Talking fast and planting straight
The Minnesota Corn Growers Association launched its “Minnesota Farm Team” campaign last week to highlight how corn farmers take care of our land, water and soil. MinnesotaCornerstone.com will profile a different member of the Farm Team every day this week.
To Joe Maidl, a nice, straight crop row is more than an aesthetic satisfaction — it saves time, money, fuel and lowers farming’s carbon footprint.
Maidl farms in Lafayette: “It’s the middle or the south central or what you might call the belly button of the state,” says Maidl. “I farm with my cousin Leon and we share machinery, which makes it all work well. We raise corn, soybeans, sweet corn and peas.”
“It’s really neat how much we know now, where before we were wasting seed,” says Maidl about his and his cousin’s investments in a GPS-synced precision planter and combine. “This stuff gets everything down to a T. Being a realtor and an auctioneer, I was always on the phone while I was planting so we had crooked rows. We were getting a lot of compliments from the neighbors now that I’m finally planting straighter. We’re doing the perfect lap every time, instead of overlapping.”
The local farmer’s cooperative has done soil testing and mapping for the Maidls as well.
“We can put some of those maps into the tractor and the combine. I’m 50 and Leon’s 51 and we are getting educated out here, yet.”
The other part of Joe’s life where art and science meet is the auction house.
He’s been calling, or “crying,” auctions for 13 years, and later got his real estate license so he could help clients get top dollar on their farmland and machinery. His specialty is household goods and antiques.
The most unusual antique he has auctioned? An ancient issue of Playboy.
Joe has seen his share of antique items that have no clear name or purpose, in which case he refers to the scientific nomenclature: “the doohickey that hooks on to the whatchamacallit.”
Thank you, Joe, for helping Minnesota’s Farm Team reduce its carbon footprint and get the highest bids possible on its “doohickeys that hook on to the whatchamacallits.”
To learn more about the Minnesota Farm Team, visit MNFarmteam.com. You can register to serve as groundskeeper for a day at a Minnesota Twins game and win other great prizes. You can listen to all four Minnesota Farm Team radio commercials below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBuA-YrYRUQ
