Farm406

farm406 26 Wicks, 34, grew up in North Central Montana and Southern Saskatchewan because his father farmed in both places, but John finally landed permanently in Montana and graduated from Chester High School. He learned welding and machining at the Helena College of the University of Montana and then decided to go to Montana State University to study agriculture. During his first year, his father passed away. Being the only son, Wicks moved home and started farming. "I have wonderful neighbors," said Wicks. "When they saw me doing something inefficiently, they would stop along the road and teach me on the spot by showing me how. I was definitely on the learning curve." Wicks slid into the cycle of farming seasons starting in 2006. He worked the family farm and followed in his father's footsteps by farming conventionally, but over time he saw that the boom line was a big problem. "We were just geing killed following the big AG production model. We could have great yields and super clean fields, but it just wasn't a profitable business model for our family farm," said Wicks. During this period, he found that he was highly susceptible to geing sick during seeding. Finally, he realized that he was contracting chemical pneumonia from the synthetic fertilizer. In 2012 Wicks began aending meetings where he learned about progressive farming methods and spent considerable time reading, especially about soil regenerative practices and he 21st Century story of North Central Montana's agriculture will include a lengthy chapter on organic farming and techniques developed for the stewardship of the land. John Wicks of Ledger will be one of the foremost voices when that story is told. microbiology. He started adding cover crops to his farming rotation schedule. In 2016 when he had 1280 acres coming out of CRP, he decided to try the organic route. Figures aer harvest told him that he had made a good decision, so he is gradually moving all of his tillable land to organic. Not having to purchase fertilizer and pesticides has been a big savings, but he needed the cover crops to control the weeds and build up the soil. Feeling that he was at the controls, Wicks became excited about farming. T Wicks checks organic malt barley to determine how close the grain is to harvest. Wicks inspects brown millet in his six-way cover crop mix.

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