Dear Township residents the Spring newsletter was incorrect. Please see the correct information below.
GREETINGS FROM THE REC BOARD!
Thank you to the Rec Board, our wonderful volunteers, and our community for celebrating our 5th Annual Community Day last June. This year, we are excited to hold Community Day with our Fire Company at their May Day Firefighter Picnic and Raffle. We will have arts and crafts, vendors, treats, our famous cake walk, and an epic tricky tray!
If you’d like to donate a baked good for the cake walk or sponsor a basket for the Tricky Tray, please contact Melissa in the Township Office.
Please mark your calendars for our upcoming events:
6th Annual Community Day - Saturday, May 10th from 1pm – 5pm at the Riverton Ballfield
Fall Mum Sale and Farmer’s Market - Saturday, September 13th, from 9am – 1pm at Centerfield. The Rec Board will have an assortment of Mums for sale. We will also be joined by local businesses selling a variety of items!
Annual Christmas Tree Lighting - There will be holiday crafts, hot cocoa, and Santa at this year’s Tree Lighting! Located in the Village of Martins Creek on December 6th from 6pm – 7:30pm
We are always looking for volunteers to help at our events and there are still 2 seats open on the Rec Board. If you would like to be considered, you must live in the Township and submit a letter of interest to Melissa at the Township Office.
Thank you so much for your support!
Warmly,
Nicole Palmeri
Chair of the Rec Board
Despite dry conditions, Kiefer reaps top corn contest award
May 09, 2025 By Andy Andrews
BANGOR, Pa. — Champion corn grower Brad Kiefer wants it to be known that he’s “not much of a guinea pig to try new things,” he said.
Kiefer and his enterprising crop family on Willowbrook Farms took home first place in the annual Pennsylvania Corn Growers Association Five-Acre Corn Club contest for the 2024 season.
Where exactly does Kiefer get his information and recommendations?
“I basically leave it up to the sales rep to guide me in the right direction, for which ones he thinks would be a good number to put into the plot,” Kiefer said.
Sales representative Justin Johnson, direct seed marketing for DEKALB and Asgrow at Bayer U.S., recommended the DEKALB 68-34 variety. It yielded 316.25 bushels per acre in the contest, best in the state.
Kiefer farms in four different townships in Northampton County, Pennsylvania: Lower Mount Bethel, Forks, Plainfield and Upper Mount Bethel.
The farmstead, now in its eighth generation, is located in Lower Mount Bethel Township, near the town of Bangor.
Harvested For Grain
The farm is on a soybean/ryegrass/corn rotation. The crop is harvested for grain and sold to various elevators, but mostly to Albright’s Mill LLC in Kempton, Pa.
Kiefer points out some specialty tillage.
“We do some minimal till with the Pottinger TERRADISC (a one-pass disc harrow) and maybe 300 acres of strictly no-till,” he said.
Total corn acreage is 1,400. The farm owns 1,800 acres and rents 900 acres. Minimal till acres numbers 500 and no-till is roughly 300 acres.
“Between the corn and beans, I try to make it as real as possible,” Kiefer said. “I don’t have any extra programs. I put it on a different farm every year. It’s not like I have one special field that always produces. A field about six miles from home can be the winning field this year.”
The 2024 champion five-acre plot was planted in Lower Mount Bethel Township.
Kiefer consults with agronomist John Stutzman, Stutzman Crop Care Inc., in Kutztown, Pa.
“He advises me as to what direction to go,” Kiefer said. The farm soil tests on a regular basis. Fertilization includes commercial brands and “some newer productions,” Kiefer said.
He also uses Xyway, a fungicide.
“We carry zero crop insurance,” Kiefer said. “I am spraying all my corn. I plant all my corn as SmartStax seed to prevent fungus and disease.”
Herbicides are used to control the most common weeds such as johnsongrass, marestail and giant foxtail.
Water hemp, a pigweed, shows up as well.
Varies Every Year
A regular chemical spray program “varies every year, depending on what it looks like when we scout the crops,” Kiefer said.
A cover crop of wheat, barley and rye is planted on about 1,500 acres every year.
Challenges remain for the Kiefer family with the rocky, clay-type soil.
