in farmers’ fields • Page 25

SHAW MEDIA Sauk Valley Media/ SaukValley.com • Wednesday, Jul 14, 2021

Today’s Farm

19

Sauk Valley Media/ SaukValley.com • Wednesday, Jul 14, 2021

SHAW MEDIA

20

TODAY’S FARM

Eyes in the sky Whether it’s watching for floods, pointing out pasture problems or creating 3D models of fields, drones help farmers see the big picture

BY TOM C. DORAN | Shaw Media’s AgriNews URBANA, Ill. — Drones have transitioned over the past several years from a curiosity to a crop and livestock production tool that many ag producers are finding an essential part of their operation.

The benefits of using drones on farms and ranches were the topic of a recent Illinois Nutrient Loss Reduction podcast hosted by Todd Gleason, University of Illinois Extension media communications specialist.

Panelists were Dennis Bowman, U of I

Extension, interim assistant dean for ag and natural resources program and commercial ag educator specializing in precision agriculture and technology; Knox County farmer Scott Erickson; and Teresa Steckler, Extension commercial agriculture educator specializing in ruminant production.

What follows are some highlights of the podcast. The full podcast (Episode No. 36) can be heard at https://will.illinois.edu/agriculture/note/50107.

DRONES cont’d to page 21

Prophetstown Farmers Mutual Founded by Farmers, For Farmers Meeting all of your Farm Insurance Needs Contact one of our Qualified Agents to see how they can help Hanford Insurance Agency Prophetstown 309-944-8670 Hanford Insurance Agency Erie 309-944-8671

Mark Gillis Insurance Agency Rochelle 815-561-2800 The Cornerstone Agency Morrison 815-772-2793 The Cornerstone Agency Tampico 815-438-3923

Sauk Valley Insurance Services Dixon 815-288-2541 Dykstra &Law Agency Fulton 815-589-2200

A local Company, with local people, making local decisions, offering farm and home insurance.

TODAY’S FARM

21

Dennis Bowman How do you use drones in your work?

Drones are just a really great tool to extend your reach and your vision in the time of year when you can look at fields. One of the reasons I started investigating drones was to help out as a crop scouting tool, but also in my job as troubleshooting for crop problems, getting that big picture of a field, remote sensing imagery on demand any time you want it to collect the information and also to document things over time as things change throughout the season to get an idea where problems might be occurring and to develop a record of different things that could go on.

One of the research projects I’m working on is using drones to collect information about soybean varieties, where we’re looking at the maturities of hundreds of different soybean lines. As they approach maturity we fly the drone every week and catch minor changes in colors as those different lines start to move in to maturity, and document the maturity ratings, and when the appropriate harvest time might be.

Are there conservation practices where you find that drones are useful?

Water has such a huge impact on crops, both too little and too much. With too much water you can get potholes in the field and a drone is really handy for mapping out those wet spots and keeping track of them and also for the erosion side of water management. With the size of farms, the operator may not actual operate a combine or a tractor in all

of the farms that they’re farming and cover every acre every year. Using a bare soil drone flight before the crop is planted or in the fall after harvest you can look for those areas and you can see where erosion is starting to occur and how extensive it is.

By taking a series of pictures as the drones fly over a field you can do a technique called photogrammetry. Even by just flying over a field and taking grids of pictures, computers can take those pictures and put them together into a three-dimensional model.

You can build an elevation model that shows the erosion, the depth of the gullies, how extensive they are, and with certain software you can actually map out the volume of soil that’s been removed by these gullies. Or, if you’re going to do some construction practices to try to correct these things you can get an idea of how much fill might be needed to fix the problems.

Are there special licensing or rules related to using drones for agriculture purposes?

If you’re going to use a drone for your business you need an FAA pilot’s license for unmanned aerial vehicles in order to operate that. The license is good for two years. You have to pass a fairly extensive test. There are several online courses or weekend courses that you can take that can get you up to speed pretty quickly with enough knowledge to pass the exam.

It’s not impossible to do yourself and there are a lot of free online sources you can use as well to get that information, but you do have to pass the exam, pay the fee, and every two years you have to take a recurrency

exam to make sure you’re still up on all your knowledge.

You need to be aware of what the laws are on how to use drones, where you can safely use them.

If you’re near an airport, that causes some problems, but by going through the education to get the license you learn the rules of where you can fly and how to go about getting approval if you are near an airport. If you have fields within five miles of an airport that operates commercial then you’re going to have to go through some extra hoops of permissions. You learn all about that as you go through the study guides for the exam.

