The Daily Times from Salisbury, Maryland • 4

Home The Daily Times Monday, October 25, 1993 Page 4 Watch out for poor quality seed. tested to insure proper germination and ANNAPOLIS Maryland Secretary of Agriculture Robert L. Walker has issued a reminder to Maryland farmers to carefully review the analysis tag on all seed they purchase to plant a cover crop this coming winter. "Many farmers are planting cover crops under the Maryland Agricultural Water Quality Cost-Share program to reduce nutrient runoff from their land. This has significantly increased the demand for cover crop seed, particularly rye.

Unfortunately, some poor quality seed is being offered for sale," Walker said. The Maryland Department of Agriculture's Turf and Seed Section recently place a tractor-trailer load of seed rye under a stop sale order after its seed laboratory found the seed to be contaminated with seed of 17 different weeds, including such noxious weeds as Canada thistle, Johnsongrass, corn cockle and wild garlic "The cost of controlling these weeds could easily exceed the payments for installing the cover crop under the cost share program," said Walker. According to Malcolm Sarna, chief of the department's turf and seed dvision, all seed bought and sold in Maryland must be tested and labeled under the Maryland Seed Law. "Any farmer planning to use home produced seed is strongly urged to have it purity, Sarna said. For testing, a two-pound sample should be sent to the Maryland Department of Agriculture, Turf and Seed Section, 50 Harry S.

Truman Parkway, Annapolis, Md. 21401. The cost for a complete purity, germination and noxious weed examination is $13. For more information on the testing and labeling of seed, contact the Turf and Seed Section on (410) 841-5960. V.

fTc Soda bottle can be a bird feeder I 112 This bird watching business can get me in trouble, ly. I was at an auction that was held outdoors and I saw a hawk circling overhead. I started to tell my friend about it and point it out to her when I realized the auctioneer was looking at my waving hand. I hurriedly brought my arm down. I heard the bid was at $400 when I started pointing.

IU try to be careful. Maybe that's why I like indoor sales best. I saw what appeared to me as strange sight in the bird bath. I have a large, enameled pot lid turned upside down in my too-deep bird bath. In order to make the lid non-tilting, I have some stones under it.

One day I lifted the lid and found what I thought was ten dead daddy-longleg spiders. I reached in to touch one and they all scrambled away. The next day they were back, all huddled together again, and they stayed there for several weeks. As you know I like to recycle things, or use them for other furposes, a3 I did the pot lid. So was very happy to receive, as a gift, an attachment that converts a two liter drink bottle into a bird seed feeder.

It is called a Soda Bottle Feeder, and uses the bottle (preferably one with the extra plaster casing on the bottom) as a small bird feeder. Perches and seed holders screw into the bottle top, and the handle goes into the plastic casing. Turn it over and you have a two-perch feeder. The only problem I had was AP Laserphoto WALNUT HULLING. Marion Gossard, an employee at the Feed Bin in Boonsboro, Md, shovels walnuts into a hulling machine while Quinn Thomas, in background, bags the hulled walnuts.

The Feed Bin is the only walnut-buying station in the state. East Coast profits by demand for walnut: Timely Topics Wayne onair Wicomico extension Was your corn crop a winner? For those of you who did not receive a copy of the 1993 Lower Shore corn variety test, call your county Extension office and request a copy. Results of the top 10 performers in the Wicomico plot planted on the Calvin Serman farm are as follows: Funks 5133X 121.5 buacre, Gutwein 2810 118.3 buacre, Chemgro 7692 116.6 buacre, Asgrow 775 116.5 buacre, Hyperformer HS 9843 115.5 buacre, Eastland EX 7S0OA 112.5 buacre, Augusta 513 111.2 uacre, acques 7820 210.0 buacre, Hytest HT 7748 109.4 buacre (tied), Northrup King 6330 109.4 (tied), Dekalb 646 109.3 buacre. The 57 varieties in the plot iveraged 98.3 bushels per acre, which is amazing considering the hot and dry weather experienced in June and July. One two-acre block around the plot averaged 90 bushels per acre.

Plant populations in the 17,520 range and additional early August rains were probably two large contributing factors to these yields. I thank Calvin for his continued assistance in helping make this type of information available to area farmers. The 18th annual Wicomico Agricultural Thanksgiving Breakfast will be held on Saturday, Nov. 20, 7 a.m., in the Ruth Powell Dining Hall -located on the Salisbury State University campus. Tickets cost $5.50 per person and may be purchased at the Farmers and Planter and the Wicomico County Extension Office.

