I'm just going to introduce this talk which is pretty much all about the lovely badge that you're wearing around your necks and we have a panel of experts because we all know how much we like experts and In Britain these days and anyway, these guys put you together your badge So I'd like to welcome them to the stage. So please put your hands together for them. Quick round of introductions. I'm Matt of UK I am the budget team lead and I've been responsible this year for delivering the actual physical hardware and working with our assembly team John T sorted out all the sponsorship Bob did all the initial concepts and designs Kimmel's been working on the Micro-Python and the Wi-Fi drivers, which is why they work on the Wi-Fi Tom has been working on the back-end server in Pearl because he's strange Why not why not? Matt who's new to the team this year He's been doing all the graphics library in the new gfx and making all the screen work for us And Merrick who's been doing all the main app and all the Python side of the actual Python side that's running on the badges right now Yeah cool So, why do we do a badge? Because it's fun and it's hard work Yeah Seems like a good idea at the time. Yeah seem like a really good idea at the time He's come back again. It's all right. We're asleep so Yeah, so this year it was a case of let's go big And we really really wanted to put the Wi-Fi on there So we started looking at ESPs and Wi-Fi and we just got some random pictures of early development early screens getting there The badge has a CPU running Micro-Python which meant we were able to get you guys to write all the apps for us We provide the framework you write apps So all of you guys have done the scheduling apps this year in the bar API apps and there's geolocation and Mario theme Mario things all sorts of apps. I haven't even looked at because I haven't seen it for since Saturday So we started back in May two years ago Yeah, no a year ago. Sorry main last year and we finished yesterday Sometime after we gave the badges. Yeah, we'll be finished in about three weeks time This was These pictures are we We rent a HDD where we go and get these things built They just and let's say The boot is full of components. There's about 40,000 pounds with components in that boot They're a bit of factory and the machines that built the boards So not we kept asking was kept telling not we're gonna Put one and a half thousand extra device on the Wi-Fi and they were like, yeah, we fine and you've all found that he's struggling, right? So you can see here at about 10 o'clock in the morning on on Saturday where the graph of associated devices just peaks as We give out all the badges in the first day and the big pink Purple slice on the graph is all the ti devices connected the network. So over one thousand four hundred Ti based device, which is the Wi-Fi in the badge and random numbers So we built around about 2000 for one 750 days where we got spares to swap it out for anything breaks Projects as a total is around about 80,000 pounds all of the money for this comes from sponsors It's not part of the tickets. So we have to find that 80,000 pounds was 10,000 pounds that is in the MCU 20,000 pounds in the Wi-Fi this 30,000 pounds in just the assembly alone Another three thousand four hundred in the PCBs Over a hundred and twenty components per batch. It took a minute each minute two minutes each to build That HCD allowed four days for the building actually took them eight. So we're going some trouble there The microphone hex the final firmware image we used up most of the 512k that we had available Tom and Catalyst made out 24,000 lines of pearl Tom was like every line almost We need someone to dev the server.  There he is. I Still haven't accepted it. I've forgotten so We now have 69 apps on the app store from all of you that was pretty good 120 revisions, so it's a you're able to go and revise your app. So 120 reasons we allowed 84 we rejected 36. That was probably bugs of revisions that we Yeah, most of the things just don't work I tried to send emails to everyone he brought them so check your emails if you haven't been accepted yet Our content approval process was nowhere as strict as apples Most went through Between the initial micro Python, which we branched an hour version of my Python We have another 250 new git commits in that repository line Which we are pushing back stuff to my Python 290 lines difference Microsoft that's the point at least that so your badges have been sending if you opted in they've been sending stats back to Microsoft Who was the big sponsor they sponsored 15,000 pounds to cover all the cost of the parts? Part of that was we're pushing data to Azure. So this is IOT in action So we've sent 68,000 records about 28 megs of data That's all gone up to Azure IoT switch remote monitoring solution and that is available anyone can deploy that and all the codes on GitHub and Paul was hoping to get some nice graphs up Like we've got we should be able to do geolocation off that data and sort of heat maps of where things are Clusters of badges are but we have no chance to implement it sponsors. I like jobs to talk for a little while Right so we mentioned at the start that all of this is Paid for by sponsors. So for those who don't know we've done a badge at EMF ever since we started back in 2012 and Frankly, it was quite ambitious to do a badge for the very first event We ever did and we pulled it off then and we've continued to mostly pull it off ever since Mostly At this time it it was it was going fairly well And we actually had discussions with TI going on for two years before this event left over from the last event And it's a very long email threat to the point where it started making their email clients have problems And they had to say can we please start talking somewhere else? So it's the the sponsorship discussions are on very long But the majority of the sponsorship has been in components before that so text instruments provided the Wi-Fi chip and ST provided the microcontroller and the reason that we have both text instruments and ST on the same thing both sponsoring which is remarkable and When we realized that and I mentioned it to them they they were massively happy But they both agreed that it was okay in the end and they would benefit everyone all around But micro python itself was only ported to ST microcontrollers The text instrument one was not it's not reasonable for us to do that The reason we use micro python it is a because we want something to be really easy to develop people who've had our previous badges Which I imagine is about half the room They've generally been Arduino based things which is fine And that's fairly easy to get going with but having an app store app store on Arduino. I didn't say app store I said app library And that will be bleeped out the I've forgotten what I was saying The reason we use micro python it is because it's much easier for us to get going in terms of developing things and to have apps On the badge in the first place And the development for that. It's just a bit tricky But so we could have done another arduino based badge based on an ST or just pure TI platform That was totally feasible, but their aim for this badge was two things. It had to have a screen or three things I mean it had to have a screen it had to have Wi-Fi and it had to have micro python And that was a bit of a moonshot to start with And Frankly, I'm a little bit astonished that the team pulled it off. It was a huge amount of work And it's taken a huge amount of effort both from ST and TI as well helping out with this We've had text instruments send one of their staff on-site and he's been working in the badson about 10 He unfortunately had to leave to go to a site visit yesterday So he was hoping to be here hasn't quite made it, but they've been working on the drivers We found bugs in their hardware. It's been a very interesting that the set of work And that you know that was all going really well. We had all these parts lined up. I was pretty confident about it. Oh I was very confident about it Oh, yeah, I Didn't want them to put this in Specifically this is from our ISE chat room where the badge team hang out so At the start of the year I said sponsorship won't be a problem Which which was made me fine and it did look at the time like everything was going to be completely okay But with sponsorship for anyone who's ever done sponsorship work It's quite hard to figure out to get contracts signed out knowing how much money you're gonna get Especially when there's hardware involved and things are gonna get made And it got to the stage where we had all the components all the components were there It was great what we didn't have was anyone who could make it and that was when the next line came in and we were saying We might have to cancel it And it was really hard for us. We would we'd spent a year at this point developing the badge We had prototypes the software was working. We had patches in micro Python. We have patches in frankly too many things and It was going really well We were just sat there and we could not find anyone in the UK who would make it for us Nobody would sponsor the manufacturing no more sponsor the PCBs We for anyone who doesn't know about the stuff, which is nearly everyone Manufacturing is really expensive PCBs are not so expensive. You can get them from China. It's fine You can also get it made in China, but we didn't have the turnaround time anymore and it would have arrived just next week so There was someone who keeps tweeting saying that the MF camp badge will always be ready for the next camp Which is not even true because I don't think the last camp badge is still ready In this case it would have really been the case but we put our call out and We decided that it was I don't know whose idea it was but it was a last-ditch attempt. We're gonna go We will just say this is what we've built. We're really proud of it We really want this to happen and we just fired it out of the internet everywhere we could think of and I remember I was sat talking to Russ and it was about eight o'clock And we were just about to publish this thing assuming that nothing was gonna happen and I wanted to put my phone number on it and Russ was like don't put your phone number on it because you get people are gonna call you might know what it's gonna call us Nothing is gonna happen The project is screwed. We're done. Let's just move on with this He was like look let's put another number in that we can forward to your phone number And I'm extremely glad that he did that because we put the blog post out and I was in the office at the time and just ignored it And then my phone started ringing and