“Our roads are river decks, with road names like Gravel Hill,” he said. “We have river-bottom soils loaded with stone and a lot of rocks. On the hill there is shale. There is limestone ground in Forks Township.”
The last growing season was relentlessly dry.
“It was super dry,” Kiefer said. “But the plot was the highest yield out of all divisions. It was not irrigated. We might have caught a slight shower, but we didn’t have anything significant for rains last year.”
Kiefer may attribute it to good fortune and some moisture at the right stage.
“We caught some rain just in the nick of time, when the crop was going through the pollination stage,” he said.
Kiefer enters the National Corn Growers Association annual yield contest on a regular basis.
“I do strip till, minimum till and conventional till entries,” Kiefer said. “It’s surprising to produce the yields that we get out of it. I try to keep it on a realistic basis. I don’t do anything crazy or extra out-of-the-ordinary, and try and succeed on all the acres as best as we can. Some guys are a lot more diehard into the corn grower contest. They have special fields every year. They apply all the chicken manure they can get: whatever manure they can put on it.”
Bar Higher
For this season, in Brad’s assessment, the bar is set higher for production. Kiefer has selected a 100-acre field in Upper Mount Bethel Township for the 2025 contest
Kiefer noted the idea at harvest is to “find the sweetspot in the field,” he said. “Start making some passes through. If you hit the sweet spot, get the certified agronomist out there and get the trucks weighed in.”
Contest participants are required to schedule a certified agronomist to do the check to verify yield accuracy.
“You cannot do your own check,” Kiefer said.
The yield check can vary from the start in early September to the deadline for the entry somewhere at the end of November or early December.
“There is no set time,” Kiefer said. “My father and my uncle’s mentality is go-go-go. My plot is always the last thing that I plant and it’s always the last thing that I harvest, because it definitely consumes more time. Typically it’s longer-season corns that are higher moisture, so we wait until the bitter end. There’s definitely a lot of yield loss there because they tell you your highest yields on a test plot can be anywhere from 25 percent to 30 percent moisture. The corn that won it last year came off at 19-percent moisture.”
Kiefer tries to have an entry from a different farm field every year, “to show that I can do it on X-, Y-and Z-farm and not just one farm all the time,” he said.
Former Dairy
In 1956, the Kiefers purchased their homestead, a former dairy farm. For the past several years, the family managed a 400-head beef feedlot, which they have decided to transition away from because it had become a strain on resources.
Last September, the farm purchased another 110-acre property in Upper Mount Bethel Township for crop production.
Early corn planted on April 21 was already sprouted by May 1.
Willowbrook Farms got its name from an old brook at the top of the farm with a natural flowing spring surrounded by willow trees, Kiefer said.
One full-time worker, William “Doug” Gardner, has been with Willowbrook Farms for 40 years.
The bulk of the land is farmed in Lower Mount Bethel Township.
The farm includes Brad’s father, Albert; an uncle, Robert; and Brad’s nephew, Bryce, son of Bryan Kiefer, Brad’s brother. Bryan passed away several years ago.
Brad is married to Janelle and the children work on the farm as well: Karli, 14; Alexis, 12; Calvin, 10; and Makenzie, 8. Calvin drives the tractor and his daughters help Brad with paperwork and some bookkeeping.
“We switched over from that 38-inch corn row to 30-inch rows and wanted to see where we were at as far as yields,” Kiefer said. “I saw some neighbors were entered in the past and I just wanted to see where we were.”
Willowbrook Farms won first and second place in the National Corn Growers Association’s Yield Contest for conventional till in 2020, the first year that the Kiefers planted 30-inch row corn.
“We never entered the contest before,” Kiefer said. “We wanted to see where we were now that we stepped up to the times and went with 30-inch corn. We saw the yield with less weed pressure.”
Kiefer praises the hard work and dedication by his grandfather, Pete, “who has given us the work ethic, him being successful in his time and being able to purchase land,” Brad said. “He basically taught us everything we know, some old school mentality and some transitioning into newer stuff.”
The key is having the right people on the farm.
“The key to any business is having good people and family around you that makes the whole operation work,” he said.
