60-Inch Rows and Virtual Fences: Greg Thoren's No-Till, Non-GMO System

0:00 Hey everybody, welcome to the Green Cover podcast where we have really interesting conversations with some of the top regenerative farmers and experts in the regenerative world. Join us as we learn together how to regenerate, steward, and share God's creation for future generations.

0:16 You know, we don't usually have podcast guests back on this soon, but this guest today was such a great podcast about a year ago, and we had so many things that we wanted to follow up on that we've asked Greg Thoren from Illinois to join us again to give us an update on how things went with his corn interseeding, where he's at with his grazing collars, and also to share just a little bit more about a very unique transition plan that they are doing. So, Greg, welcome back to the Green Cover podcast.

0:46 Thank you for having me again, Keith.

0:48 Yeah, absolutely. You know, we've wanted to have you back on, but also we had a lot of people asking, hey, when's Greg going to come back on? You said you were going to have a followup on these things, and so we've had people asking for this, and so we just are grateful that you took the time to join us. So, Greg, when we talked last time, one of the big topics, well, before we get into that, for people that maybe didn't hear the last podcast that we did with you last year, give us a little bit of background, set the context for your operation, where you're at, what you're farming, and how you're doing things there on your operation in Illinois.

1:27 Okay. I'm in the northwest corner of Illinois, far northwest corner. We're approximately 15 miles south of Wisconsin and about 40 miles east of the Mississippi River in Iowa. So we're in the far northwest corner. We're in the drifless area. So we have a lot of erodable ground, a lot of hills. We have some good small bottom areas, lower ground areas. Basically my farming operation, we run about 2400 acres. That includes pasture and we're all non-GMO. We're all no-till and we're 100% cover crop. We planted naked seed the last, I think this will be our fourth or fifth season. We're low input as far as phosphorus, potash, no micronutrients. Actually phosphorus and potash we haven't used any except for some experimental trials since 2019. We're using low rates of nitrogen stabilized with humic acids. You know, the non-GMO crops that we plant, the cash crops, they can be a challenge because there again we can't use glyphosate in season or some of the other herbicides. We haven't used insecticides or fungicides since 2019 either. So we're kind of unique, maybe in the area and probably a little harder farming practices than the normal conventional farmer.

3:06 And you're also certified through Regenify as well. Correct?

3:10 That's correct. We've been lucky enough to get our third year certification in the fifth tier, all three years.

3:17 Yeah, that's great. And if we have time we'll talk a little bit about maybe how that's opened up some markets or some of the additional learning opportunities that's given you. And then talk a little bit because we'll get into the grazing collars as well. Talk a little bit about the livestock that you have integrated into your operation.

3:36 We, I grew up with beef cattle, actually hogs and cattle with my father. We're lucky enough to be born and raised on a farm. My wife has been also. So we've always been around livestock. A number of years ago, I think it was back in the '90s, we got out of the hog business because of more so on rented farm and buildings and it just wasn't going to work. We expanded into more row crop and actually cattle at that time, too. So right now, we're running a spring and fall herd. I think we're going to have probably close to 180 to 200 females dropping calves this year. And we've always adapted grazed, my dad did as far as rotating pastures, but there again that was maybe every two or three weeks you'd rotate.

4:34 Pasture whereas today we're trying to move cattle daily. We did that with wire, the Gallagher wiring system, here about four or five years ago and then about a year we started and then right now we've been into this a long year and a half. We had the virtual fencing through ESHepard, which is a Gallagher fenceless grazing system and we're moving cattle now daily, maybe up to once every five days depending on the herd and where they're at and in the pasture location. But we don't have a lot of large acreages of pasture.

5:16 On about every farm beans, like I say, when the driftless area, we have a lot of you know, we have a couple hundred acre farm or even a 100 acre farm, there's probably 40 acres of pasture on it. On the smaller farms, it might be 60 80 acres on the larger farm. So we've got quite a few different groups, six, seven, eight different groups, depending on the time of the year, and then we're able to move those livestock around with the virtual fencing, which works out very well.

5:46 Right now we have a group of cows. We're still grazing 60-inch row corn. Not a lot there. It's burnt back, froze back pretty good. But it's amazing anything green out there and even that dead plant or that terminated plant, whatever they are eating that off, and the nice thing about that is in a corn field with 60-inch row corn, I still as of today see corn in their manure because we can move them across, you know, we'll move them every couple days instead of every day.

