$300 Farm Whiskey, Fruit-Picking Robots & Draconid Meteors | Daily Farm Brief

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Good morning, Farm Nation, and hello, Truck City. This is FarmTales Unplugged Daily Farm Brief for Thursday, October 8th. Brought to you by World TradeX, empowering farmers. I'm Rick Portonova. Coming up this morning, a New York farmer's buckwheat is finding a new market in the milk aisle. A Nevada farm couple is putting a grain usually grown for livestock into a $300 bottle of whiskey. We'll check the grain markets in the middle. Then a fruit-picking robot with arms that bend like elephant trunks, and the fruit travels right through them. We'll finish with the old farmer's almanac and something to watch in the sky tonight. So grab your coffee, fire up whatever you're driving, and let's find out what was happening while you were busy actually working. First up, a crop you might plant to control weeds is turning up in a milk carton. Buckwheat. Paige Hansen developed a milk alternative from it, and New Barn Organics is bringing it to selected whole food stores. An associated press report published Wednesday follows that effort back to the farmers. One is Klaus Martins in Penyan, New York. He's been growing buckwheat for about 40 years and has worked with Hansen. This is a fast crop and can produce seed in 10 to 12 weeks. Farmers also use it between other crops to cover the ground and help keep weeds down. But Hansen wants more customers buying what comes off those fields. Her partnership has allowed her to triple the amount of buckwheat she buys from farmers, according to the AP. That's a development to watch. A new drink has to win over shoppers, but if it does, growers could gain another buyer for a crop they already know how to raise. Now to Fallon, Nevada, where Ashley and Colby Frey have found a very different customer for their grain. Whiskey drinkers. Their family's farming history in Nevada goes back to 1854. They grow their whiskey grains on the ranch, and the distilling and bottling happen there too. Their latest announcement includes Triticale. That's a cross between wheat and rye, commonly grown for feed or as a cover crop. The release is called Third Harvest. I want to meet these people. That sounds like a fun farm. The suggested price is $300 a bottle with tasting room sales starting November 7th. Growing the grain gives the phrase a way to experiment with the flavor before it ever reaches the distillery. Colby oversees farming and production. Ashley works on the business branding and visitor experience. There's a long wait while whiskey ages, and a bottle's price doesn't tell us the farm's profit. Still, this is quite a destination for a crop often grown to feed livestock. Quick market watch using Wednesday's clothes. December corn fell six cents. November soybeans dropped five and a half. December Chicago wheat lost nearly eight cents. Wheat had the bigger move of the three. That's the market check onto technology. Picture a robot that reaches into a fruit tree with an arm that bends like an elephant's trunk. That sounds like the robot on Lost in Space. Then picture the fruit sliding down the inside of that arm. That's what an Israeli company called Picker Egg Robotics is developing. The arm is hollow. It reaches around branches, cuts the fruit's stem, and lets the fruit travel through the arm into the collection system. The company calls it Snip and Roll. Sounds like a sushi roll to me. Cameras and software help it find the fruit and decide what's ready to pick. The team started with avocados. That's a difficult target. Green fruit tucked among green leaves in a big, basically green tree. In an interview published Tuesday, co-founder Yossi Rosenblum said the company has been testing its equipment in orchards. Customer pilots are planned for January, beginning in Israel, with California among the intended next locations. So this is still equipment being developed and tested. Harvest speed, fruit damage, and cost will matter when growers try it. But the idea is easy to picture. The picking arm becomes a shoot. Once the stem is cut, the fruit has a route straight to the bin. I don't think there'll be any aliens landing in these fields. They don't want crop circles that bad. And now the old farmer's almanac. Tonight, the Draconid Meteor Shower approaches its peak. The almanac lists October 9th. NASA puts the viewing window on Thursday evening into early Friday. That means tonight is worth a look if your sky is clear. Here's the useful difference with this shower. Evening is a good time to watch. You don't have to set an alarm for three in the morning. The meteors come from debris left behind by a comet. As Earth passes through that material, little pieces burn up in our atmosphere and make those streaks a light. The moon will be close to new, so there's little moonlight to wash them out. Find a dark spot away from yard lights, give your eyes time to adjust, and keep the phone screen dim. You don't need a telescope, a wide view of the sky works better. This usually produces only a handful of meteors an hour, so expect some time waiting between sightings. If you're already outside after dark, which you probably are, take a few minutes and look up. You might catch a piece of comet debris arriving overhead. This morning, a new buyer for Buckwheat, a Nevada farm's unusual whiskey grain, and a robot that sends fruit through its own arm. Plus, a quick grain check and tonight's meteor shower. How could you miss this show? And there you have it. That's your FarmTales unplugged daily farm brief for Thursday, October 8th. Brought to you by World TradeX, empowering farmers. I'm Rick Portonova, and we'll see you Friday morning. And if you enjoyed this podcast, please follow us. Give us a share, a like, a review. That'd be fantastic. I'll see you tomorrow morning.