Scott Erickson Erickson grows corn and soybeans — 90% rotation, 10% continuous corn — and has a farrow-to-finish hog operation on his family farm. The operation is primarily no-till with some light chisel plowing on the continuous corn ground along a creek that runs through the farm.

I bought my first drone four or five years ago for the same reason everybody does: just to see if I could take cool pictures around the farm. Now I use it a lot more for work than I anticipated.

We can have flood issues where the creek runs through and I got a better drone because I want to be able to fly over the creek line to see where it’s holding water or where water is coming out and we need to do some erosion control, or this farm is going to need tile because it seems like it’s holding water longer than others.

DRONES cont’d to page 22

Do I Smell a Problem?

Your farm. Your passion.

Our protection.

We offer services including, but not limited to…

• Air Conditioning • Goulds Jet Pumps • Submersible Water Pumps • Sump Pumps • Ejector Pumps • Water Service Repairs • Underground Boring

RESIDENTIAL • COMMERCIAL • FARM • INDUSTRIAL IL Licensed 055-000988

Family owned and operated since 1967.

502 IL Rt. 2, Dixon • 815-284-2044

Larry Farley Representative Dixon, IL 61021-9139 (815)284-7790

SM-ST1897322

• Sewer Rodding • Sewer Televising • Trailer Jetting • Franklin Livestock Waterers • Site Plumbing • Drainfields & Septics • Backhoe • Boilers • Furnaces

Policies issued by COUNTRY Mutual Insurance Company®, Bloomington, IL., an equal opportunity provider.

1218-500HC-03984-9/1/2020

COUNTRYCrop.com

SHAW MEDIA Sauk Valley Media/ SaukValley.com • Wednesday, Jul 14, 2021

DRONES cont’d from page 20

Sauk Valley Media/ SaukValley.com • Wednesday, Jul 14, 2021

SHAW MEDIA

22

TODAY’S FARM DRONES cont’d from page 21 The creek has a deep bank creek and a lot of the farms are pattern-tiled, but there are some spots that you can tell when the water comes out it takes a little more of the bank with it every year and every couple of years we have to do some erosion control. It’s a lot easier to see that when the water is up and it’s definitely easier to see when I don’t have to wear mud boots and walk around trying to figure out where the water is coming out at.

I’ve really liked using the drone and it seems to help us out a lot.

Have you used it to see where wet areas might be in the spring to more easily locate the areas that may need tile?

I took the drone up to look at emergence to try to see where the trouble spots might be on a farm that I did some cover crops on last year. When I had the drone in the air I could see some spots that from the air almost looked like drowned-out spots, but they weren’t; they’re just a little wetter than the rest of the farm. I took some pictures of that farm and sent them to my tiling company and they’re going to put some tile in just those spots whenever they get back around this area.

The biggest thing I use mine for is for farm ground that we rent or lease from a family member or landlord. I try to fly and take a picture every week once the corn is out of the ground, but I don’t always get it done. It will give you a pretty good idea of the progress of the farm and

PROTECTION FOR YOUR FARM. AND YOUR FARM’S FUTURE.

you don’t have to do that Sunday afternoon drive to see how things are doing on the farm.

What pointers do you have for farmers interested in using drones?

The biggest thing is the government regulations and getting your license. It’s not hard to do. It’s not a tough test. It’s pretty much all common sense stuff, but you do have to jump through some hoops just like anything.

As for the actual flying of the drones, I had two of them. The first one was kind of a low dollar one, under $1,000. That’s still expensive, but it was hard to fly. It took some serious getting used to, to be able to do what I needed to do with.

The one I purchased last year is more technologically advanced and more money, but it almost flies itself. It’s definitely not anything to be afraid of. I don’t want to spend $2,000 on something and then not be able to fly it. There’s not a very sharp learning curve on the newer, nicer stuff.

Teresa Steckler How do you use drones in your livestock research?

I am currently trying to recruit cattlemen who need assistance with their pastures. We’ve had very poor spring weather the last several years in southern Illinois. The wet and cold weather didn’t lend itself to the growth of the forages very well, and we’ve had some very dry falls.

The culmination of all of this is a lot of overgrazing of

our pastures. The pastures just haven’t had time to be rested and once you’ve had pastures that are overgrazed that lends itself to having invasive species or forages that are not very consumable for the livestock.

You need to give these pastures time to recuperate and unfortunately a lot of these gentlemen just don’t have that option.