6:19 They don't have the whole field up all the corn exactly right. Yeah, so there's a lot of positives to them.

6:25 So that's a great transition, Greg, into the first topic I want to dig into, which is the wide row corn with interseed cover crops. Because here we are, we're sitting here at the 1st of March and you're telling me that you're still grazing your corn stocks, they're still picking up corn because they haven't had access to the whole field and there's still some greenish material out there from the cover crop. So let's start back at the beginning to set the stage. Why are you going 60-inch row corn instead of 30 inch? And then we'll talk about what you're interseeding in there.

7:04 Well, we've seen in the past and we've played with or worked with the 30-inch row corn in trying to intercede in that. We generally get about 36 inches of annual precipitation where we're at. And we started with actually cereal rye that was put on with a fertilizer high clearance fertilizer spreader and that worked out well. We did get germination. The corn might have been a little too tall. It was no tail. There just a lot of things that didn't work. The cereal came up and then it dampened off. You know, it basically got starved for sunlight and it terminated itself. We're not getting enough light to the ground to that plant that we want to grow for fall forage.

7:57 So I'd heard and seen on YouTube and different things about 60-inch row corn. So I talked a couple different people about it. So that's what we started into and then we started interseeding into that. And we've always drilled into that. We did various ways actually. To start with, we actually just drilled the same day we planted corn, we put cover crops in or maybe it was a week later or we just tried all sorts of different timing. That wasn't really the best scenario. So I ended up getting a three-point journal 15 foot and then I can intercede that amount. I can control my height of my corn a little better. We'd like to do it at that, you know, two to three, maybe up to five collar corn.

8:46 And we seem to have better luck. You need to get the seed in the ground. What I've seen with the length of time I've been doing soil health practices is that we have a lot of predation with critters in the field, earthworms especially, as far as eating the seed if we don't get it in the ground. So even drone seeding makes it very difficult for my.

9:12 Operation. At least it does right now.

9:15 Yeah. And we've seen the same thing and 100% agree. Getting that seed in the ground because timing is so critical when you're interceding. We've seen the same thing. V2 to V4, if you start getting out past that, you're really risking not getting enough sunlight to that cover crop to get it established well so it can hold on. Getting that seed in the ground is really key to both protecting it as well as the timing on that.

9:45 So with the 60 in, now you've got a big gap down the middle. You got more sunlight hitting each corn plant which is an advantage for the corn. Plus you've got a big solar corridor for the cover crop. What have you done with your corn populations as you move from 30-inch rows to 60-inch rows? What does that population of your corn look like?

10:07 We've tried some different populations, especially this last year. We're using seed from Bass Seed at Bumgardner's company and he had a hybrid that we thought we could drop the population on and it would double air. For some reason it did not this year. There were a lot of quirky things with that hybrid that happened this year on my particular farm and I guess on a couple other people's farms. Good hybrid, but it just didn't respond the way we'd like to have seen it. We did a lot of different variations of populations anywhere from low to high. If I plant my 30-inch row corn at 32,000 plants per acre, I'll plant my 60-inch row corn at that same population. So we'll just have twice as many in the row.

10:59 We're going to do more population trials this year. Again, one thing, also working with Bob Recker and his group from Cedar Falls, Iowa. He's interested in this because in order to make this wide row corn work as far as integrating livestock, that's what he's interested in here too. He and I came up with the idea—maybe he did—as far as, I've got a John Deere soybean planter at 15-inch rows. So we actually did some last year on a trial basis. We actually planted four 15 rows and then we're going to skip three or four 15 rows and then plant another. Basically we're getting those plants spaced out a little bit more. The twin rows, they say, works a lot better than a straight 60. Twin row 60s, which I understand that. So we're going to try with this 15-inch row and try to plant three, two, three or four, shut off three or four, and then go across the field that way and still be able to interseed that. So that may be more adaptable for trying to maintain yields in that also.