then my phone kept ringing all day for two days and That was when I was just like people. Please just stop calling me. I I don't know how to handle this I don't know how to handle this much support and it was my favorite one being Microsoft who Email this and apparently have been wanting sponsor for years and they got in touch and said you have to do it today You have to get the contract to us today because it's the end of the tax year and it has to be today That's great Russ, can you send them a contract at which point Russ went what contract I haven't written it yet So there was a lot of scrambling and within two days we managed to get HDD set up to manufacture it We got get smarter energy who offered support to sponsor the PCBs And we had to I and worth electronic came in as well. I'm going to skip back because I can't remember this Smart carbon control and then RS and worth electronic and next mo came in as well And we had some really amazing phone calls and Conversations and my but my two favorite ones were with Microsoft when they just kept offering more and it was just like Can we bring a gazebo as well and put things on it like yes, of course you can do that That sounds great. Can we bring loads of robots? Yes, you can bring robots. Can we put works? Yes, yes, you can do all of these things. This sounds really good Please do all of the things and the next moment like can we send text messages to the badges? I'm like, yes, you could send text message to the bad is And it was just ended up being a really good 48 hours of people offering things for free and it's really nice when that happens so So essentially that was me rambling for a little bit too long about how nice our sponsors are and how much you should all love them for Giving you free things The badges themselves if we do actually sell them and we are considering doing a second run because people They're so in demand now would be about 40 to 50 pounds to buy So they're not a cheap piece of hardware. So keep keep it safe Don't throw it in the bin or anything or at least sell it on eBay to someone who wants it So there's a couple of other things on here, which they put in which again I'm not massively happy about and some of these needs slightly explaining is there a screenshot of the comic sans interface Yes, they really wanted to ship the badge with the entire interface in comic sans I Just had to make the call on that one because I've I've got standards and typography is important. So Point out that we were talking I see and most of us use IRC cloud and when you type comic sans in IRC cloud It displays in comic sans and it was driving half of us mad You and your fancy IRC clients And then the last one that there was the bit about it going on fire now I don't know how many people know this either But if you do have a badge from 2014 and you've been storing it with a battery still plugged in We did email you about this, but please do unplug the battery It's not likely that it will burst into flame, but it did happen more than once so There was a slight design error we're very sorry just please keep it unplugged for now Other than that which isn't in this one. No, this one will definitely not go on fire today Right, am I done excellent So the badges all open hardware and open source. So these are the links to all our github. So we have quite a few different ones so Mark 3 hardware. So the the eagle design files are all licensed under the CERN OHL So you can go and tweak it make your own If you're that brave it took me three hours to build three badges in a batch by hand with tweezers, and I did about 20 prototypes There's our fork of microprison which has all the changes in it. We're gonna slowly emerge back as much as we can Mark 3 firmware, that's the Python that it downloads when it first boosts up or the bootstrapping code and runs the app library and the store and the built-in apps and the server which is Tom's pearl side Please pull request welcome anytime And yeah, so we're gonna move on to Q&A, which is the best way of doing it Can we get the yeah, so I have the mic so basically put your hand up I'll try to be as democratic as possible, and we won't have time for everyone go All right other back here Hey, so quick question. So did these need to be RF certified in any way or? Development modules And actually the TI Wi-Fi chip is I believe Probably likely to have been tested for FTC and whatever but it as a whole the module It's the board itself hasn't been tested any way shape or form It doesn't need to be because it's yeah, it's a development board so we get around that loophole Next all right more questions Oh come on Sorry, I have to run around So these pictures going by just random stuff up to go all through the the build so like that's like when the lanyards arrived Build it battery charges So how are you get are you to do this all again? Sorry what? How eager are you to do this all again for next DMS? Yeah, we're just giving you all Android phones next year What can we improve on well? I don't know about anyone else, but I think that we've got a really good base We've got stuff that people can work on so I think to improve on next year It'll be different peripherals, but I would hope that we can build upon the same base so that people can Contribute really well more RAM Um Frankly, we actually need more people to help the team this time was okay, but this is the entire team set on the stage and Producing some a piece of hardware at not inconsiderable scale is really hard Now some of this is worked okay because people have experience in the areas that matter without Matt We couldn't have made it because he knew how to get electronics made without Gina Hcd Hcd who assembled it's helping we probably would have screwed it up really badly and we would have had a lovely PCB That didn't do anything Without the team that have done the embedded development It wouldn't have worked at all But all of these things is really one person and when that person's busy or having to move house or in Bob's case move an entire Hackspace We Are we all being in South Africa twice that that? It's we need more people to help out But we also because this thing needs money behind it in the first place. We do need money We need sponsors mainly for components and mainly in kind we actually don't really like taking cash for this We would rather have all the parts given to us and time on machines and assistants and in any possible way It would be great, and I'm sure there are people in the room who have contacts or Can think of people that we should be talking to or maybe even would like to get involved But if you would like to get involved with this and we would like to help build this in the future Please do come talk to the team after We're quite receptive to new people and we're also looking for new ideas Like that we don't just want to roll with the same platform The point of the badge is to give you something that no one has had before something that's interesting to play with Something that's fun at the camp and then people can use to learn afterwards We want to see the badge well all sorts of weird things done with a badge after the camp And that means it has to be reusable and we have to produce something that oh Go on. Oh on that note on that note Oh, yeah, I've got about this so we've got some prizes We've got some prizes for the best badge app that's been built so far out of the 60. We've had submitted We also are gonna offer a prize for the best app built by the end of September to give you a bit more time because Most of you only got them yesterday, and it was a bit crashy. So Yeah, none of it's my fault only the app store was really crashy. So sorry, sorry app library And also the best hardware integration So there are some things on this badge, which may not be obvious It has been designed for conductive thread. So along the top there are conductive thread holes On the right-hand side are connectors that are very suitable for making a drone If you would have so I was kind of hoping someone will do that at the camp, but it hasn't happened yet Oh, yeah, we've had we've had a small robot arm hooked up to already But the prizes are so for the best badge app built so far We've decided this based on the one that made us all giggle in a good way There is the one that does Wi-Fi geolocation on the badge and then also shows you what what is now and next on the Stage is if you happen to be in a stage just because it's really lovely It works really well, and it's a great app, and I don't know if the person here is in here who built it I suspect is it you right so you win another badge If you want one of the badges that go on fire occasion, you can have one of those two In fact, we've got about 70 you can take all the ones you want Quite seriously if anyone does want a badge from 2014 they really don't go on fire that much Where we have loads of them and where they're on sale from the badge tent for I think was it 15 15 quid They're really nice arduino development boards They've got a really nice screen really nice wireless chips and things on them if you would like one drop by there And then the prize for the best badge app built by the end of September will be two free tickets to the next EMF I know and a cuddly toy And two free tickets if we do a one day next year maybe then two free tickets that as well So that is worth doing and there's I've been talking to people who are building apps, and they're having quite a lot fun With it, so I'd recommend having a go submitting apps to us and seeing what happens And the best of the same for the best hardware integration is two free tickets to the next EMF and also the one day So I would recommend having a go Sam from next mode everyone to the stage Hi, thank you. Sorry. I'm kind of desperately packing up my camp because I'm trying to get home to get a flight somewhere But I just want to say thank you very much for those that have played with stuff and poked stuff and done stuff People have asked us about the messages and it says you know what happens with the messages afterwards So I'm going to repeat the spiel that I've been giving everybody The numbers that are currently assigned so there's an on-site badge server that the messages app talks to which will I believe go Down tomorrow sometime and possibly be back up towards the end of net of the week ish We it may not go down at all. We so we'll see what happens There may be some a brief outage in the next week But that should be back up and working those numbers that are currently on your badges are pointing at that server and your badges talk to that Server that will all stay until at least I'll leave all those numbers till at least the end of the August Before