Please purchase by Nov. 15. Lewis R. Riley, deputy secretary of the Maryland Department of Agriculture, will be the featured speaker. Steve Hammond of WBOC-TV, will be the master of ceremonies.

Entertainment will be provided by Jim and Kathy Payne of Greenland, Pa. Walter West, a Somerset County farmer, will be providing accordion music, which was greatly appreciated at last year's breakfast. For those attending, we ask that you bring one canned good or some other type of non-perishable item to be donated to the Christian Shelter. Mark Thursday, Nov. 4, on your calendar and plan to attend a soybean variety field plot meeting at 9 a.m.

to be held at the Sid Richardson Farm, located on Richardson Road near Willards. This will be an excellent opportunity to see how 30 varieties of soybeans responded under this year's adverse weather conditions. Sign up for the disaster or crop loss assistance program provided by the ASCS office now through March 4. All crops are eligible for assistance, provided there is a 35 percent loss if you have crop insurance and a 40 percent loss without crop insurance. Calculations in corn and soybeans seem to indicate a break-even situation of 45-50 bushels per acre yield for corn and around 20 bushels per acre for soybeans.

Yield above these figures will probably provide little or no assistance, depending on whether or not you have crop insurance or whether or not you participate in the ASCS program. WAYNE SIIAFF is director of the Wicomico County Cooperative Extension Service. BOONSBORO, Md. (AP) So many people have come to cash in their walnuts for money at The Feed Bin here that Starr Ramsey can't keep up with the paperwork. "We're up at more than 30,000 pounds now," said Ramsey, who owns the feed store with her husband, Raymond.

"I didn't really think we'd get the response we've gotten. We weren't prepared for the turnout." This year, a Missouri walnut processor, one of only two in the United States, has set up a walnut buying station at The Feed Bin. Domestic and foreign demand for walnuts prompted the company to seek 30 million pounds of hulled walnuts in 31 states, including Maryland. "Basically, the demand for the meat and shell is greater than the supply end that makes us go into additional areas where we haven't been. But we've been to Maryland before," said Gus Rutledge, executive vice president of Hammons Products Co.

of Stockton, Mo. Demand is high for walnuts to put in ice cream, candy and baked goods and for sale in packages at the grocery stores, he said. Rutledge said demand also was bolstered last spring when the American Medical Association reported on the cholesterol lowering properties of walnuts. Hammons Products set up the noisy, yellow walnut hulling machine at the Feed Bin where area gatherers have sold more than 30,000 pounds of hulled walnuts since the beginning of the month. Quinn Thomas' hands are stained dark brown from bagging the green-hulled, bitter-smelling nuts in 50-pound red, onion sacks.

"It will have to wear off. Fve tried everything. I tried Clorox," Thomas said as she quickly filled a couple bags of animal feed before having to rush out the back to meet a man with a pickup truck full of walnuts. The Feed Bin is paying $10 for 100 pounds of hulled walnuts. She said people need to fill about 3V2 100-pound feed sacks full of whole walnuts to net 100 pounds of hulled nuts.

Rutledge said his company hoped to get a total of 1 million pounds or more from Maryland. The processor also has set up a buying station in Dover and has them in many other states in the East Most people bring in 50 to 100 pounds, Ramsey said. About half the people are doing it to make extra money. Many retirees are selling walnuts simply to get the bulky nuts some as large as baseballs off their land so they don't have to mow over them. "I always picked them up when I was a kid," said Frank Rhodes, a 31-year-old construction worker who cashed in 367 pounds of walnuts for $36.70 on Thursday.

He collected them on his property near Downsville and on relatives' land. "We could have picked up more, but I wanted to bring them over before it rained. They're an awful mess in the rain," Rhodes said. Property owners seeking protection The Kitchen Window Elsie Northam filling it with a small funnel the sunflower seeds wouldn't go through, so I ended up with a flexible cup and just poured the seeds in. I could cut off another bottle top and use that as a funnel, I guess.

It didn't take the house finches long to find it and use it, either. Have you been watching the clouds lately? It seems the fall of the year has the most unusual shapes and formations. One day I was coming home from Easton and there was a severe thunderstorm warning for the Shore, and a possible tornado. I think I noticed every type and kind of cloud there is that day. I couldn't help but look and look at their beauty.