12:17 We've seen yields all over the board. Next to the 30-inch row corn, I'm going to say we're probably at least 10% less and maybe in spots where we could be 25, 30% less. But a lot of that depends on the variability of our soils. We've had probably actually in spots even with the 60-inch row corn, we probably had better yields. But there again, it's a variation of the soils. We've had over 200, 220 bushels of corn in this and we've had as low as 80 bushels of corn. It just depends on the field and there's a lot of quirky things in my operation alone, especially there. Again, I'm going to go back to the non-GMO and low fertility, or low fertilizing applications, I should say. Not necessarily low fertility, but just a lot of things we want to get pinned down on.

13:10 Yeah. And one of the things I appreciate about you, Greg, and many regenerative farmers would share this same mindset is that you're not focused on yield so much as you're focused on the profit per acre. And so it sounds like from the way that you're doing your inputs, you're very much a low-cost producer. And then when you stack on top of it the dollar value of the cover crops and between those rows and what you can get on those cattle, I'm guessing that that's still a pretty good system to do.

13:41 Yes. Well, we, I'm pleased with the net revenue back per acre on that. I figure I can probably in my operation actually take about a 25% hit on the corn yield as long as I've got good forage under there and can have the opportunity to rotate those cattle every day in that 60-inch row.

14:06 Corn with forage pretty much somewhere break even for me. Now there again, not everybody might be able to do that, but that seems like that works very well in my operation. Plus, you get all the other benefits of soil health benefits, all the biology benefits, water infiltration, it's just unbelievable. And we are seeing our soils get darker, get blacker, infiltration gets better every year. I just think this is a good program for it. It fits what I'm doing.

14:38 Yeah. No, it really sounds like it. So let's talk a little bit about what you are interceding. And I know that we've sent you a number of different mixes that you put in between those 60-inch rows with a lot of diversity. I think we even sent you some of the Mila mix if I'm not mistaken. So talk a little bit about what you saw, what plant species you felt like really did well. Which ones maybe struggled a little bit and just what you're thinking for this year. How will you change this year based on what you saw last year?

15:12 This past year to start with we've, there again the variability of our soils is actually in row across the field is we've seen a lot of variability on what species will grow and even in spots if it's water nothing will grow. We have a lot of sidehill seeds, we have a lot of different things going on here too. I we did plant quite a few different blends.

15:47 My one of my goals for this coming year is I want to for the foraging is I want to make sure I can get possibly more blends that will stay greener and not mature out on me for the forge for the cattle in the fall. Now, we've planted some sun hemp and we've done sever well, the buckwheat of course that I always put buckwheat in but that, you know, that's brown and matured out way before then but we don't put much in but we will definitely always put buckwheat in. Vet will use just all sorts of different things. We do like the concept of a minimum of four different families and the millets seem to work out well. Of course we don't put sorghum sedan in there but the millets work out well and we've had quite a few different grass species and legumes in there that seem to work out. We put just a few brasas in there. We found out too through the years even seeding after wheat and or rye as a cereal grain in the summer that we will, we've actually at one time had too many bras in there and the livestock are way too loose of manure, way too much protein, water, they actually lost weight. So we want just a sprinkling and other people say that too of no more than maybe even a pound, half a pound to a pound of brassacas in that mix. The mila mix actually I think did better in the seedings we did after wheat and rye and actually this past year we actually seeded a combination of peas, oats, spring barley and spring wheat and we're going to do that again this year and we harvested that for grain and finished beef cattle on that and we put about 20% corn in that mix. Next year I'd like to grow some a few acres of sorghum and then in mix that in the following year. So I've got six different grains that they're getting protein and energy from. Actually that mix last year that we grow peas, oats, wheat, barley, we had that feed tested and everything was good on but I was surprised that the protein in that mix was actually 18%. So that I thought that was pretty good and the cattle did very well.

18:14 So you're harvesting this grain blend and then are you feeding that to your cattle or do you have chickens or what are you feeding that to?

18:22 No, we only have cattle. So what we do is we actually feed that to our finishing cattle. The ones we market direct market. And the reason I did that is for basically diversity on the ground. That's probably number one. But number two, if you can get those diverse grain mixes in there, plus then they're eating diverse cover crop mix, probably a minimum of 12 to 15 different species in there that we

18:50 Chop and then we'll feed dry hay alongside of that. So everything that those livestock get I grow on the farm. I do not buy anything. I think I mentioned this here too that last year for the amount of cattle that we had that we do run, I had less than $1,000 expense as far as bought feed and that was salt, that's all we feed. And with the diversity there again of the multispecies cover crops, we're bringing different nutrients up with each one of those plants and they seem to be doing very well on the mineral end. I don't, for beef cattle at least in my area of my mindset, is that you should be able to grow everything they need if you do it properly on the farm. I'm not saying I'm doing everything properly, but it seems like it's working very well.