the end of August I'll also publish some stuff on the next mode blog and I'll tweet it and next mode will tweet it So just follow us somewhere About basically how to get yourself your own number You can sign up for a nexmo account and I'll give you a chunk of free credit I'll keep a number running for at least a year depending on long as you don't want a number in sort of South Africa or something where they're really expensive But you can point you choose your own number point that at a server will work out the server We're going to open source all the server code and I'm going to try and we'll run a long-term Server for the messaging stuff and push some improvements That's basically it and if you need anything just like tweet me or something, but I'm going to be traveling So I might not answer immediately What's your Twitter handle? Sam Machen on Twitter if you can find it in the Will be cursed off and things in the speaker slides for his talk. Yeah, so if you want the worst SMS device ever for the next year While they're running the thing down there everyone that got a badge will have had a thing from text instruments And they've got a competition as well to to win one of their deathports. It's just a prize draw So if you look on the leaflet you got with the badge and sign up that and say I pushed that particularly because Roger from TI was so so helpful to me in getting the wireless working In fact, he would be replying to emails at half past two in the morning You mentioned about the 2016 hardware hacks. There was a competition for the 2014 badge. Did anything actually come out of that? Yes, and I meant to look it up before I came on stage So I don't know who the person was but I do know who won that and I've been quite busy organizing a thing I forgot to tell them that they won the prize But Whoever wrote their own operating system for the entire for the 2014 badge and I mean a complete operating On the left of that you you have also won two tickets for next year, which you should have had for this year, but I hope that's okay I'm really sorry about that All right, I think we've got one more one more question time It's easy if you could have added one feature to the badge for this year. What would it have been? bike shed approaching Actually, so No, actually the the screens that are on there actually come in a touchscreen option So the we brought 20 screens for the heart for the for the for the for the badges to play around with But they're too shiny in gloss for actually giving out but it's all wired up So if you go out and buy the touch the description version of screen and write some code Yeah, touchscreen interface We did also have We tried to do an e-paper variant in the previous badge We kind of wanted to do that again with this one, but e-papers really very slow for good interfaces One of the things we looked at was there's a type of LCD memory. Yeah sharp memory LCD Which is like e-paper for with a much higher refresh rate Yeah, the pebble watches use it and we'd really like to use that But it's far too expensive for us to sponsor and sure I'm wearing sponsor It for good reasons because they've given a lot of money to cancer research and I that is a very good cause So instead of shiny badges But if anyone here works for sharp, I'd really like to talk to you There's actually two tiny things that we haven't talked about with this which we're really short on time now One is there is a magnetometer in it, which is a compass No one has done anything with it yet because we haven't documented it but Read the data sheet. They read the data sheet. It's chained off the accelerometer So you have to put the accelerometer in some mode that should then So if somebody gets that working, I'll buy them a pint I would love to see a little compass out that'd be really neat And the second one is some of you may already have seen this but the LED on the badges doesn't work And we've been the big shiny LED that's up the top which most people have probably seen does nothing important But that's a big RGB LED and it should be working. It kind of got put on backwards So sorry about that But yeah, I think that's it really Yeah, we have been swapping them over and we probably still will do a few if you want to pop over to the badge tent Yep, and if yeah, this is true And anyone who's good at soldering should be able to re-solder this for you your local hackerspace will be able to do it easily It just you'll need to replace it because it turns out if you turn it on it actually destroys it So it's not a matter of turning it around. You need a new one But we do actually have one for every person here. So you can come get one from us And where do we get them from? Sorry the badge tent? Yeah, to get them from the badge tent. All right Well, I'm afraid that's that's all the time we have for you guys But I'm sure everyone enjoyed that so please think the guys for making such a fantastic badge


And with just these two exercises, your ankles can be strong as ever, flexible and prevent ankle sprains as well as helping you lift and jump your best. So let's go. Don't tip Tuesday. Let's get it. Today we're talking ankles. Quick story. I used to wear high tops and sprained my ankle every couple of weeks. I used to have really weak ankles and I didn't know it at the time. Now I wear low tops and I actually wear these vivo barefoot shoes when I train. That was a huge shift for me because early in my life playing basketball, I was wearing high tops, spraining my ankle. I wondered how do people wear low tops and now I've converted myself to completely wearing low tops because it's healthier for my ankles. It helps them get stronger and now they're bulletproof. So I want to give you some tips on how to recover from an ankle sprain. If you recently had one and also how to prevent and strengthen your ankles, range of motion, and so you can handle different jumps and prevent any injuries at all. So the feet get neglected a lot of the times. That's why I like to wear these shoes when I train because they're very connected to the ground. There's no cushion. I'm using my toes. I'm not elevated heels tightening my calves. So there's a lot of benefits to these shoes. I don't dunk in these because they're a little low profile. I still need dunk shoes and basketball shoes to dump jump in because I jump with a lot of power, but they do help me use my ankles a lot. So when I do lifts and I do squats, I'm using those ankles. So that's the key number one is strengthening your ankles. So this is stuff I wish I knew when I started my basketball career, when I was a kid, because it would have prevented a lot of ankle sprains and a lot of ankle injuries, putting me on the sideline. So now the main thing is simply barefoot or with these barefoot shoes, just standing still. If you stand on a pad like this, a pillow at home or just standing on flat ground and holding it in this position, you'll start to feel the ankles working.  So at first you just want to stand still. And then when you get more advanced, you could start to use movement like this, touch behind, work on that balance. And it's using all the angles of your ankle and you'll feel that burn. Do it for about 45 seconds to a minute, do multiple reps and start increasing that if there's no pain. And even if you have an ankle sprain, it's a great safe way to stimulate that blood flow to help your ankle recover. Cause the more blood flow you get in there, the faster it's going to recover. Of course, if it's not anything more than a sprain or a low grade sprain, you can recover super fast. My ankle sprains would be like 10 days I'd be back playing. So that's huge. All right. So the only other thing you need is a band. A band will be fantastic. I have links on my website. You can grab these on Amazon, cheap. You don't have to get these really thick ones, but you can also use a towel at home, anything that can give some resistance. This is going to be a great way to strengthen it even further and build that range of motion as well. So all you want to do, very simple is put it around the top of your foot. Pull, just flex it. Very simple. Again, feel it for reps. I'm really big on intuitive muscle building. And I'm going to do a whole podcast and video on that to understand what your body needs. Cause that's the most key. If you can understand how your muscles are adapting to what stimulus you're giving it, you can produce the results you want. But if you're just going by reps, you're not learning as much. So I want you to learn the most. So you do that, then you could tie it to your bed. So the band where I used to tie it to my bed and the point is then you could flex your foot this way. Now it's pulling this way. My hands are not flexible. This is a really strong band and you're going to flex it this way. So it's like this, right? So your foot's going to be pulling this way, pulling it this way, pulling it this way. And next one is to the side, just to the side, right? It makes sense. That's a lot of times where you roll your ankle, right?  So it's not about avoiding that. It's about strengthening your ankle in that position. And look at all that range I get. And then by doing this, your ankle is going to get more range of motion. So it's going to be stronger in that full range, which is the goal with every part of your body, actually. And then of course the last side, I don't need to say it, but you go on this side as well. So you go to the inside, right? So I'm not really pulling it. It's a lot easier when it's tied to a post, but you get the point. You could use a towel for this. This is a fantastic way to strengthen it. Do a ton of reps, very safe.  And now a bonus. All right. So those were directly ankle movements. Now we can do the tib raise, which is the tibialis raise. The muscles here and a lot of people neglect this too.  Everything's connected. But if you could see that next piece of the puzzle would be your tip. So again, you're just going to lean on the wall, a little bit of a slight bend and just do 30 or so reps. You could feel more too. Again, go with the interval to feel, feel that burn and you're going to, the stronger this, the better. It's going to help you prevent those shin splints, knee problems. A lot of knee problems come from those weak tips, but also you're going to feel it in the top of your ankles, which is just fantastic. So we're trying to get bouncy. Everything starts to defeat ground up. Everything starts from the earth, mind, spirit. Let's go. That's it, baby. That's dunk tip Tuesday. I got that question so much. So I hope that helps you with your ankles. Ask any questions you want. Let me know what you want to see next week. Keep dunking. Let's go. Go to Tuesday.


