Northeast Grainshed Founding member and Advisory Board member Francis Domoy got in touch with us a few weeks ago about putting the Northeast Grainshed logo on his Domoy Farm seed truck. Here is his story…
“The story of the seed truck! After many years of handling seed in many ways: paper bags, super sacks and a bushel basket gathered from a gravity wagon the time arrived to add the use of an auger with hydraulics to load grain drills, planters and the spreading of cover crop seeds to the farm.After driving by the cab and chassis parked with a ‘for sale’ sign many times (the truck showed much wear from delivering propane through many winters) we decided to buy and rejuvenate the vehicle. Lots of scraping, sanding, priming, and then painting – it was brought back to life for a gravity box to be mounted to hold bulk seed. Wow! What a piece of work to carry those precious tiny seeds for planting in the Northeast Grainshed.After bringing the seed truck to life, an email arrived entitled “Born Bred and Brewed in New York” which really energized our farm interest saying we must consider making the maiden use of the seed truck to plant this new barley variety. After numerous emails with Cornell and it’s plant breeders, we were allowed to plant CU31 barley on our farm!!!! It was like the Seed Truck was honored to complete the mission of Cornell’s dedication to the Born, Bred, and Brewed project lead by Mark Sorrells, Gary Bergstrom and tired graduate student Daniel Sweeney from the Love Lab.And so the precious seeds arrive in the hands of Phil Atkins to be placed in the Seed Truck for planting this coming week ready once soil is ready to go.The Seed Truck contributes to the Northeast Grainshed!!!!!