19:42 So go through that blend again because I think a lot of people will be interested. It's peas, oats, barley. Yeah, I planted peas, oats, spring barley, and spring wheat. Spring wheat. And then what I did, because there again not knowing the first year it was going to happen, we harvested that, put it on a semi, put about 20% corn on top of that. Then we basically augured that into a wagon. Wagon went into a blower. The blower went into the harvester silo. So it was probably around 14 to 15% moisture, which I'm hoping I can maybe be just a little more moist next year, then I have less dust in my feed room. Just little things like that. But we put it through a roller mill and we got to do some adjustments on that, of course, so we could try to crack those small grains. The peas will smush and the corn will crack, but we want to rough up those small grains a little bit. And it seems like we've got that taken care of.

20:48 And there again, I think that the diversity of those different grain crops is no different than the diversity of different foods that we eat. Even though they are energy crops, protein—the beans or the peas are for the protein. We might even put a field pea and a grain forage pea and a grain pea or a field pea in this year too to mix that up a little bit. So just something to try and see. Yeah, the cattle really enjoyed it and they did well on it and the customers that we've gotten back, we talked back to from the meat on this. I didn't expect anything to be really much different, but I have had no negative responses whatsoever on the meat itself.

21:36 It sounds great. You might consider putting a little bit of flax in that mix. If you can get that flax and I think it would probably make seed in the same life cycle as the other things that you're talking about because these are all spring annuals and so you're going to plant them, probably end of March, first of April, something like that, and harvesting in the summer. I think flax would be a really interesting one to try in there to see if you can get those good omega oils in your feed mix as well.

22:12 Yes, that would be one. I've heard that you don't want to plant or feed them too much flax, like over 5%, I've heard, because it may do negative things to the animal. I don't know that, but I don't think you want a lot from what I've understood anyway. No, you sure wouldn't. And I'd only put maybe a couple pounds of seed in that whole mix per acre, but I think if you can get a little bit in there, that would be a really nice addition to, you know, the energy and the protein that you're getting, to have some of those oils. So yeah, it would be interesting. I'm just thinking through, maybe even mustard. You know, mustard would be the one brassica that would really get after it. It would flower and it would have seed out there as well. I was just thinking of higher oil which would add some energy. But might be something you experiment on a little piece or something as you plant this. So that's really interesting though.

23:13 People do similar things and that would be excellent feed for chickens, any kind of pasture pigs, those sorts of things would be great for any of those classes of livestock, I think.

23:29 So there's all sorts of things that we can do out there. We have to do the same old thing out there. And the neat part about this, going back to costwise, actually it cost me about $53 an acre last year, be just a little cheaper this year if I use the same mix. But I didn't have any nitrogen on that. I didn't have any anything else. All I had was seed and I harvested it. I probably didn't get the tonnage I would have for corn or bushels per acre, but I didn't anything in it. And then I could come back in and reed. We reeded after that. It was harvested in July. We receded then a multispecies cover crop and then we grazed my fall cows and their calves on it and then the previous year's fall calves on that too. So we had forage for 3 months after that.

24:17 And that's one of the keys to making the grazing, the integration of livestock back onto the land. You have to be creative in how you can, especially in a higher rainfall environment like what you're in or we've got the benefit of having some irrigation here. We're running all of our cows just on crop ground too and our hope is that for a lot of the acres we can harvest a cash crop and still get a forage crop.

24:47 Not every acre every year certainly, but you know why not take a summer harvested crop and then follow it right up with that grazing crop. So love that strategy. So one of the things that's making it work for you in the wide row corn and these other things is these grazing collars because now you are able to really utilize the forage to its maximum. You're not grazing the entire field. So you've got the ability to, you know, whatever grain is out in the field or whatever forage you're giving them, just what they need as they need it. So you're doing eShepherd collars and you at our regen Nexus in Omaha that we had last month, you're the first person that I've heard say that you were doing some of that grazing with no perimeter fence and you were even grazing some road ditches with that. And that must mean your cattle are really well trained. Have you seen them get as they get used to these collars, they're just much easier to control with them?