Joining us today for this roundtable, we have Dr. Kim Mulanix. She's an Associate Professor and Beef Extension Specialist here in Albert. We have Dr. Leanne Gillard. She's an Assistant Professor and Forge Extension Specialist. Jerry Thompson. He has been an Alabama Extension Animal Science and Forge Regional Extension Agent for around 20 years in the Tennessee Valley region of Alabama. Steve Stroud. He owns and manages poultry and hay operation in Pike County. He's active in the Hay and Forge Committee with the Alabama Farmers Federation and serves as a board member for the Federation. Also Wade Hill. He farms at Lawrence County. He owns and operates head oak farms and is also a district conservationist within RCS. And he breeds high-quality quarter horses and produces high-quality alfalfa hay, primarily marketing to horse owners. So without further ado, let's get started. So today we will be talking about alfalfa. So alfalfa is often referred as the queen of forges due to its high nutritive value. However, its adoption in the South has been limited over the last decades. And perhaps it can be useful to those that are not as familiar with alfalfa production to start talking about its requirements and some of the main challenges we might face here in the South USA. So I'd like to start with one question for Leanne. Leanne, what are the main soil requirements someone should be aware when considering planting alfalfa? So alfalfa, as I always say, it's a queen because it has such high quality, but that also means it's a diva. Because it needs a lot higher requirements than most of the forages that we use in Alabama or in the Southeast. So as with all legumes, it is not tolerant of acidic soils, which most of our soils in Alabama are. So you need to make sure that your pH of your soil is 6.5. So some of our legumes can get away with a little bit lower, but this one in particular is 6.5. On top of that, because it's a deep rooted plant, you also need to make sure your subsoil pH is adequate and at least a 5.5. So this is something we don't typically do. You can contact your local extension agent for information on that. The good thing is since it's a legume, it doesn't need nitrogen per se. Sometimes we might use nitrogen to help it, but typically, you know, in general, it doesn't need nitrogen. It might need some micronutrients like boron. It also will need potassium and phosphorus. So soil testing is very important in order to make sure that you have adequate pH, which can take multiple years to fix. If it's too low, but also make sure that your nutrients are adequate because it is a little expensive to establish. We want to make sure that you do a good job and have everything ready for it to establish well. Okay. Thank you. So moving to talking more about the, we just talked about the great nutritive value that alfalfa has. So, Kim, what are the main benefits of alfalfa inclusion on animal diets and diet and their performance? Thanks for the question. I would say that probably some of the biggest considerations for that from an animal standpoint are improved overall digestibility, as well as crude protein value relative to if we were to look at just our warm season perennial grasses alone, which are typically used for hay production in the state. And so by integrating alfalfa either into those warm season perennial grass systems, or by using alfalfa monocultures alone, we can see improved quality benefits. So from an animal standpoint, that can look a couple of different ways. Generally, we see that they would have improved consumption of a higher quality product. And subsequently, we would hope that that would later be seen and improved animal performance or gain or improve body condition of those animals. Okay. Thank you. Leanne, start talking about the sort of the requirements for the software tillage. And one thing that sometimes can be challenged is establishment, just the variations year by year with rainfall and other other weather related things. So, Jerry, what would be the best practices that can help optimize our changes on getting a good establishment? Okay, thanks for that question. Yeah, so the biggest challenge, I think for most of the livestock producers, hay producers in Alabama is we are not used to working at such high pHs. So we've got to, and it's a slow process to raise pH by applying time and whatnot. So you've got to be pretty far ahead of time to get that pH up to where it needs to be. And so, and I think a psych selection is very challenging. I was thinking about this on the way down this morning that my forages professor back in the early 80s at Auburn, he had the statement that his first choice of where to grow alfalfa would be on deep well-drained soils and his second choice of where to grow it would be on deep well-drained soils. So I think choosing the right place to plant something is just a good challenge also. And then I think, you know, most hay producers, we're not used to dealing with a crop that's a legume. So then with weed control issues, it's not impossible. And there's good resources online here from Dr. Russell about how to do that. But to get the weeds under control ahead of time, that's going to be plaguing you during the time of establishment. I think that's a big challenge and a really important thing to be dealing with. And then I think just the challenge that we're dealing with a new crop. So just the continuing to learn. If somebody's looking to do this, it's different than Bermuda grass or Fescue hay or something like that. So just the need to continually learn and stay up to date on what needs to be done to grow a crop like alfalfa. Okay. So, Wade, how long have you been planting alfalfa? Well, Jerry and I was just talking about that. And I think it's been 17 years. Okay, 17 years. What about you, Shiv? You've been growing alfalfa for a while, right? Yes. I'm on my second year of alfalfa and it's doing quite well. Okay. So, yeah, I wanted to hear more about your experience for both of you, what have been the experience. And it's good that we are going to have a different point of views. You've been doing that for a couple of years and Wade has been almost for two decades so far. What are the main points that you had as a challenge or points that you had as your experience planting alfalfa so far? Okay. I'll go first. Actually, I had a very successful first year of planting. We got a great stand up first year. I did go ahead about a year and a half ahead of time and I applied three tons of high-cow line per acre to get my sole pH up. It was actually around the seven when we planted. But what we did was went in and sprayed a burned-down glyphosate on the Bermuda in early October. And that's when we went in with a no-till drill and planted and got a great stand during that. What about you, Jerry? Well, some of the things that we've ran into here over the past 17 years, you know, to start with, we did not have the access to the roundup ready. So one of the big things was the weed control because you had to start early. Now, I do agree with everything that's been said about the pH in the first place. You definitely got to start ahead of time on that. Picking out that good site, I've even tried a few sites that I thought were iffy. And the majority of the time, if you think they're iffy, walk away, put something else there because it has not worked. Now, since the roundup ready seed has been available, the biggest thing that we've run into getting established is Mother Nature. You know, have I got the right kind of weather to get the ground prepared? I have done some of it no-till, but the majority of our alfalfa is conventional till. Well, you've got to have good weather to get the ground ready, then to get the alfalfa up and get enough growth on it to withstand that first winter. And if somebody's going to do this, I guess my biggest thing is to tell them to be prepared for failure. Because in 17 years, I've had three years that's been failure of planting. And we try to plant a little bit each year because if I get four to five years out of it depending on the site, you're constantly having to re-plant. And we try to space that out where I've got alfalfa. In 17 years, that's worked until this year. And between me making a mistake and Mother Nature hitting me this year, I don't have any alfalfa. First time in 17 years because of failures. But it will happen even if you try to do everything perfectly occasionally. Mother Nature's just not going to play with you. So last year, we had a prolonged drought here in Alabama. That was one of the reasons for the failure that you're talking about. Well, I don't know if it was the drought as much as once it got to where I could plant. I was pushing it at the end of the planting season. I got it planted barely in time. But then when it started raining, I mean it just never let up. So I had excess water and I had a problem with volunteer ryegrass coming up in the field. Since I had plowed that up, stirred the soil, I brought up some seed that was ready to germinate. Well, it was so wet, I was torn in between. Do I take a chance of spraying and making ruts? Or do I wait for it to dry? Well, the next thing I know, here we are in springtime. And by the time it got dry enough to hold my rig up to spray, well, it was too late. So between the excess water and the competition from the volunteer ryegrass, I think I've lost a whole lot of what I planted. Now we've got it cut right now, fixing to start baling any minute now. Still hoping to have some to come back through that. Jerry and I spotted a little bit. Whether it's going to be enough to be a viable stand is still yet to be determined. So I think you mentioned during your talk that you had some stands that were good for four to five years, right? Yes. Okay, that's really good. And so just going back to you again. What would be the potential yield to be expected or even a number of harvest per season when you're cutting for hay? So I'm going to give you the typical extension answer and that is it depends. So a lot of that's going to obviously, first of all, depend on your fertility. So whether you're grazing or hay, we suggest for alfalfa doing soul tests every year to make sure you're on top of your soul fertility. And that's the number one thing that's going to end up limiting your yield production. Another thing that's going to make it depend as whether or