Farm-Stay Grants, NASCOW Cow Racing & Pepper X | Daily Farm Brief

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Good morning, Farm Nation, and hello, Truck City. This is FarmTales unplugged daily farm brief for Monday, October 19th. Brought to you by World TradeX Empowering Farmers. I'm Rick Fortanova. Today, $10,000 grants for farm tourism, a Jersey steer named John the Deere entering a race, and a grower who spent years trying to beat his own pepper heat record. We'll also meet a Kansas woman who sold tumbleweeds to space researchers, check Friday's grain futures, and explore the battle happening over our fields after dark. And if you enjoy the show, give us a follow, a like, or a share. That would be fantastic. So grab your coffee, fire up whatever you're driving, and let's find out what was happening while you were busy actually working. Your next farm customer might want to spend the night. Airbnb and American Farmland Trust are preparing to offer grants of up to $10,000 for farm stays and farm experiences. That could include improving overnight accommodations, running farm tours, or offering workshops and farm-to-table dinners. They expect to award about 25 to 30 grants. Applications are scheduled for November 30th through December 4th, with full guidelines coming before the opening. The program plans to accept about 350 applications and review them in the order received. So if you've been considering a guest business alongside your crops or livestock, this is one to put on the calendar. The details are at the American Farmland Trust website. And here's a farm event with a very different lineup. Seven cattle are preparing for Thursday's NASCAL race at Frying Pan Farm Park in Herndon, Virginia. Jojo, a Jersey heifer, is defending her title. Among the challengers is a young Jersey skier named John the Deer. Farm staff have been helping the animals get comfortable with the course. Alfalfa and Spent Brewer's Grain help encourage them along. The event began during the pandemic when cancel gatherings left the farm needing another way to raise money. This year's race is October 22nd. Proceeds help feed and care for the farm animals. A race where the competitors can stop for a snack and the spectators still help pay the feed bill. Ed Curry had already grown the world's hottest pepper. Then he spent years trying to beat himself. The South Carolina grower behind Pucker Butt Pepper Company created the California Reaper. In 2023, Guinness recognized his next contender, Pepper X. Its average heat rating was nearly 2.7 million scovil units. For perspective, Guinness puts a jalapeno at around 3,000 to 8,000. But behind that tiny pepper was more than a decade of breeding. Curry crossed plants, selected the traits he wanted, and kept working through generations. Guinness described a process involving more than 100 crosses a year, with only one or two potentially making it through that long development cycle. And here's a detail for anyone who has cleaned a pepper. The seeds aren't where the heat-producing compound is made, it's concentrated in the tissue holding them. Pepper X has a deeply wrinkled shape, with room inside for more of that tissue. More than a decade of growing seasons packed into a pepper that fits in your hand. Now, a little more on the grain board. These are Friday, October 16th's closing futures. December corn finished at $4.74. Down three and a quarter cents. Drier harvest weather weighed on prices as traders anticipated more combines moving. January soybeans settled at $12.75 and three quarter cents down two cents. Fresh export business wasn't enough to lift the clothes. December Chicago wheat ended at $6.60.50.5. Sluggish export demand and ample supplies kept pressure on wheat. The next checkpoint is USDA's crop progress report scheduled for today. Watch how much ground Harvest gains. Those are futures prices. Your local cash bid also reflects bases, the difference between the local bid and the futures contract. Now to Garden City, Kansas, where a woman who found customers for something most people want off their fence line. Back in 1994, Linda Katz was putting together a family website. She invented Prairie Tumbleweed Farm, had relatives pose for pictures, and wrote about selling tumbleweeds. The farm was make-believe. The orders turned out to be real. A bride planning a Western wedding wanted one for decoration. So Linda gathered a tumbleweed, boxed it, and shipped it. More customers followed. Schools wanted stage props, business wanted western displays. In 2005, in an interview with Farm Show magazine, she listed large tumbleweeds at $25 a piece, plus shipping. That was the price back then for something she collected when the wind piled it up. Then came a customer she probably hadn't put in the business plan. NASA. The agency was investigating a rover concept that could roll across Mars using just the wind. Linda told Farm Show that NASA bought her tumbleweeds for that research. Imagine packing that order. A weed from Kansas, heading to researchers trying to figure out how to explore another planet. Linda's imaginary farm had found a very real market. And now the high-tech moment. Drop a seed onto the ground and it may never get into the soil. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon and partner universities built a tiny wooden carrier that can help it do exactly that. It looks a little like a corkscrew with three tails. Moisture helps the wood change shape. As it twists, those tails help brace the device against the ground, allowing it to push the seed downward. There's no little motor inside. The movement comes from the wood itself. The researchers took their inspiration from plants whose seeds naturally twist into the soil. They fashioned their version from thin pieces of white oak. The research was published in 2023, and the team demonstrated the carriers in laboratory and field tests. One possible use is planting hard-to-reach ground, including places being restored after damage. The published work was an experiment. It doesn't establish what this would cost to use across a whole farm. But that's a remarkable little planting system. A seed, a shaped piece of wood, and moisture supplying the movement. Now let's step outside for the almanac. Picture a warm October evening. The light is fading, and a bat cuts across the yard. It looks quiet up there, but a hunt may be underway in a range of sound our ears can't hear. An insect hunting bat sends out high-pitched calls, then listens for the echoes. Those returning sounds help it locate a moth moving through the darkness. Now comes the surprising part. Some tiger moths can hear the hunter coming and answer with rapid ultrasonic clicks that interfere with its sonar. Wake Forest researchers studied this with high-speed cameras and sound recordings. A moth's clicks could disrupt the bat's attempt to locate it and catch it. And other bats can help make the hunt harder too. Researchers studying Mexican freetailed bats found that one could send a special jamming call while another was closing in on an insect. The timing mattered. Get that sound in at the right moment, and the hunter could miss its meal. So there are hunters and prey that can interfere with the hunt and competitors trying to spoil one another's catch. For farmers, that nighttime activity can have a measurable payoff. In a study published in 2015, Southern Illinois University researchers kept bats out of some corn plots at night and compared them with plots bats could hunt over. The plots without bats had nearly 6% more corn earworm larvae. They also had more damaged kernels. Bats were eating the adult moths before the moths could contribute to another generation of crop pests. That's our Monday. Grants for welcoming visitors to working farms, cattle getting ready for NASCAR, and a pepper grower who spent years beating his own record. Grains closed Friday lower with a fresh harvest update due today. A Kansas entrepreneur found buyers for tumbleweeds. Researchers built a wooden carrier that helps seeds bury themselves. And above the fields, bats and moths are locked in a contest most of us will never hear. And if you'd like more information about any of the topics we cover, there's a matching blog for every episode we release. You'll find it on our website, farmtailsunplugged.com. To farm nation, have a safe and productive day. To Truck City, keep the shiny side up. The future of food starts with the people who grow it and depends on the people who move it. And there you have it. That's your FarmTales Unplugged daily farm brief for Monday, October 19th. Brought to you by World TradeX empowering farmers. I'm Rick Portanova, and I'll see you Tuesday morning.