One of the things that I’ve been trying to do is get cattlemen to do at least more of a rotational graze. That way the grasses have somewhere between three to five days, maybe seven days, to recover from being grazed, and also working with them to spot spray.

One of the nice things the drones can do is instead of having to drive over the entire pasture we just fly over.

It’s quicker, it’s easier and the cattlemen actually can get a whole different perspective and really target those areas and possibly set aside the really poor sections and work on those as far as spot spraying or bush hog.

It also helps us figure out the lay of the land, where the creeks might be and how we can work with waters, whether we need to take a wagon wheel approach or just make squares out of it, but figure out what’s the best layout that’s the easiest for the cattlemen to implement these changes.

Tom C. Doran can be reached at 815-780-7894 or tdoran@ shawmedia.com. Follow him on Twitter at: @AgNews_Doran.

You’ve got big plans for the future and at American Family Insurance, we understand what it takes to make your dream a reality.

Let’s talk about the protection your dream deserves.

Robert Maltry, Agent 709 N Brinton Ave Dixon, IL 61021 Bus: (815) 288-4206

American Family Mutual Insurance Company S.I. and its Operating Companies, American Family Insurance Company, 6000 American Parkway, Madison Wisconsin 53783 ©2019 016630 – 04/19 – 14474127

TODAY’S FARM

23

More people are driving a country mile, and then some, as agritourism pick ups in popularity KAY SHIPMAN | FarmWeek With people ready to travel and summer vacations starting, Illinois agritourism is well positioned to cash in on the latests tourism trends – outdoors, family oriented, road-trip accessible, and food ... especially local food.

“People are excited to do family activities on the farm. They’ve been with their families inside and they want to do things outside, and it feels safe. Our current pick-your-own strawberry season was exceptional,” said Chris Eckert, vice president of retail for Eckert Inc. Eckert’s, the largest family-owned pick-your-own orchard in the U.S., started as a roadside stand in 1910 and today the family-run Eckert’s Country Store and Farms has retail, entertainment and farming entities in several locations throughout Illinois and Kentucky.

The state’s new tourism campaign, “Time for Me to Drive,” covers every region of the state and highlights road trip itineraries showcasing experiences unique to Illinois. During the pandemic, people became more interested in outdoor activities, and farms can capitalize on that interest, said Karla Flannery, deputy director of the Illinois

Office of Tourism.

The tourism campaign launched ahead of the Memorial Day weekend when an estimated 1.7 million Illinois residents were expected to travel, according to AAA. In addition to instate promotions, new ads encouraged travelers from seven states to visit Illinois.

Flannery advised agritourism owners and operators to focus on their strengths to provide certain experiences as traditional tourism destinations.

“What we are seeing in agritourism is doing it the right way,” she said. “Find your niche and the peo-

ple who are interested in those experiences.”

Eckert’s is continuing to use some of the practices it adopted during the pandemic. Like some other agritourism and on-farm businesses, the seven-generation family farm added admission tickets with a specified date and time in order to eliminate large crowds and even out the number of visitors throughout the week. A ticket system continues this year. “Guests are accepting it, and we love it.

You can staff accordingly for busy times,” Eckert explained.

Plexiglass shields remain in Eckert’s’ retail stores in Belleville and Versailles, Kentucky, and the wagons that transport visitors to the fields remain at two-thirds capacity, but that may change in the fall.

To market tourism during the year, the Office of Tourism publishes a monthly newsletter highlighting events and sights, including agritourism. Eckert said their farm has been included in the newsletter along with a couple of their dairy suppliers, Rolling Lawns Farm and Marcoot Jersey Creamery. Kentucky tourism has also promoted Eckert’s.

AGRITOURISM cont’d to page 24

VandeVoorde Sales Inc

FOR ALL YOUR GRAIN BIN & DRYER SALES AND SERVICE 9LVLW XV DW ZZZ ILUVWVWDWHEDQNRIIRUUHVW FRP RU FDOO

18854 E 2750th Street Annawan IL 61234 309.935.6382

11399 Maple Grove Road Lanark IL 61046 815.493.2210

SHAW MEDIA Sauk Valley Media/ SaukValley.com • Wednesday, Jul 14, 2021

It’s time for a trip to a farm

Sauk Valley Media/ SaukValley.com • Wednesday, Jul 14, 2021

SHAW MEDIA

24

TODAY’S FARM AGRITOURISM cont’d from page 23 “People are interested in off-thegrid experiences,” Flannery said. People can email information and descriptions of agritourism experiences to news@EnjoyIllinois.com. Flannery said the office will reach out if more information is needed.