not you are doing a monoculture, or as Dr. Mollinix mentioned, you can intercede it in metagrass. So when you intercede it, you're going to see differences in yield. Now your overall hay yield will be much greater because you're taking the benefit of having both alfalfa and bermudagrass, but you're going to slightly compromise the alfalfa and the bermudagrass yield a little bit. In a monoculture, and I'm going to throw a number out there and I'm probably going to see, I'm staring right at Dr. Bouton. So, screen, so from what I've seen in general, we can get about five to eight tons of dry matter in the southeast. On average, I'm going to say, again, that's going to be done a lot of factors. I'm sure there are scenarios where people have seen more and plenty of scenarios where people have seen less. But on average, we can see that. In terms of cuttings, you can get a couple of cuttings in the spring, as well as several in the fall. Again, depending on whether you're interceding it or doing a monoculture. But we're going to say it's going to be, you know, four to five cuttings a year. In the alfalfa bermudagrass system, you can do eight of the total system while that wouldn't be all alfalfa. That would be bermudagrass as well. But in that system, they've seen in Georgia that they can get eight or nine cuttings a year. So there's lots of factors that are going to determine the yield of alfalfa. Okay. Just before I move to to receives and weights experience on that, I just want to go to your Kim. Harvest timing is very important. So what, what, can you tell us a little bit about what is the criteria to decide when harvesting alfalfa? Right. So I would say that the harvest criteria is dependent on, first of all, the age of the stand. So if it's a newly established stand, and we're looking for criteria for that first harvest. Generally, we would like for that alfalfa to be at least 10% bloom, perhaps past that up to even 25% bloom before we would get that first harvest. So while we would potentially have some compromise in terms of the alfalfa quality at those later stages of maturity, what we're doing is we're setting that plan up for success because we're allowing the root system of the alfalfa to be very well established and have a good reserve to then carry us through the subsequent harvest of the season. Now in subsequent years, once the alfalfa is more readily established, we would shoot for that about 10% bloom threshold to be able to harvest going forward. Okay. So just going to Stephen Wade and feel free to start whichever of you want to start. So what has been your experience regarding number of cuttings per year production? Well, I've actually had the alfalfa Bermuda mix. So last year, my first year I was able to harvest seven cuttings. The first three cuttings were predominantly all alfalfa, and then from there on it was a good mix. So excellent yields, I was pleased with it, and quality as well too.  And your first cutting was in April, right, Sue? Yes. I cut it on April 1st, and then I cut it this past Saturday on May the 9th for the second cutting. I've already got it in the barn as well. Okay. What about you, Wade? Well, I'm a little further north than Stevie, so I don't get cut near as early as he does because of the weather. But usually the end of April 1st of May is our first cutting. You know, and the number of cuttings we get a year is all dependent on what kind of summer we have for this rainfall. I've had a few years to where three cuttings was all we got, period. And then I cut it six times up here. Now, mine is a monoculture. Somewhere around that fourth or fifth year, once it starts kind of playing out, I will drill some orchard grass in it and have a mix that way for maybe a year or so. As far as tons per acre, you know, that year that I cut it three times, it was pretty low. I have had as much as nine tons per acre at the end of the year. But now that was a year when everything worked perfect. You know, as those saying those, you could close your eyes and throw the basketball from half court and it went in. That was one of them years. It doesn't happen that often. Okay. So, just, just going back to the end on the same talk about, hey, how, what, what are the main recommendations that we can use to improve, hey, college, when harvesting or fall from. So the first thing is going back to what I said about the maturity, any forage maturity is the number one thing. So making sure that you can get in the field at the right maturity but not pushing the plants to fall and finding that optimization between yield and quality. Beyond that, alfalfa is very sensitive to overworking. So if you are when you cut it. If it gets too dry and you, you tell it or rake it you're going to get a lot of leaf loss and all the good quality. You treat nutrients are in these. So you want to make sure that if you are working that you work it as little as possible. If you do need to tell it if you need to increase your drawing great. You can also we suggest using a mower conditioner. So that you increase the drawing great and don't have to work it quite as much. Those come now as a combination. So you want to do a A crusher. So it uses rubber pads you don't want to use the V shaped kind of strips the leaves that we normally would see with a grass conditioner. So once you have a mode and conditioned it and let it dry if you do need to tell it do it preferably in the morning when that is still a little damp. You don't want to do it, like I said when it's too dry. Also, when you bail it for hey, you know, make sure that when you're raking it up, it has enough moisture. Let it finish drying in the windrow. More information on those specific numbers can be found in the description that I did. You can watch that and I have those specific moisture contents. I can't remember them exactly off the top of my head that you don't want to. But once you break it into a windrow, let it finish curing at that point and then bail it to minimize leaf loss. And that's really what our goal is also story inside. This is a very high quality, very costly, hey product storing it outside is just going to diminish that the quality tremendously. So this is definitely the type of product you want to be storing inside, instead of having outside storage. Okay, so I want to hear in just one can just question can be for Jerry Wade and see why what have been your experience with that regarding diseases and pasts. Okay, so I asked Wade about that a little bit. And I'll let him answer, but he indicates that there's been a time or two and because of from an stimulating circumstances, a few years ago, had a little problem with blister beetles and it's just a time when the rain just wouldn't let him get to it was way way more blooms than we would ordinarily think this it was impossible to get a cut, but what you addressed that how much how much is that pressure and disease pressure that you normally deal with. Very, very little. I mean enough, or it's not even enough to count that one time in 17 years I've had the problem with blister beetles. Other than that, sometimes I have a few of the I'll file the weevils. One time I had the army worms actually got in and I had to spray it, but that's in 17 years. That's the only time I've had any trouble with any kind of handset, or I've never noticed any kind of disease trouble here. Now, I do rotate my, you know, once I go through that four to five years with it and then I converted over to the orchard, I may let it be straight orchard for a year or two, and how about somewhere else. And then I come back, and I think that has helped a lot. Okay. Well, my phone in South Alabama. It was I last year that my first year of alpha alpha. I was after the before the first cutting alpha alpha we will just hit me hard and I was wondering where they came from because there's never been any alpha alpha in my area. And we had to spray for those last year, but this year I haven't seen any, any sign. As far as blister beetle we haven't seen any sign of that as well. So I've been able to, other than the alpha weevil that's only on pressure I've had for men say, Sure. Okay. And for, for you, Steven, wait, what, what have been the main, I don't know, actually wait, have you, have you done hay for only grasses before either Bermuda or grass before planting of alpha. Yes, before I started. It was all grass. Okay, so I want to, I want to hear, I know she has planted, has planted Bermuda grass before as well. So I want to hear what have been the main management strategies, and even like the level of management that you notice it's different when dealing with alpha versus a grass system. Well, the biggest thing that I've noticed is, you know, when alpha needs something, whether it needs spraying for weeds, whether it needs the first place and whether it needs cutting for hay. When it needs it, if you think about it twice a year late, where you can debate on it a day or two on what to do, and it not hurt your quality as much. But with alpha, when it needs something, you need to be able to drop everything else and go 10 to your alpha. Okay. Yeah, I agree. The biggest difference I see as far as dry hay, grass hay, and alfalfa, you know, in the past, when we cut just Bermuda grass, we'd go out there and cut it. The next day we'd go out there and tether it. The next day we would rake it and bail it. Well, alfalfa is completely different. We're mowing with a mower conditioner. I do not tether mine. I usually wait. Sometimes I'll rake the next day after cutting. Sometimes I'll wait until the second day, but I'll go in and rake it early in the mornings. And I've actually, I've always used a wheel rake in the past, what I call a V rake. Well, now I've got a rotary rake because it does a much better job of when row is dry. But yeah, we go ahead and rake it and we might bail it that day and we may have to wait till the next day. It all depends on moisture. And once I've had to add a applicator to apply an inoculant as I bail because I'm bailing, you know, anywhere from 18 to 22% moisture a lot of times and you have to have that inoculant to keep it from heating up on you. Sure. It's the act when you talk about raking it.  