Patrick Verkley
Middlesex County
While I grew up on our family farm, it was 2 years ago that I got started on my own operation. My main business is Broiler chickens, but I also have 50 acres with the barn. I also do field work for my parents 100 acres. We run a Corn-Soybean-Wheat rotation and have started to incorporate cover crops into the rotation. I've again been dedicating a few acres to R&D, exploring relay Cropping and 60" corn. My goal is to increase the biodiversity of my farm landscape, reduce my input costs, and get biology to do the work for me.Been increasing the usage of cover crops. We have for a while been frost seeding clover into winter wheat. This past year we also seeded ARG into the corn at side dress. But I'm also looking at how to increase the biodiversity in my soils by increasing the number of plant species and also applying our broiler manure to the land. In my 60" corn plots, I planted a polinator mix which aimed to both fix nitrogen and foster a diverse polyculture.