Till, no-till. Organic and conventional. Throw in some unique poultry and a goat fittingly named Jack “Free-Range” Willis and you have a sense of the “everything but the kitchen sink” nature of the land Union County Farm Bureau member Ron Burns farms.
This year in Our Ohio magazine, we’re going to take a pictorial look at a “year in the life” of Ron Burns and his fiancée, Melissa Downerd, from planting to harvesting crops and everything in between.
Spring, of course, brings much activity to the 250 acres Burns manages on the 1,500-acre family farm operation. It’s nearly time to get the soil ready for planting season and get those seeds into the ground.
Farmers across Ohio will soon be gearing up for spring planting, with most of the work coming in April and May (unless the weather fails to cooperate).
Burns tills and fertilizes his fields in preparation for the planting of his diverse crop plan. He grows both organic and GMO crops using no-till practices for his corn, wheat, soybean and hay rotation.
His wheat cover crop planted in the fall, goes dormant in the winter and will start growing again this spring. It will be harvested in July.
We’ll have more on that and other practices on the farm throughout the year. You can also follow Burns on social media. Search the hashtags #RBEQUIP and #245Organic on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. He is “GraysonGrains” on Snapchat.
Read the next installment: Lifecycle of a family farm: Summer labor








Photos by Dave Gore