What we have done in the past with our alfalfa is, you know, if we cut it this morning, tomorrow night, as everything starts going back and get to case getting a little sticky, we rake ours at night. Then the next day, we opt out and as soon as it gets dry enough that morning, mid morning for lunch, we've got a baler running. So, you know, with grass hay, we never have raking away at night. Okay. So, so we, we mentioned a little bit about Jesus already. And we can have alfalfa mixed with other other stands. So, with other grasses stands. So, currently, we here in Albert and in Georgia, we are conducting research on alfalfa bermuda grass mixtures. And, Kim, would you like to tell us a little bit more about the projects that you're working on? Sure. So, a lot of the conversation we're having today is has stemmed from several different things, some ongoing demonstration work in surrounding states, but one thing in particular is related to a research project that we're working on in collaboration with University of Georgia. Dr. Jennifer Tucker, I believe is on the call with us and she's the lead on this project, as well as the University of Florida. And we're looking at just evaluating management recommendations for alfalfa bermuda grass mixtures. So, the purpose of that project is to identify appropriate harvest heights, as well as harvest frequencies of that mixture that allow us to optimize yield quality and persistence of that mixture over time. So, our hope from that initial work then is that we can ultimately apply that information in both hay systems, but then move on and evaluate this work under a grazing setting as well. I also see we have Dr. Bouton on with us. Dr. Bouton is known for his work associated with breeding a lot of the alfalfa varieties that are adapted to the southeastern U.S. And so while we may have more familiarity with those hay management aspects of those systems, really a lot of this ongoing work that we're working on is to move us towards developing grazing recommendations for those mixtures as well. Okay, thank you. So, and this question can be again for Jerry, Wade, and Shiv. So, just for producers that are listening right now and they might start thinking about starting planting alfalfa monoculture or mixing with other grasses. So, what are the steps you would recommend them to consider if they plant alfalfa in this fall, for example? Well, if they're planning on doing a mix with Bermuda, I would definitely recommend not spraying any grazing on next, any chemical with any type of residual to be extra careful with that. Go ahead and pick out their spot now, soil test and start working on that pH getting it up. But other than that, just site selection is key and watch your chemicals. Okay. Yeah, just to share with residual herb sites is very problematic with alfalfa. So, it's important to hear what Shiv said about the ones at the herb sites that you should be careful when planning to use them. What about you, Wade? Well, if, you know, and I'm speaking from a monoculture standpoint, if I want to plant something this fall, I've usually already got my site picked out and got a plan in my head. I ain't going to say I've got it written down on paper, but of what I'm going to do last fall. But starting right now, I would start with weed management if I hadn't already. You know, and with us doing the majority of our conventional teal this time of the year, I'm starting to break ground right now for this fall planning because I want to get it tore up and make sure I've got everything smooth, weed control handled by the time fall gets here. And sometimes that's tough to do if you wait till now the start for this fall planning. Okay. Okay, thank you. So, do you both, Wade and Shiv, do you have more people around you planting alfalfa right now and which type of systems? Monoculture or mix? I've had a couple of, if you want to call them neighbors within 30, 40 miles that I know of that planted some in the past that's a monoculture. One of them planted it one time, he cut it for a few years and he quit. The other one I think has been a little bit more persistent at trying it, but I haven't talked to him in a year or so so I don't know if he's still doing it now. But other than them two, I do not know of any in my area. Yes, I've only got one neighbor that has actually planted some of this past fall, he and I ordered our seed together and he's actually doing a grazing system on it. I haven't had a chance to visit with him to see how I think I know he got a good stand but other than that I'm not sure about his results on his grazing so far. But he's the only one I know of there's a couple guys that plant some actually for food plots for for deer hunting but other than that I don't know anybody with with a grazing or a hay production system in my area. Okay, thank you. So I just just going for the questions now and I see we have a couple of them but if anybody else went to to to ask something please just type on the chat box below here. We have one question from Anthony. Have you been a problem in establishing our power for you. Stephen, I don't know any anybody actually on the run table that would like to answer. Well, you know as I stated earlier in 17 years we've had three failures. You know part of that I can attribute to my mistake of not being able to say no, don't plant this year because you know it was dry till it got late and I didn't want to put the seed in the ground without any moisture. Every time I got moisture with seed in the ground, I mean I got a great stand, but it froze out because it did not have time to get the needed growth or winter setting. This past year was all the rain and then the volunteer ryegrass hitting me, you know, I'm considering it a failure right now. Yes, I've had trouble, but then I've had out of them 17 years I've had 14 years to everything work great and I got a good stand. So from that standpoint I don't look at it as any different than if I was planting corn or soybeans or wheat. Sometimes it's just not going to work the way you want it to. But actually, Anthony was asking if you had issues with deer coming to eat the alfalfa growing, because I know some places, for example, in Florida, we have issues with, we used to have issues with deer coming to lagoon plots. So did you, I don't know how big of a issue a deer are here in Alabama. Did you have any? No, ma'am, and I'm sorry for misunderstanding. Oh, don't worry, no worry, not a problem. But in my area we have quite a few deer coming in, but I've never had a problem with them bothering my alfalfa. I would expect that if I was in a highly populated deer area that I could have. I know they love it in a deer plot, but I just don't have enough in my area for that to be a factor. Sure. I've seen deer in mind, but I've never noticed a lot of damage. Now I will say mine is planted out in the opening. There's not a tree line within, you know, several hundred yards from my field. So other than just seeing a few out browsing just every now and then, never seen much damage. Okay, so we have a second question about pH. So Lee Gilmore says that my pH went from 6.7 last spring to 5.9 this spring. Got a decent first cutting of about one ton per acre two weeks ago. Should I apply lime after my next cutting or wait to just fall? Who would like to answer that? Liani, I'll take a stab at it and there may be a difference of opinion, but in my opinion, being that it takes lime several months to be effective, I would say the sooner you can get it out would be better. Obviously, we need rainfall to get it incorporated and rainfalls will become more unpredictable as we go through the next few months, but at least it would be there when the rain was there. Because if you wait till the fall, then really the lime won't be effective till in the spring or in the winter to the spring. So I would say the sooner that you could get that out would be the better. Okay. Anybody else would like to say anything? Well, wait to say that he agrees. And I do too. I've kind of got a saying that I have. It's not necessarily just about alfalfa, but about timing of lime. And one of my, is it's going to work till you put it out there. And you know, and it's always going to be slow. So the sooner you can get it out there, the sooner you're going to start seeing results. So in the case of this question, I just can't foresee anything, any reason I would say, because his pH fell pretty, pretty abruptly. I want to start trying to fix that as soon as I could. And, you know, today would be a good day. Okay. Thank you. So we just got another question here from Jack from UF. So now Obama, what are some of the benefits of choosing to grow alfalfa compared to other legumes options? Did you have a she even waved or whoever went to address this question? Did you have experience with other legumes before? You know, I have planted a little clover for hay. And I've planted the, what I call the hay beans. The soy beans is the hay variety. But you know, without, it's even a better quality. And it lasts for three or four years. If I go out and plant crimson clover and I pick for hay, then I've got to replant again this next year. And I get more tonnage and better quality out of alfalfa. And I think along, you know, Wade's primary reason he grows alfalfa is to sell horse hay to horse owners. And so there's a tremendous name recognition and respect for alfalfa hay. And then a lot of horse owners right or wrong object to the idea of clover because of the slobbers that can come along with some varieties of clovers at some times. And so from Wade's perspective, he was advertising grass they would clover in it. Probably a lot of customers would not be terribly interested in that. But with his customers demand for specifically for alfalfa that's only met by growing alfalfa. Don't need it by growing something else. And it's a high cost to produce crop. But it's also a real high value crop. And so, Wade, we were talking about some digress that is harsh. But you know, the cost is the same, grow a lot up there and grow a little. And so you want to grow something that can be very productive and very well received by your customers. I would just say to follow up on that, I agree with Wade and Jerry, especially from the aspect of looking at alfalfa as a monoculture legume option. When we think about integrating alfalfa into Bermuda grass systems specifically, that's kind of a unique fit for legumes in our state because we historically don't have a lot of legume options that will grow well with warm season perennial grasses. So we have white clover and red clover. You