The second stop on the Indiana Farm Management Tour on June 26 will be at Hal and Ty Brown's farm near Frankfort. The farm will also host the evening program and Master Farmer awards after the afternoon tour.

There are several features on this well-managed farm, including a new shop and tool storage area that also doubles as an office for their outside business, selling Dragoo corn heads. Another interesting twist is the dike system they have built for fertilizer storage. They opted for placing tanks inside a concrete dike.

Safe and convenient: Check out this dike system that also includes tanks in a recessed , remodeled hog barn when you visit the Brown farm on the Indiana Farm Management Tour on June 26.

The twist on this dike system, Ty Brown says, is that they also incorporated fertilizer storage inside an older hog barn which they remodeled. It is located relatively close to the dike structure. They removed the flooring, cleaned the pit, and use part of the barn for storage. They have even held meetings in the recessed floor building in the past, before they constructed their new building.

The hog barn also serves as a dike, Brown says. There are poly tanks that they placed inside the building. These tanks hold fertilizer. Two large pipes underground connect the tanks to the metering system located outside. This allows them to use the loading pad built outside the concrete dike to fill tanks in the hog barn or the outside tanks, he explains.

A computer controlled system allows them to pull fertilizer from the tanks in the barn, or from tanks in the dike.

The combination system allows them to use an existing structure, and have more fertilizer storage than they could have otherwise, Brown explains. Having adequate storage for liquid fertilizer allows them to make better input buying decisions, because they have the chance to buy liquid fertilizer when it is cheaper and take delivery.