Successful farming for Friday the 13th

Nov 13, 2015

November marks 3rd Friday the 13th in 2015

There’s an old adage stating that bad things happen in threes.

For those who are extremely superstitious, now would be the time to grab a lucky rabbit’s foot, avoid ladders and black cats, and turn your clothes inside out in an effort to bring yourself good luck.

Friday, November 13^th marks the third Friday the 13^th in 2015 with the other two occurring in February and March.

Friday the 13th

With the infamous day come many superstitions and agriculture has its own.

“Evidently mine is to never sell at the high,” said Daren Niemeyer, a producer from Bladen, Nebraska via Twitter on Friday morning.

“Keep a smelly billy goat with your cows and they’ll never get sick,” said Katherine Grossman from Pennsylvania on Twitter.

Filipino farmers are also known to have interesting superstitions.

An article from 1919 in The Journal of International Relations by Emma Sarepta Yule states that “when the farmer sows the rice in the seed-bed he must be alone so that if locusts or other insect pests come to destroy the crop they will not come in large numbers.”

Another superstition says Filipino farmers don’t plow the soil deep because the roots of plants are afraid of the dark.

Other farming superstitions include:

Never starting a job on a Friday
Never planting on the 13^th or 31^st of any month
Rain on Easter Sunday means it will rain for the next seven Sundays
When raising animals, never have 13 of one breed or species
Sowing crops from north to south will perform better than crops sown east to west

There’s only one Friday the 13^th in 2016 and that will happen in May.

Join the discussion and tell us your thoughts on agricultural superstitions. Do you have any?

Video: Evolution of Beef Cattle Farming

The Clear Conversations podcast took to the road for a special episode recorded in Nashville during CattleCon, bringing listeners straight into the heart of the cattle industry. Host Tracy Sellers welcomed rancher Steve Wooten of Beatty Canyon Ranch in Colorado for a wide-ranging discussion that blended family history and sustainability, particularly as it relates to the future of beef production.

Sustainability emerged as a central theme of the conversation, a word that Wooten acknowledges can mean very different things depending on who you ask. For him, sustainability starts with the soil. Healthy soil produces healthy grass, which supports efficient cattle capable of producing year after year with minimal external inputs. It’s an approach that equally considers vegetation, animal efficiency, and long-term profitability.

That philosophy aligned naturally with Wooten’s involvement in the U.S. Roundtable for Sustainable Beef, where he served as a representative for the Colorado Cattlemen’s Association. The roundtable brings together the entire beef supply chain—from producers to retailers—along with universities, NGOs, and allied industries. Its goal is not regulation, Wooten emphasized, but collaboration, shared learning, and continuous improvement.