Idaho Farm Profiles

The Idaho Farm Bureau caught up with long time farmer Mike Christensen of Melba. Christensen Farms was named the Canyon County Farm family of the year. Christensen and his family farms nearly 10-thousand acres in the Dry Lake area everything from potatoes to mint.

It was cold and wet throughout most of April, are you behind?

We’re about average for a good a season, maybe a little bit behind for a normal year. We had a few cold days this spring it’s starting to warm up right now. Spuds, I was checking the last couple of years, the chemical we’re applying are on almost the same date so we’re pretty close there. The field of spuds behind us is Rangers, that’s the variety; it’s for processing and will go to the J.R. Simplot Company.

What do you do on Christensen Farms?
We raise a lot of corn for the dairies, we put up 100-200,000 ton of corn that goes to the neighbors and we also raise peppermint, we distill it and sell it to Calliston where it ultimately goes to toothpaste or gum. Colgate is a big buyer of our mint products; we do some wheat, not a lot. We also have a lot of hay and raise it for the dairies that are close by, we also a few acres of sugar-snap peas and that’s about it.

Where will you ship today’s hay?

We have three main dairies close by, they own the ground but we farm a few thousand ton of chopped hay on it. They put it in a pit, pack it and feed it right away. They like it for a number of reasons, you don’t have to worry about rain on the first cutting, so that’s a good reason and it’s a little more soft and palatable so the cows eat more and that means more milk, our hope is to put in the best product we can for the dairymen, they in turn can turn it into milk and ultimately—money.

What are your typical spring worries going into a season?

This year we’ve had good snow pack and we haven’t worried about water; in other years it was a big concern. Right here behind us, this irrigation water comes out of the Snake River and we have a high lift, some 420 feet from the Snake River so we are pretty good with that supply of water. Fuel is our big concern, prices were up last year and it cost us. We will go through about 150-thousand gallons of diesel this year. In the fall we have the mint, potato and corn harvests going on at the same time, that’s a lot of fuel everyday running 30-40 trucks and running the mint still, it gets expensive doing that. This year with the diesel down its helping, let’s hope it stays there.

How many trucks and people do you have working just on the hay operation?

We’re running 9 trucks in the operation along with the choppers, behind those choppers we’re planting a crop of corn. We’re running a two disc ripping tractor; a ground-hogger and a planter and we try to keep it running so when the hay is off we can have corn in the ground.

What do you think about the round-up revolution?

All of our corn is roundup ready, it’s been a convenience we’ve had to get rid of weeds and save cultivation and that has been nice. I like the idea of round-up ready corn, we have used round up before and it will definitely clean up things, round up has definitely been a help. The cost per acre for other products is higher, and the timeliness in using it is the selling point, with roundup you can spray weeds when they’re real small or big and it’ll still get them. Other products don’t have that wide window application. So you don’t need to worry about cultivating it stops from having to do that.

How will the 2009 season turn out?

I wish I knew that one; I’d like to predict that. Every spring our goal is cut down on errors, the yield is the number one thing. It’s because we are contracted so we go out after the best crop we can, if you get good yields you’ll end up making out okay so, eliminating errors along the way makes the best crop, that’s what you are after: cutting expenses.