Going To Paris

Paris TN was founded in 1823 and named after the French city of Paris to honor the Marquis de Lafayette, a Revolutionary War hero who visited Tennessee in the early 1800s. It is known for many things, including its historic downtown, the World's Biggest Fish Fry, and the Eiffel Tower replica. Paris/Henry, TN is also the home of Tosh Farms, who have been cooperating with Bourgault to conduct seeding trials using a Bourgault CD872-8 c/w Air Planter option. Tosh Farms currently tends over 18,000 acres of land, of which 11,000 is company owned. The other 7,000 of their acreage is leased from 83 different landowners in the Henry area. Around 2,300 of their acres are irrigated.

They use this land to grow white corn, yellow corn, soybeans, wheat, canola, rapeseed, and barley. Their second company, Tosh Pork, provides care for around 38,000 sows that produce over 1 million market hogs each year. They raise these pigs from birth to market. That’s a lot of bacon! It’s also a lot of fertilizer, which is applied at 10,000 gal/acre to supply primary nutrients like N and P for their field crops.

But wait a minute… “wheat, canola, rapeseed, and barley? There must be some mistake! This sounds more like Saskatchewan than Tennessee. The difference is these are all spring crops in Saskatchewan. In Tennessee, these are all winter crops - meaning they are primarily seeded in September & October.

So, what is the difference? Well, there actually are huge differences. For starters, winter canola and rapeseed are typically planted into 200 plus bushel corn residue. This represents a huge challenge for the seeding machine, which not only has to accurately place the seed at the typical ¾” depth in heavy residue conditions – but also has to do so in what can typically be a very hot and dry time of the year.

Another huge challenge of growing winter canola is winter survivability – and the residue around the growing plant can hinder its success at surviving the winter months before taking off again as temperatures warm up in February and March.

But it is always where the growing gets tough that Bourgault gets growing! As a base 7.5” space drill with PLR™ Openers, the CD 872-8 can be set up to seed into many different seeding scenarios. It can volumetrically seed winter wheat and winter barley at 7.5” spacing, volumetrically seed canola, rapeseed and soybeans at 15” spacing, as well as singulate canola, rapeseed and soybeans at 15” spacing or even singulate corn at 30” row spacing! It checks all the boxes for the crops typically seeded in the area. Although we did have some start up challenges and a steep learning curve, we asked Tosh’s about their experience so far. It came back as one word: “Awesome”.

Providing the equipment continues to perform as expected, this could be a game changer for seeding equipment in this part of the world. At Team Bourgault, we are working hard to make this happen!