25:57 Definitely. We have we're very particular on the females that we keep and even males. We know our cattle. We have them bought outside breeding stock on the female side probably for 30 some years. Keep our own replacement efforts in of course and we're even keeping our own bulls here. We're on our second round of keeping our own bulls back for inline breeding. So they're used to it. Actually, the young bulls that we kept back that were last spring's calves, we put neck bands on them when they were weaned and they've had neck bands on them all winter. They're with our first calf cows now and they're doing fine. Yes, the cows themselves, they get trained very easily. My key is to make the system work is you don't want to starve them because if you get a cow that is hungry, she will go through a fence no matter if she's a fence pusher or possibly even a virtual fence. So we make sure they have to eat and they know they're going to get moved daily or whatever their paddock or that mob routine is, if it's every two days or 5 days or whatever. They understand that too. And they know we're going to look out for them and they do understand that. Actually, we made my last move on a 260 acre farm that has no fence around it whatsoever. They're great. They're finishing grazing some 60-inch grow corn. We will move them off of that property hopefully the next couple days before it thaws out because we want to no tail corn back into that and some 60-inch row corn again too. And then we've got another mob that we're going to move tomorrow I believe. They've been they've had that whole 60 acre farm for quite a.

27:48 But there's no fence around those either. But again, I cannot recommend you doing that because state of Illinois legally you need a 54 inch tall fence and perimeter fence and all this. It's a liability thing. We have some nooks and crannies that we can do this with and it's pretty neat. I can keep my fall cows and even the fall calves, the yearling fall calves, I can keep them if I can keep them off of what you might say normal pasture for 20 to 30 days in the summer. That's huge by just grazing waterways, building sites, road ditches, things like that. Not every year it may work exactly that way, but it seems to this last year.

28:36 Well, the rest that your pastures are getting has to be huge. And are you able to draw out the boundary on waterways and graze those during the growing season?

28:47 Yes. Yes, we did that last year. We found out that the laptop platform is different than the cell phone platform, you might say, the cell phone app. And this year, the ESH Shepard started this late last summer or fall, whatever, that I'll be able to go out with my cell phone and actually drop pins in along waterways and different things, and that should be very very accurate. Last year doing this on the laptop I was, you know, I could be off three to six feet and actually I've got pictures where the cattle grazed into the corn that far and they stop. I mean, they'll have half of an ear eaten and they won't go any farther because they get the rest of it and they don't go in the corn. So they understand that when that neck band beeps there's going to be consequences if they go any farther.

29:47 Yeah, that's fascinating how that works. And so basically you're saying and that'll be this year with ES Shepard you'll be able to just like ride that on your ATV and just drop pins as you go around and then it will draw a complete boundary for you.

30:05 Yeah, that's really cool. How has the durability? How has the live battery life? Because these have a solar panel on them, so it kind of recharges that battery, right? Have you been happy with the quality, the longevity, have they been pretty low maintenance?

30:28 I would say yes. They have double solar panels. They have a lithium ion battery in each one of them and a global SIM card. They claim that these lithium ion batteries may last up to seven to 10 years. Maybe I have some maybe like a half a dozen or 10 of them out of 200 and some that they found out that they had a bad batch of lithium ion batteries. You're going to have that. I don't care whose it is, what it is. Life isn't perfect. You're going to have flaws. So they'll send those back in and then they'll send me new neck bands. You can't work on these yourselves because they're actually vacuum sealed inside, of course, for water and moisture protection. So they've been very good on that. I've had several of the solar panels get cracked or starburst. It doesn't seem if you have one, it doesn't seem to bother too much. Even if you have two, I've had a cow that has had two cracked and it doesn't seem to bother. And you can monitor your battery life and just all these different things on your laptop platform here too. Durability, they had some issues with some of the hooks. They outsourced the mechanism on the top strap and we had some issues with some of them breaking or coming off, but it's nothing out of the ordinary. I think you're going to have that probably with about any system. If you do look for a system, there's some, all the systems are good out there. Just depends on what you need. I did not want to use a tower system because of our topography, the hills. I'd have to have several towers and the cost wise then would not be beneficial for my operation. So that's why with these, and it is all basically cell phone connection is what it is. They run off of cell phone towers.

