2024-2025 Annual Report

Description

Blue Ridge Soil & Water Conservation District 2024-2025 Annual Report Franklin, Henry, Roanoke Counties & the City of Roanoke July 1, 2024—June 30, 2025 Volume 37, Issue 1 1297 State Street, Rocky Mount, VA 24151 (540) 352-3312 www.brswcd.org Green Sprig Ag Awarded “Clean Water Farm Award” What would become Green Sprig Ag was started in 2005 when Daniel Austin purchased a no-till drill and rented some crop land. A couple years later the business expanded and began offering King’s Agri-seed as part of seed sales and a custom planting operation. From 2010-2012, the business again expanded to offer seed cleaning and a mill, cover crop seed mixes began to be offered in 2012 after the mill was established. Milled livestock feed began to be offered in 2017. In June of 2021, a big change was made when the entire operation moved to a neighboring farm, which is the current location of Green Sprig Ag today. Green Sprig Ag is a leader in the local agricultural community, being a provider of cover crop seed and other crop seed as well Green Sprig Ag as custom planting, and the go to in the area for cover crop blends. On the farm itself, which has 417 acres of cropland, the motto for cover crops is every acre all the time. The farm is run in a systems approach, focusing on long rotations, double cropping in the Summer. Crops include various small grain varieties, corn, sunflowers, grain sorghum, and soybeans. As part of the system, crops are planted in a targeted manner to control weeds and disease. Livestock are also used in a targeted manner to suppress weeds in crop fields. Green Sprig Ag has also conducted several crop trials over the years and often experiments with different crop for both viability and profitability. More recently, cereal rye mixed with brassicas has been used as a high biomass combination and wheat mixed with Austrian Winter Pea has resulted in a combination harvested together that is both good for soil fertility and highly profitable. The livestock operation of Green Sprig Ag consists of 422 hair sheep, 75 pigs with some beef cattle and pastured poultry on the farm. The sheep are intensively grazed, with at no time the sheep being in one area more than 10 days due to both parasite control pasture degradation but are usually moved much more frequently with the use of both permanent exclusion and water troughs, and the use of portable electric fencing.