Currently, the Office of Tourism does not offer any marketing links or materials specifically for agritourism, but “as this trend grows, we are interested in developing it and will do everything we can to help grow this industry,” Flannery said. “We welcome any ideas to help it grow. There is so much interest right now in fresh food and in getting outside. People are asking for more of that, so we want to provide a window to the world.”

Those visitors may include international travelers, including Europeans and Canadians who are interested in experiencing local culture, according to Flannery.

“Please keep us aware of any new trends. We have a serious interest in growing and supporting this industry,” the tourism deputy director said.

This story was distributed through a cooperative project between Illinois Farm Bureau and the Illinois Press Association.

FSA seeks county committee nominations tion, commodity and price support programs.

SVM Staff Report The USDA Farm Service Agency is accepting nominations for county committee member elections. Nomination forms must be postmarked or received in the local FSA office by Aug. 2.

Elections will occur in certain Local Administrative Areas for individuals who will determine how federal farm programs are administered locally.

“We need enthusiastic, diverse leaders to serve other agricultural producers locally on FSA County Committees,” FSA Administrator Zach Ducheneaux said in a news release.

“Just as our nation’s agriculture industry is diverse from coast to coast, so are the viewpoints and experiences that you can represent on your local committee. Now’s your time to step up and truly make an impact on how federal programs are administered at the local level to reach all producers fairly and equitably.”

Nationwide, more than 7,700 members of the ag community serve on FSA county committees, which are made up of three to 11 members who serve three-year terms. Members play a key role in the agency’s day-today operations and are vital to how disaster programs are carried out as well as conserva-

Eligibility

Ag producers who participate or cooperate in a USDA program, and reside in the Local Administrative Areas that are up for election are eligible to serve on a county committee Administrative areas may be a single or multi-county jurisdiction and may focus on urban or suburban areas.

A cooperating farmer is defined as someone who has provided information about his or her farming or ranching operation to FSA, even if no program applications were filed or benefits received. Individuals may nominate themselves or others; qualifying organizations may also nominate candidates.

Producers should contact their local FSA office to register and find out how to get involved in their county’s election. They should check with their local USDA Service Center to see if their administrative area is up for election. To be considered, a producer must be registered and sign an FSA-669A nomination form or an FSA-669-A-3 for urban county committees. The form and other information about FSA county committee elections are available at fsa.usda.gov/elections.

Election ballots will be mailed to eligible voters beginning Nov. 1.

Local FSA service centers Whiteside County — 400 Wilkens Drive, Morrison, IL, 61270; 815-7722124 ext. 2 Lee County — 319 S. Mason Ave., Suite A, Amboy, IL, 61310-1817; 815-857-3621 ext. 2 Ogle County — 1213 Pines Road, Oregon, IL 61061; 815-7326127 ext. 2 For other locations, go to farmers.gov/ service-locator.

EXPERIENCED • RESPONSIVE • TRUSTED

Brandt Hutchcraft • Mike Urish • Doug Vanderlaan • Garett Plumley • Bart Ottens • Luke Larson • Bill Dale • Steve Taets

Farmers National Bank Ag Lenders Serving Northwest Illinois Since 1902

For All Your Ag Banking Needs • Operating for Crops and Livestock • Equipment and Irrigation • Buildings, Livestock and Grain Facilities • Farm Land • Prompt and local decisions with access to as much as $10 million per farm customer

PROPHETSTOWN

TOP

100

Ag Bank in the U.S.

www.FarmersNationalBank.bank

114 West Third Street

(815) 537-2348 GENESEO

700 US Highway 6 East

(309) 944-0580 MORRISON

1100 East Lincolnway

(815) 772-3700

TODAY’S FARM

25

UI ag professor says there should be greens with grains, not only to help soil health, but farmers’ bottom lines, too

BY TOM C. DORAN | Shaw Media AgriNews Publications URBANA, Ill. — Incorporating perennial grasses not only supports clean water and healthy soils, but also opens up market opportunities.

Emily Heaton, University of Illinois professor of regenerative agriculture, discussed perennial grasses and related issues in the recent Illinois Nutrient Loss Reduction podcast hosted by Todd Gleason, U of I Extension media communications specialist.

Heaton recently returned to U of I after serving as an assistant professor of agronomy at Iowa State University. She has conducted extensive in-field research on perennial grasses.