may see some carryover of those into our warm season months early in the summer, but they tend to play out. Whereas the alfalfa and Bermuda grass mixture is a bit more consistent and it's persistent throughout the summer growing season. So I think that's kind of a unique opportunity for that warm season forage legume need or time period that we have in there. Okay. And I would like to ask if anybody has any questions. I saw somebody raising their hand, but I couldn't see who was it. Just not in proper time to amute the person. So if anybody has any questions, please just type them or raise your hand again. Yeah, so one question that I would like everybody on the table to share your thoughts is, do you think alfalfa can be profitable in the Southeast USA? I'm going to experience definitely if managed correctly. I agree. There is demand in the Southeast for sure. That in my area, I'm in a rural part of the state. I'm not seeing a whole lot of demand from the horse on our side, but as far as beef producers, I'm seeing a lot of interest. They're wanting to add it in with some feed to get that close to the mixture. And there is definitely demand there on that side. And so yeah, I deal with the horse clientele quite a bit up here in North Alabama. There's a lot of horses, you know, and there's certainly a demand for it and an unmet demand. Wade pretty much has his customer base set. I mean, he struggles to meet the needs of his established customers. So we have a lot of horse owners that are bringing it in from here, whether that's Tennessee, Kentucky, up in Illinois, or West of here. So there's obviously based on that more demand than there is supply, which is a great recipe for being profitable in something when the demand outstrips the supply. To follow up with what Jerry said, and I think the beef and horse markets are really important, but while the Alabama does not have a huge dairy industry for producers that are within a reasonable distance of the state line, be it, you know, South Georgia or Mississippi, the dairy industry is also an excellent place to market this hay. I think it is profitable for the elite few that are intensive and management I would say for the average farmer though I would take caution and using it. And, and just as I have the good forge economists I have extension specialist I have to give the disclaimer of. I think, you know, Wade talked about, you know, he has different sections he plants every year and thinking about doing it in a stepwise fashion and see if it works for your system. And if you can make it work then there are definitely opportunities to market it and be profitable be it dairy or horse. I think one thing that everybody has brought up is related to management, and that being so key in terms of the economic success of alfalfa. One of the resources that we've produced out of some of this work is an economic decision tool, Chris prevent from Florida has a budget tool that you can download and it's an Excel based file that you can go through and put in your input cost associated with the system, and it will project based on your operation whether or not this may be a potential fit or not so that resource is available for download on the southeast cattle advisor.com website and I'll type that into the chat box here if anybody wants to go look at that later. Thank you Kim. So we have one more question here Dr. Solemberger from UF is asking when preparing to plant alfalfa into Bermuda grass, what rate of life is it that you're using the fall to set back the Bermuda grass. I cut it the first year we planted on October the 17th I think it was and I waited late that year to cut it so I only had about one to two inches of stubble height left and just as soon as it greened up, I went in and sprayed it with about anywhere from 15 to 20 ounces of ground up I think that that range you'll be fine. You're not going to kill Bermuda with ground up I've tried and tried and I've never been successful with that so you just want to stunt that Bermuda for a period of time and get those seed in the ground and you should be fine. Yeah, and he also asked about the Bermuda grass stubble height that you prefer at time of planting alfalfa in the fall. The lower the bag, that's for sure because you want to be able to get that no-till drill and get that seed to ground contact. Now you don't want to plant those seeds too deep. You want them very shallow but the less competition with the stubble height you have out there the better chance of getting a solid stand for sure. Okay, so why I don't know if anybody else has any questions so why we wait to see if anybody is going to type or ask something else. Kim, we just released a survey on challenges of alfalfa adoption today so would you like to talk a little bit on for the last few minutes about that? Sure, kind of as a follow up to the round table discussion today for everybody who's registered for the round table will be sending out a link related to your perception about alfalfa use in the southeast. And the purpose of that survey is really just to help us identify what are potential limitations for why a producer may or may not consider incorporating alfalfa into their operation. And through that we're hoping that information can help us form new extension programs around this topic as well as help inform the research that we're continuing to do on this topic. And so in that survey link will be coming out later today so you may see that and if you're interested in willing to participate we would certainly encourage you to do so. Thank you. Does anybody have any questions? So Lou, the other question that came to me by text that Wade don't even know that the text came in but. Sure. The text wanted me to ask Wade does he use any kind of preservatives or spray on as Steve mentioned he was just doing something because he fails it with a fairly high moisture content. Do you do that? I do not and I think I mean you and I have discussed this and that was one thing I wanted to say to anybody that's thinking of this in the future. When I started this 17 years ago this was before most of y'all's time with extension except Jerry and he can attest to this. Him and Dr. Ball probably got tired of hearing their phone marine from me calling them but I got awesome information and guidance from extension. And there was a lot of things that was new and we said well here's what we think let's try this direction. There's a few of them didn't work like we did but we got there and it was because of all of that. Now when you get back to the preservative and I told Jerry this morning I do not like to lay down a bunch of acres of alfalfa at one time. You know I like them five acres box I will do 10. But then when I get out there that day Bailey the first third of whatever I'm bailing I'm on pins and needles thinking am I here too quick it's just a tad on the sticky side. The middle third of that field man I'm smiling this is perfect the last third I'm sitting here scratching my head I should have done had this bail that's getting a little dry on me. So I do not use a preservatives but I try to do small plots at a time to where I can bail it at that optimum moisture not to lose them valuable leaves. So we got another thank you thank you wait so we got another question and Jay is asking almost everything I've seen with mixture mixture stands is with Bermuda grass. We have a few pastures of mostly faster. Are there any grasses you would not recommend proceeding with alfalfa from from I don't know like from what I'm seeing. Usually it's mostly about the space between rows that we are generally concerned but I don't know if either of you have any any grasses in mind that will not go well with alfalfa. Really honey I think there that's a good point about the row spacing and and I saw Kim just unmute herself so I'll let her talk a little bit more about the row spacing. But specifically I mean you see a lot and I think way kind of alluded to this earlier about orchard grass mixtures as you go through and you know you get towards the end of the life of the alfalfa you're going to have grasses come in. I would say with fescue to me it's not worth it to do with Kentucky 31. I it's to me that's kind of counterproductive to put a Kentucky 31 toxic in the fight tall fescue with alfalfa with a novel in the fights that would be an excellent choice similar to orchard grass. But you're going to be a little bit more diligent about making sure the alfalfa doesn't out compete. So I think that there are options. The hair grass is another one of those the quality to me just isn't high enough to really benefit the alfalfa, which is why we stick with tip to 85 and other Bermuda grasses. There are a higher quality and digestibility, but there are some challenges so now I guess I'll turn it over to Kim to talk about some of the challenges of interceding. Right, so kind of following along with what Leigh Ann had said, I think that she's right that if we just kind of reframe that question and think about the success stories of these mixtures of grasses with alfalfa. There has been quite a bit of extensive research done on tall fescue and alfalfa mixtures, as well as orchard grass and alfalfa mixtures so I think those are an option. The more recent work in the southeast has been with the Bermuda grass and alfalfa and that's where the kind of the row spacing that they were talking about comes in. So in that particular mixture oftentimes we're looking at 14 to 15 inch row spacing between the alfalfa rows is just dependent upon your particular equipment and kind of the drill setting or the spacing that can be accommodated by that equipment. Also, you can intercede alfalfa into bahia grass. Mississippi State has done some work with that. It does appear that it's less persistent in the bahia grass systems compared with if you were looking at a Bermuda grass alfalfa mixture. Okay, thank you. So I think we have one question. Jeff, I'm sorry if I'm pronouncing your name wrong, but I'm going to a mature. Yes, I was wondering, Wade talked about the moisture content. What if you could pick the perfect moisture content to bail? Where is that? Where do you feel is too high and too low? A million dollar question. And I didn't want to ask an easy question now. Well, say I do not use a moisture meter. I have in the past, I use my hands and I fill up the hay. And it's just experiences the way we