The Saskatchewan Soil Conservation Association welcomes Tom Mathieson, producer from the Watson area, to fill the North East regional director position. The association appreciates and thanks the outgoing director Don Kelsey for his efforts and commitment to the board.
Tom earned a BSc. in Agriculture from the U of S and is a member of the Sask. Institute of Agrologists. He has worked in a number of professional positions including: Regional Farm Management Specialist with SAF, Field Agrologist with DU, and several winter positions with chemical companies to name a few. Tom and his wife Joanne came back to the farm in 1976. Tom is the third generation on this farm where he and his family live. Joanne taught elementary school before they started their family, and is a partner in the farm. They have 4 children. Holly, Jeff, and Brad are already working away from home. Chantelle is going into Grade 12.
Tom says his father was direct seeding with discers in the 60's. Later he direct seeded with a hoe drill. It was high disturbance and 25% of the acres were summerfallowed. Brome alfalfa hay was seeded in the rotation for the cattle. Tom started seeding with the hoe drill, switching to an airseeder with sweeps and eliminated summerfallow in the mid 80's. He moved to more low disturbance seeding in the early 90's with an air drill. Tom says, "I have often said one of the best farming decisions made was to go to low disturbance seeding with on row packing. If I could do anything different, I would have skipped the air seeder and moved directly from the hoe drill to the air drill."
The soil in Tom's area is clay loam but is quite abrasive. The drill Tom uses is a Morris Maxim with a Gen 54 tip on a Morris Acura Point Opener. (See photo.) This Gen 54 has a carbide tip and short wings giving approximately a 2.5" spread pattern. Tom expects to get 4 times the wear from this opener as compared to the 3" spread tip he used in the past. The drill has 10" shank spacing and 3.5" rubber packers. Tom seeds at 4.5 mph. He knifes in NH3 in the fall.
Tom harvests with a Massey rotary combine equipped with a Kirby chaff spreader and factory chopper. He straight cuts flax and wheat and swaths barley and canola all 30 ft. wide. He is pretty happy with the residue handling behind the combine except in windy or tough conditions. He prefers not to harrow. He says harrowing in the spring creates dust which eliminates the effectiveness of a pre-seed burn-off. Tom uses custom high clearance sprayers for pre-harvest applications. He has observed sprayers equipped with crop dividers in front of the tires flatten less crop leaving a lot less material to have to go through the seed drill next spring.
Of course the sprayer is an important piece of equipment on the direct seeded farm. Tom runs a Bourgault 120' field sprayer. This is 3 times the width of his 39' drill so in the past seed drill overlap provided a great tram line. Just this spring he purchased an Outback GPS guidance system that so far seems to be working great. Tom also comments that the large 830 gal tank size is important as he farms by himself and he can cover a quarter section at 5 gal/ac with one tank. Tom is especially proud of one field of peas he 1 pass seeded into 12" tall cereal stubble. He says all his fields should look like this. (See photo.)
Crop rotation is another part of the grain production system that must be considered to successfully direct seed. Tom alternates cereal and broadleaf crops. His options for broadleaf crops are flax, linola, and canola as well as peas for a pulse crop. He also has begun to include a forage crop in his rotation. He established meadow brome with direct seeding in 20" rows three years ago. He waited to seed till the end of June. This gave him some time to get a better chemical weed kill. Grass seeds, like meadow brome, do better shallow seeded after a rain and into warm soils. Tom expects to get 3 to 4 years of good production off this field before rotating it back into an annual crop. He feels that with 2 applications of 1L of Round-up each in the fall and then including Select or Assure in the in-crop mix, the meadow brome should be disappearing. He has direct seeded into old hay stands in the past and it worked well, as long as it rains!
Tom says that the Sask. Soil Conservation Association has provided him with information and contacts that have helped him develop a more profitable farm. Tom, you now have the opportunity to make sure that the association keeps up that tradition of helping many others develop more profitable farms.