While a doctorate student at U of I before going on to Iowa State, Heaton worked with plant biology and crop sciences professor Stephen Long overseeing the first side-by-side trials of miscanthus and switchgrass in the nation.

Below is part of Heaton’s Q&A with Gleason. The full podcast can be heard at https://tinyurl.com/2dxp6ye7. Other Extension podcasts can be found at https:// extension.illinois.edu/global/podcasts.

We already have grasses on the farm in the form of corn and wheat, why then do we need perennial grasses?

The way I view kind of a high-functioning Midwestern landscape is it has corn and soybeans complemented by strategically placed plantings of perennials. We know that the way we have corn and soy distributed today that is completely covering our landscape.

Sometimes up to 95% of non-water land area in the Midwest is in row crops. That’s too much to support clean water and healthy soils. We’ve found that the paradigm of farming fence row to fence row is failing in a lot of ways.

But strategically incorporating perennials into the landscape like we used to even just 50 short years ago when there was a little bit more pasture and small grains, those provide complementarities to those corn/soybean systems, so that if water or nutrients leave a field, there’s an actively growing perennial plant nearby that can suck up that water and the nitrogen that’s in it, for example.

Obviously, we’d like to keep our nutrients in the field where the crop can use them, but should they leave, if we plant buffers in intelligent ways around our row crop landscape, it helps the whole landscape operate at a higher level and we can grow an extra crop. We get some perennial biomass that grows during the times of year when corn and soybeans don’t grow and allows us to sell into different markets than we can with corn and soybeans.

to thinking about waterways, maybe some buffer zones. They’re not used to thinking about the ability of using those as a cash crop in some way. There needs to be a marketplace and in order for that to happen.

The marketplaces are developing for perennial grasses and they’re developing pretty rapidly right now. Farmers are problem solvers and perennial grasses are just one more tool in the toolbox. What we’ve had really in the last 10 years is an explosion of smaller markets that are now getting quite well established.

The market that I think is the nearest term today is bedding market. Here in central Illinois we have some confinement animal operations, but not a lot of poultry ones.

However, there are a lot of poultry operations around the Midwest and particularly in the Mid-Atlantic.

Miscanthus is one plant that I work on. It’s a tall perennial grass that chops up nicely into small pieces that look really similar to woodchips and it grows really well in the Midwest.

Miscanthus chips have been taking the place of woodchips in poultry operations and within turkey and chicken aggregators have found that miscanthus bedding is more absorbent. They can go longer between times of changing the bedding or they can keep changing bedding at the same rate and have healthier outcomes in the house.

So, lower ammonia levels in the house, which is better for both the birds and employees that work there, and then they have found it actually improves the quality of poultries’ feet.

We may not think about it in this country, but chickens’ feet are a valuable commodity in Asia, so it added a whole new product for some poultry producers that they can now sell feet in addition to the meat.

PERENNIALS cont’d to page 26

Make Your Farm, Home & Business Communication More Efficient, Profitable, and Enjoyable!

Intercept those important phone calls

~Business Telephone Systems~

It’s the economics of this that makes a difference to producers because they’re used

L O C AT I O N S : G A LT HOOPPOLE M O R R I S O N - D OW N TOW N MORRISON - RT 30 N O R M A N DY P RO P H E TS TOW N B I N S I T E ROCK RIVER MAIN OFFICE STERLING RAIL TA M P I C O Check out our website for more information on our Agronomy Services and Grain services!

Two Way Radio

~Call Us ~

www.rockriverag.com

Rock River Lumber & Grain 5502 Lyndon Rd, Prophetstown, IL 61277 (815) 537-5131 • info@rockriverag.com

SM-ST1898865

Don’t Take A Chance, Call Radio Ranch!

Since 1954

Whiteside County Airport 10924 Hoover Road, Rock Falls 815-622-9000

SM-ST1898602

SHAW MEDIA Sauk Valley Media/ SaukValley.com • Wednesday, Jul 14, 2021

Grasses should be a perennial favorite

TODAY’S FARM PERENNIALS cont’d from page 25 Iowa is the nation’s largest producer of turkeys and eggs. What were your experiences there with regards miscanthus and marketing?

I’ve been with a miscanthus company, AGgrow Tech, and then Tyson Foods to plant miscanthus around turkey farms in Iowa and it will be used for bedding. But then it will also improve water quality for the local corn and soybean farmers.

