By David Davis

You may have seen earlier this week that our annual Clark County Extension Farm Field Day will be this Saturday.

The layout planned for this year’s field day is slightly different from years past. In previous years, the field day focus has alternated between horticulture/crops and livestock. Now that agent Clay Stamm is on board, we have been able to expand our trials and demonstrations so that our field day will now include both horticulture and livestock topics. We should have information presented that will benefit even more of our Clark County farmers.

The livestock portion of the field day will begin at 9 a.m. at Barberidge Farm.

The afternoon portion of the field day will start at 12:30 p.m. at the Clark County Extension Office. If you are a farmers’ market producer, you have time to get to the field day. Don’t worry about arriving late because we are starting with introductions. We will head out to our first farm stop around 1 p.m.

Our first farm stop will be at the Barnes family farm. The Barnes family participated in the black plastic mulch demonstration program. We had three farms participate in our black plastic mulch demonstration, but at the Barnes Family farm, we demonstrated pre-emergent herbicide use between rows of vegetables grown in plastic. The Barnes family had never used black plastic mulch technology for vegetable production before this season. This program also included weekly farm visits where our Intern, Kendal Bowman, or myself gave recommendations for the work that needed to happen in the demonstration each week.

Our second farm stop will be to visit the Zeldon Angel farm. Zeldon is our largest vegetable producers in Clark County. This year, he hosted a University of Kentucky tomato fungicide trial geared to farmers’ market producers. This trial will hopefully provide some useful information to update fungicide recommendations for farmers’ market producer growing tomatoes. In addition to the fungicide trial, we will also be able to discuss his pumpkin, green bean, pumpkin, burley and industrial hemp production.

You don’t have to attend both the livestock portion and the horticulture part of the field day in order to participate. Feel free to join us for the part that is most applicable to you. This field day does meet the CAIP educational requirement. If plan to attend the field day, please call the Clark County Extension Office at 744-4682.

David Davis is the Clark County Cooperative Extension Service Agent for Agriculture and Natural Resources.