There again, I could get in trouble by watching nature, as I was doing the driving. There was even a rainbow that was divided in the center, and only the two ends could be seen. Which end held the pot of gold, I wonder. As I've said before, there are really interesting and fascinating happenings in nature, just be on the lookout. ELSIE NORTHAM is a regular contributor to The Daily Times.

Farm Bureau Notes Carole WnS Kelley "yfc VV To fanners, it would seem a straightforward and rational requirement. But to many in the House, the move was seen as a dark, sinister plot to derail this proposal. On the positive side, the amendment brought the opportunity for a debate, and a vote, on the private property rights issue. It is disturbing, though, that landowners must be placed in the position of going to battle to defend these rights in the first place and of being branded as alarmists for having legitimate concerns about such a survey. The House also adopted an amendment that would prohibit the use of volunteers to conduct the survey.

Debate was ended without voting on final passage. CAROLE KELLEY ia office manager for the Wicomico County If arm Bureau. ducks bors dogs got into my white geese, and I had to get my shotgun and shoot one in the hind- iUte.r8He ran home holering. ddn have any more problems with him. I told the neighbors to keep their dogs home.

He died not long after that of heart-worms anyway. Life in the Country ia written aa told to Drice Stump. hat can a cord yield? SALIBURY What's in a cord? According to the America Forest Paper Association: One cord equals a pile of wood 4 foot by 4 foot by 8 foot. A cord of air-dried, dense hardwood (oak, hickory, etc.) weighs about 2 tons (4,000 pounds) and has the heating value of a ton of coal or 200 gallons of fuel oil 15 to 20 percent of the weight is from water. Twenty percent of a cord of wood may be bark.

Bark, wast-ewood and pulping liquors provide more than half the energy needs for U.S. forest industries. Bark is also a source of many The annual membershin meeting is tonight at 7:30 in the Wicomico County Extension Office. All members are asked to attend. A provision guaranteeing some protection to property owners while the government conducts a proposed survey of all Elants and animals in the nation as passed in the House.

The measure requires that surveyors must first obtain written permission to enter private property. It also requires that all data collected will be available to the landowner at no cost. The amendment passed on a 309-115 vote as the House began debate on a bill to authorize the National Biological Survey, a new agency of the Interior Department that would conduct a comprehensive inventory of all plant and animal species. The survey would monitor populations of all species to keep them from becoming endangered. However, this amendment appears to be at cross purposes depending on how it is viewed and by whom.

The amendment strongly supported by Farm Bureau simply stated that before any agency personnel could enter private property to conduct the survey, they must receive written permission from the landowner. told him the raccoons and foxes must have gotten them. We have had lots of wild ducks and Canada geese here, too, but we have noticed that there are fewer and fewer coming up in the yard. The last moscovie duck I had was the one that laid eggs in the gutter and now she is gone. Several years ago the neigh paper (depending on the process), or 942 one-pound books, or 61,370 No.

10 (standard) business envelopes, or 4,384,000 commemorative-sized postage stamps, or 460,000 personal checks, or 89,870 sheets of letterhead bond paper (8.5 11 inches), or 1,200 copies of the National Geographic, or 2,700 copies of an average daily paper, or 30 Boston rockers, or 12 dining room tables (each seating eight). Life in the Country Edna Davy Muir other day if I knew what had happened to the ducks, and I chemicals and is used for mulches and soil conditioners. Building an average home uses 15,824 board feet of lumber (equal to about 32 cords), and up to 10,893 square feet of panel products (equal to another 12 cords). What will a cord yield? Thousands of products used by Americans every day come from wood. Different products require different kinds of trees, but for general information, a cord of wood will yield the following quantities of products: 7,500 toothpicks, or 1,000 to 2,000 pounds of ducks here on the farm.

One time, years ago, I had 50 ducks and in the fall, around Thanksgiving, I would feed them in the cow barn and catch them. I took them to the now late Joe Farlow and got them picked and dressed. Then I sold them to friends. Many of my customers were people who worked at First National Bank. My husband asked me the Raccoons, dogs and foxes attack When Doris Hoffman and her late husband, Ed, used to come down to the farm and fish in the pond, I had 25 or 30 young mos-covie ducks swimming in the pond.

When they saw the "fly" hit the water they would run and paddle as fast as they could to see which one got there first and that always brought laughter to the Hoffmans. I have always had moscovie.