So, there it’s part of a vertically integrated operation for some of the big farmers in the area and provides a cheaper, higher quality bedding source and a local bedding source for Tyson. That’s one of those win-win situations.

Now we have people saying, “if you’re using that for turkey bedding and I know you can also grind miscanthus up and make paper products out of it,” we have people saying, “we raise all of the eggs in Iowa, we could also raise the egg cartons.”

So, all of a sudden you start getting the market to layer and vertically integrate quite nicely while also providing ecosystem services like carbon storage and water quality improvement.

How does a producer or landowner get involved in perennials?

When I talk to anyone who is interested and they have land they either manage or own, the first question is what

their goals for that land are. There are a lot of things that we can do, but we want to do the thing that works best for their operation, and that usually looks pretty different for renters compared to owners, and people at different stages of their career or succession planning.

One of the first things you can do whether you rent or own is understand where in your operation you have room for improvement, both economically and environmentally.

Are there places in your field that you farm and you shouldn’t and you know you shouldn’t, but you do it anyway? Maybe they’re difficult areas to work around or, whatever reason, you’re in a hurry or something else.

Those might be areas of economic and environmental opportunity to try something different.

I think until you know where you have room to make a different decision, there’s not much point in trying to figure out how to incorporate perennials into your system.

It’s something that should be undertaken strategically with a system-wide perspective for your whole operation.

What are some of the grass species that could be used in fields such as waterways?

Waterways are a place that people are familiar with being grass on the farm. The grass in a waterway performs a very specific function. The role of grass in the waterway is to help the water move.

So, waterway grass needs to lay down, get out of the way for the water, and then survive, and that’s it. That’s the whole job of a waterway grass and it needs to be

July 22-25 Lee County Fairgr ounds (1196 Franklin Rd., Amboy)

In the Grandstand

facebook.com/leeco4hfair

Admission: Thurs - Sat. $5.00 Sunday - $2.00 Kids 12 & Under FREE

SM-ST1888658

July 22 - Tractor/Truck & Garden Tractor Pulls July 23 - Illini State Pullers Tractor/Truck Pulls July 24 - Broken Horn Rodeo

Full fair schedule at www.leecounty4hcenter.com

managed for that purpose.

The grasses that we grow for biomass and for water quality improvement provide a very different function on the landscape. The biomass grasses are stiff stemmed, they don’t lay down, they slow the flow of water. When they do that, the water moves slower and it drops a lot of the stuff that’s in it.

So, if you’re trying to keep soil on the landscape, if you’re trying to keep phosphorous on the landscape, if you’re trying to keep water on the landscape and just letting it peculate through. You think of the times that we have no rain all summer and then some sort of big gully-washer, the stiff stemmed biomass crop or the energy grasses will help the water actually stay on the field and move through slowly.

Now, sometimes you don’t want more water on your field. Oftentimes in the spring we’re trying to get rid of water. Perennial grasses also help water move through the profile better, so their roots are big, their roots are long-lived and go deep so it makes channels in the soil for the water to drain.

And we tend to find that these perennial grasses improve soil organic matter, which improves water management in a field, water-holding capacity, and they improve infiltration. The waterways have their place, but it’s a different place than a biomass crop.

Tom C. Doran can be reached at 815-780-7894 or tdoran@ shawmedia.com. Follow him on Twitter at: @AgNews_Doran.

OVER 95 YEARS OF GREAT DEALS AND GREAT SERVICE

Matt Hermes

Designated Managing Broker Specializing in Farm Sales & Management

1254 N. Galena, Dixon 815-288-4648 Lee Co:

160+/- Acres. Irrigated farm w/excellent yields.

38+/- Acres. Excellent location to build or develop.

DING 45+/- Acres. 85% tillable, great location Amboy.

PEN SALEnear OLD 40+/- Acres. Gorgeous recreational farm S w/CRP. 445+/- Acres. Palmyra Township, S 429+/PENDING ALEtillable.

200+/- Acres. Irrigated farm in East Grove OLD STwp.

“Great Deals, Great Service, Since 1926”

Whiteside Co:

143+/- Acres. Clyde Township, 138+/-Stillable.

OLD 715,000 bu grain storage setup in great Sterling location!

SM-ST1893898

Sauk Valley Media/ SaukValley.com • Wednesday, Jul 14, 2021

SHAW MEDIA

26

Rt. 52 N. Sublette, IL Ph. 815/849-5232 or 1-800-227-5203

WWW.VAESSENBROTHERS.COM SM-ST1896537