32:31 Have you been able to use your collars to identify animals that are low performing or maybe they're getting

37:17 Outside of the virtual fence, we feed them basically just dry small square bales of hay, second, third crop, night, really nice stuff. And they'll come out every morning from the cows and they'll forage by themselves on the pads of hay. But there again, that's their creep area. That's their safe zone. And mama, if the mothers come down there, they'll hit that line and they'll beep and they'll turn right around. So it's really something there. And you can then there again, you can move that around in muddy times or wet times or whatever. You can keep moving those areas around like that too for those calves to be away even away from mama even though they were born—they'll always come back to mother. We've had them oh my gosh too far away either sometimes but they always come back to mother and if they don't mother will bellow and then they'll come back. So they they understand the system also.

38:12 Yeah. And there's a lot of herd instinct within those animals. So like if a cow, you know, if that latch breaks and the collar falls off, does that particular animal stay with the herd pretty well even though she could wander and not have the beeps? We had this past winter we had one cow. She's a tamer cow, but she was in this group of 32 on this area with no fence, 240 acres. And she, as far as I know, she did not leave that group all winter long. She had her neck band off for at least five weeks, I want to say five or six weeks. And we kept checking her every day, you know, we'd check them. We drive by and check them and they're going to take them one small square bale a day and just flake it out so they know I'm there. I can move them easy. I know everybody's there, especially without the fences, perimeter fences, and she was with that bunch for at least five weeks without a neck band and far as I know she was never on the road there. Again, if this would have been summer and there had been grass, green grass on the other side that all looks better, she might have been out but being there was nothing else for her to eat, you know, but she'd have to cross the road to get to the neighbor's field, different things like that. No, I hadn't had they're getting—it's time of the year what your animals are, where you're at. You don't want to push the system, but they do definitely have that herd instinct, you might say. And it helps having the best feed in the county is right where they're at, right in front of them. There's no reason for them to go looking.

40:02 Yes. Definitely. Definitely. Yeah. Well, that's fascinating. And as you continue to learn and as the software continues to improve, it'll just be exciting to see how many more things we can do with it. And you know, like any technology, I suspect the cost on these things is going to come down. There's going to be more companies entering the market. So there's going to be more competition. So I think the grazing collars have a bright future. I know we're going to try to get some this year to start experimenting with ourselves. So really looking forward to it and appreciate all your insights and what you're learning on that as well. I want to move into the kind of the third area that I wanted to discuss and follow up on from our previous conversation and that's the transition plan that you guys are working on because you know transition planning is a big deal for every farmer, especially you know as we get older and we need to make sure we understand and know what that plan is and even people that don't make a plan, you know, that doesn't mean things still are going to happen and so I appreciate your foresight. So share with folks what you are doing and how it's a little bit unique within you know your area and community.

41:22 We, my wife and I have two children and they decided not to farm when their youth, you might say, or when they were young adults, let's put it that way, which is fine. They're both doing very well. So we farmed actually right now, my

41:43 Farm, I'm just setting this up so you understand why I'm doing what I'm doing, but our farm now with the acres and the livestock we have and the diversity, it basically takes three families to farm now, my wife and I, and then we have two hired men, you might say. And they've worked along very well with us through the years and that. So my idea is, and of course I'm the lead on everything. My wife and I are the lead on everything. My idea is with the acreage we have, number one, in order to get things done, you need labor. You have to have somebody here doing things, getting things done.

42:20 So what we'd like to do is transition our property actually to three different young people. And that's kind of unique. They're people that haven't known each other in the past. We actually have two different young fellas here now. One isn't married. He actually grew up, was actually born about two miles from where he lived. Known him his whole life and his parents and his family. And then there's another gentleman I met here last spring that moved in from central Iowa to another job and I had offered him an opportunity here and he's very interested in this. So I've got two very good young people now and they and I can look for a third one hopefully in the future.

43:11 But the basis of what I want to do with the regenerative farming with certified regenerified and all the different things we're doing with cover crop seed, all the soil health aspects and that in the livestock and all the different things we're doing, is I can only see this system and other people's systems that are doing these practices only getting better. My idea is I don't want to just when I get all said and done, my wife and I are both 68. I really don't want to sell the farms. I don't, you know, you can run them out, but if they go back conventional, you basically we've lost everything that we've tried to gain.