run. I can go out there and check several spots in that windrow and just by the feel of it, I can say yes, I can get by or no, I can't. 99% of the time I can do it with my hands. So to put a number on that, I actually can't do that. And I know that didn't help you out at all. But Jeff, I don't have Wade's experience with it, but in reading about it, it's about the same moisture content as putting up good quality grass. You know, you can put it up a little higher moisture in square bales and you can and round well are the big square bales. But it's not, it's not significantly different than your experience with grass on the moisture content. Okay. Yeah, and we kind of have a another question the same line, asking if you have to do bailage with the first cutting due to other issues so I don't know if she had issues as much as on the north region of Alabama. Regarding rain. So, well, last year, our first cutting we did put up in bailage but as far as this year, I don't know if y'all remember but we had some almost 90 degree days in March, and the week that I cut it on April the first had excellent weather and I was able to get it down to dry enough to where I could actually around build it but I had that moisture down to around the 20% mark. So I built it use it as dry hay. Okay. This was an unusual year as far as warm weather in March and April. So I would say typically you probably need to put that first cutting up. And wrap it moisture. Sure. I never have put any alfalfa as a you know we have other species but not alfalfa. Now I will say that my first cutting. I'm a little further north and Steve so I have to wait later to cut and it does get a little rank. That's usually what I see my horses they get the the worst end of this work or deal and I sell the better hay to the customers. But we usually put that first cutting up in our barn dry because it is a little rancor a little steamier but also but I never have had to do it in batch. Okay. Thank you. So we just passed two p.m. here so just as a brief brief summary what we're we kind of discussed here. I just mentioned a lot about the importance of so fertility and pH to be correct for a fall for establishment. We also talked about the importance of having the harvest happening on the proper timing, especially on the first year just to make sure that to your stand your stand was going to be well established. This is going to help a lot, especially with the root system and the storage for that that stand. And it's an option to use alfalfa as mixture with other grasses as we were just talking about, but I think the main take home message here would be that the management is key. And it's important that it's very well defined and planted ahead and for for you to be able to succeed on the alfalfa business.


This video features a montage of photographs depicting landscapes, community agriculture, and farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa. Onscreen text appears phrase by phrase, synchronized with the images. Two-thirds of land in Sub-Saharan Africa is degraded. This puts huge pressure on limited resources, negatively impacting food and nutrition security, which has extensive social and economic implications. Packling degradation through ecosystem restoration is critical for building resilient landscapes and livelihoods. Given the global scale of land degradation and its negative impact, we need to more effectively target and track interventions. This means facilitating real-time data collection by stakeholders on the ground. Addressing this need, the Regreening app was developed under the Regreening Africa program, funded by the European Union. The app puts data collection and data in the hands of farmers and implementers, connecting science and practice. The app allows tracking of multiple restoration activities such as tree planting and farmer-managed natural regeneration, FMNR. The success of the app can be attributed to its design and the close engagement with users and filling a critical gap of real-time data collection of restoration activities on the ground. Each module uses universal symbols, making the app user-friendly for a range of stakeholders, including farmers, community facilitators, NGOs, and scientists in different countries. The app fosters a dialogue between scientists, farmers, and other stakeholders to scale restoration efforts toward achieving food, nutrition, climate, and social security. Regreening Africa, funded by the European Union.


That a block real G's move in silence. Like you honest in that particular G moved in silence from the free throw line to a devastating savage block in what a half a step, two steps with a second. That was unbelievable. Everybody's attacking Chris Paul. He's being wrongly judged, I believe for the choking in the moment situation. He was just trying to play a good basketball out there.  Devin Booker bounce back. That was an easy bet that Connor gave me yesterday. Connor was like, Hey, Devin Booker hammered that. What I failed in doing is I didn't just hammer Devin Booker. I heard him hammered him to score 40 plus in the Suns to win. And I also hammered Suns plus four and a half. I thought there's no way I lose.


Events like these semiannual conferences are perhaps the most visible things that the Energy and Environment Affiliates program at Stanford does, but they're far from the only thing. We do put on two of these conferences each year, each one on a specific topic that's determined by your interests and the interests of Stanford faculty. Today's, of course, is big data for energy and environment. Past conferences have looked at topics like smart energy and energy efficiency, materials and chemistry, sensors in harsh environments, energy storage and batteries, and so forth. We're always eager for your suggestions for what topics you'd like to see in future conferences. You can make those suggestions in any way you want, and of course, you'll all be getting an email with a link to an online survey so that you can give us your feedback on today's event. In addition to these semiannual conferences, we also run the new faculty seminar series, a seminar series that we launched a few years ago to provide all of you a chance to meet with our new faculty that often have some of the craziest and wackiest ideas that are still trying to decide what their own research agendas are and are still establishing relationships with people like you. We offer those three times a year. They're small events. It's a chance to get to know the faculty member and his or her colleagues in detail. But the larger part of what we do, kind of like the part of the iceberg that's below the water line, is our private meetings. Many of you know that we meet quite frequently with our members and prospective members. We help you to figure out what your strategy ought to be for engaging with the research and professors and students at Stanford, and then we help structure and implement those relationships. For the companies that decide to join the affiliates program, we work with you closely to develop a strategy that meshes your corporate strategic plan with an action plan at Stanford and we develop a customized work plan, all the things we'll do for you during the next year to realize that plan. Lately in addition to all the technology and policy and regulatory and finance issues that we focus on, we've also been doing original research on the innovation process. This is designed to understand by looking at successful examples of innovation, how we can make sure that your relationships with Stanford lead all the way from the right question, through the research, through discovery, through coming up with something that's practical and can be commercialized at scale. Those of you who know Stanford well know that one of the things that distinguishes us is that we are entrepreneurial and we are pragmatic and the culture of the researchers here is to not only do good scholarly research, but to also do things that can in fact change the world. The energy and environmental problems that we're all concerned with are problems of scale and as such we can only have an impact when we find opportunities to translate those solutions into things at scale and your companies are often the best way to do that. For the last four years our flagship program for our affiliates program members has been something that we call the fellow mentor advisor program. We transfer half of our members membership fees to a professor that they choose and we use that to establish a relationship between a PhD student, the professor and an employee at the company. This is a chance to develop a great relationship with two way communications. The employee of the company becomes a mentor to the grad student and the company gets to experience research in progress as the triumphs and failures proceed. In response to many of your questions we've now added an alternative to the fellow mentor advisor program that we're calling focused groups. We've now established groups of professors in specific areas and the companies that join the affiliates program can either participate in the classical fellow mentor advisor program or they can opt in to one of our focused groups. We've established focused groups in batteries and we're in the process in response to your requests to establishing focused groups in photo voltaics and smart grid and we're open to establishing these groups in other areas based on your interests and the interests of faculty. For the first time it gives people like you and companies like yours a chance to engage with a group of professors and their students in a particular area. So please let me or Marjorie Alfs the program manager for the affiliates program know if you want to hear more about any of those opportunities. As you all know events like today don't happen without a lot of help and hard work from a lot of people and I'd like to take a moment to acknowledge who they are. Marjorie Alfs is the program manager for the affiliates program and handles all of our activities. Donica Sarlia is our administrative associate and has been involved in much of the logistics and arrangements today. I'd also like to acknowledge Jessica Castillo, Aisha Masoud, Nancy Sandoval, Sunny Wang and Sneha Aigari who's an undergraduate here and has been working with us on our new initiative in sensors. So please join me in acknowledging all of them.