PSXV-26 Late-Breaking: Effects of feeding haylage on the reproductive performance of 2-year-old beef cattle raised in a sustainable production system at Berea college farm

Effects of winter feeding haylage on the growth and reproductive performance of late weaned, summer breeding, rotationally grazed, selectively bred mixed breed cattle (n =90) raised at Berea College Farm during 2015 to 2021 were evaluated. Cattle were grouped based on the year in which they turned 2 years old (2017, 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2021). The 2017 group alone was not fed haylage. Initial data indicated that maintenance of a pre-ruminant gastrointestinal tract during the early developmental years under our management is the main factor impacting cattle performance. Indeed, despite similar birth weights, weaning and yearling weights were numerically higher in 2018 and 2019 compared to 2017 cattle. Significantly higher weaning and yearling weights (264.47 vs 229.37kg and 306.60 vs 253.03kg; P < 0.05) were observed in 2020 versus 2017 cattle, respectively. Additionally, 2018 (426.83kg) but not 2019 (387.38kg) cattle had higher (P < 0.05) liveweights than 2017 (398.93kg) cattle at yearling pregnancy check. At the 2nd breeding, 2018 cattle maintained numerically higher weights than 2019. However, the higher liveweights observed for 2018 cattle compared to that of 2017 cattle at the yearling pregnancy check, was reversed in the following year at the 2-year-old pregnancy check. Consequently, pregnancy rates at the yearling pregnancy check did not differ (89.47 vs 91.67%) but numerically lower retention (31.8 vs 50%) and pregnancy rates (50 vs 75%) were observed for 2018 cattle than 2017 cattle by the 2-year-old pregnancy check, respectively. Additionally, 55% the 2018 cattle displayed ovarian activity and 50% of the 2019 cattle displayed estrus prior bull introduction. In 2019 cattle, 92% were cyclic before introduction of the bull and a 91% estrus response was detected during the breeding season. Feeding haylage promoted growth and reproductive performance of cattle but apparently did not alleviate 2019 drought induced dystocia occurrences during 2020 and 2021 calving seasons.

Compost Functions as Effective Replacement for Peat-Based Potting Media in Organic Greenhouse Transplant Production

Commercial horticulture in many regions of the world depends upon Sphagnum peat as a potting-media substrate, but extracting peat has serious environmental consequences. Composts may be able to serve as effective substitutes for peat and offer potential environmental advantages. The suitability of compost as potting media depends upon the raw materials as well as processing methods used. This study includes two related experiments—one with beet (Beta vulgaris L.) and the other with tomato (Solanum lycopersicum L.)—aimed at assessing the potential viability of farm-produced, food-residuals compost as a replacement for peat-based potting media in the production of organic vegetable transplants. The experiments were conducted in 2021 on the Berea College Farm in Kentucky, USA, a USDA certified organic farm. The results indicated that potting media composed of 75% to 100% compost performed as well as fertilized, peat-based growing media for plant growth. Further, although weeds were present in the compost, weed pressure was not severe enough to adversely affect crop growth. Thus, sterilization of compost, which did eliminate weeds in the compost, was not deemed necessary for using the compost as a partial or complete potting medium. Compost pasteurization was also assessed but was ineffective in destroying weed seeds.

1925–1928

The climate favorable to reform darkened by the mid-1920s. Bradley taught courses at Berea College and assisted at mountain clinics offering primary care. Mostly, the doctor sold more stories and articles that exposed the ill health of rural families to national publications.

Young Lady from London

Jackson teaches for a year, and then attends Ohio Wesleyan University, where she excels academically. Her personality emerges from records of her activities, and it’s clear she is an energetic and enterprising young woman. She earns not the usual degree women did, but the regular B.A. degree, graduating with the same credentials men did. Jackson teaches, then returns home when her father dies. She returns to Ohio Weslyan and earns a masters degree. She attends Columbia University and earns a Ph.D., only the second woman in the history of the college to do so. Her life as a female Ph.D. student and Southerner in a great Northern city is discussed. While at Columbia, Jackson studies balladry in her Spanish Literature class, and hears about ballads being sung in the Kentucky hills from two classmates, who in turn learned of this from two lecturers from Berea College.

7. Introduction by Elizabeth DiSavino

By at least one account, Katherine Jackson had, by 1909, accumulated over sixty ballads (five more than were included in Campbell and Sharp’s 1917 English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians) and set about compiling them in a scholarly manner. Sadly, a large number of those ballads were lost over the years, and fewer than half remain today. I have included everything that remains of the collection, a total of twenty-eight ballads (twenty-five of British origin and three native) in forty-three variants, one thirteenth-century song, and one Appalachian tune. Four versions of Jackson’s ballad collection can be found in the Berea College Special Collections and Archives, and almost all the ballads printed in this book can be found in one of those four versions. A few had migrated to other collections, including those of Gladys Jameson, James Watt Raine, and E. C. Perrow. I have noted the collection or collections from which each song comes, and I have edited Jackson’s introduction by weaving together parts from several versions of her manuscript....

Introduction

Every study begins with a question and ends with many others. When A. J. Bodnar and I began a fellowship project at Berea College in 2012, the name of Katherine Jackson French was unknown to us. We entered the vast vault of the Berea College Special Collections and Archives at Hutchins Library and entrusted ourselves to the tender mercies of the archivists Harry Rice and Shannon Wilson....

Berea Beloved

(Jackson) French approaches Berea College to ask for their support in publication of her ballads. Eleanor Frost is enthused, and President William Goodell Frost promises help. French prematurely shares her ballads with Hubert Shearin and Josiah Combs, and they eclipse her as the claimants to primacy of Kentucky ballads. She continues to wait on Frost to seek a publisher for her, knowing she must depend on a male champion, but five years go by and the ballads are never published. Meanwhile, the Ballad Wars are raging, and others vie for the title of Appalachian Ballad Authority. The web of intrigue, jealousies, delays, miscommunications, and ruthlessness is explored in detail. Elizabeth Peck, college historian, finds Jackson’s ballads 42 years later and engineers the reconciliation of Berea and Jackson, and the founding of the Katherine Jackson French Collection at Berea College.

Katherine Jackson French

A native of London, Kentucky, Dr. Katherine Jackson French (Ph.D. Columbia University, 1906) collected over sixty British Isle ballads in the hills of Kentucky in 1909 and attempted to publish them in 1910 with the help of Berea College, an endeavor that never came to pass due to an intriguing tangle of motives, gender biases, wavering support from her hoped-for patron, and ruthlessness on the part of fellow collectors. (Her ballad collection, “English-Scottish Ballads from the Hills of Kentucky,” sees publication here at last and comprises the last section of the book.) An unwitting participant in the Ballad Wars of the early 20th Century, French went on to a full professorship at Centenary College in Shreveport, Louisiana, where she was also the co-founder of the Woman’s Department Club and President of the UUAW. This book sets the story of Jackson’s life against the backdrop of the social upheaval of the early 20th century, highlights Jackson’s focus on women as ballad keepers, discusses the long-lasting Anglo-only depiction of Appalachia, and reimagines what effect publication of her collection in 1910 (seven years before Olive Dame Campbell and Cecil Sharp’s landmark English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians) might have had upon our first and lasting view of Appalachian balladry.