43:49 At least in our mind that we've tried to gain. So I thought if we could transition this to people that have number one, they have to have a regenerative mindset. And both of these young people do. And one of the things I want them to do is when they get my age or hopefully before because they've gone through this is to set it up for their kids or someone else's kids to make that go another generation. There's going to be big responsibilities on these generations to move this ahead.

44:34 Now, one unique thing about this, if we can make this all work, we own about a thousand acres of the 1400 acres we farm. On the rented land, quite a few of the landlords are on board with this, you know, as far as working with my next generation of farmers or the ones after me and even in their family. I've got several farms here that I'm into the second and third generation of owners of that same piece of property, you might say, family members.

45:09 So I think that's good long-term stability. The my thousand acres of land, what I would like to do, and I think we can do this, is we would like to put that in some type of a trust, some type of an entity. I don't know what it's going to be yet. That land will never have to be sold. And the reason I thought of that too is these young people, how my life would have been better or how my life would have been different, maybe not better, but different if I never had to pay principal and interest on a base piece of acre that I knew I could farm for my whole life. And then I can go out some of these rented farms that I have now. There'll be other land in the community that will come up for sale. If they wish to purchase that, bring it into the operation, keep that off to their side and farm it with the there just all sorts of different things. But if they have a base, they can work off of that would be fine.

46:08 Can retire off of a reasonable rent. We have to make sure that the buildings and all the infrastructure is taken care of, different things like that when we're passed. But we have to have this set up somewhat and basically faith and trust in the ones we choose to carry this forward. So it will be successful for generations to come.

46:31 A lot of details, nothing really hammered down, but this is where we're going to do it and that because it's going to work different with every family in here. But we all have to have a written plan. We got to have a written plan in the direction we want to go and what we want to do. Luckily, we're profitable enough and we can help these young families out. I can almost be the banker for them as far as the livestock and equipment wise, and that'll help us I think on the tax basis here also.

47:10 They need to have operating money through a bank or lending institution. So they've got to have that access in the now and in the future and that experience to do those type of operations also. There again, nothing says that you do A, B, C, D, and E, this is going to work. No, that's not the way it is. But it's all about the people and I tell these young people, it's not about me and my wife and it's not about you and your family. It's about the soil.

47:42 If we have to keep the soil in mind at the beginning and that's what we're working around, the reason we're doing this is the soil, the environment, everything we're doing. I think it'll work out fine if you have that mindset. If you're after just more acres, I'm not going to bash the conventional farming because I've done that too. But it's the idea of a different mindset and the regenerative people I think think different than the conventional farmer. They just do. So they look at things different, they see things different, they understand things different.

48:19 I feel very optimistic about what can be done here, but it's not finished yet, and it's going to take a number of years, just like any of these transitions, but it looks very interesting.

48:32 What I really love about what you're doing, Greg, is that you and your wife are not just saying we're going to pick one person and transition it all over to them. I love that you're going to bring in three because now you're helping three times as many young families get started. You're not going to overwhelm any one person. And as these three families get established, as they get their foundations built, like you said, they can buy additional land, they can go rent additional land. And now you've just tripled the impact that you're going to have on your local community through people with regenerative mindsets.

49:18 I believe there are a lot of those young people out there, but it's so difficult for them to get started if they aren't coming into a family operation. And so, hats off to you for what you and your wife are doing. And I hope that you document it really well as you go through the process—hey, this worked really well, or you know, we should have done this different or we had to go back and redo this, because I think there will be a lot of interest in what you're doing and how it works. Do you have identified a really, because what you need is you almost need an estate planner that has a regenerative mindset as well.

49:59 We've talked to several, a group out of Iowa, Next Generation Ag Advocacy. Mike Downing is lead on that. We've been working with him for about five years. He's going to be part of this. Actually, Legacy Farmer is going to be another part of this. I talked to them. It's all about everything we do is about numbers. It's all financing and stuff. And there again, they've got a different mindset. They've got a lot of experience with being in the banking industry and all the different aspects. We've got a young local attorney here that we want to work with rather than an.

50:35 Older ones. I think older ones, which there's some very good older ones, but they're going to time out too. And then these young people that start up, they'll have someone more their age that they can work through through their through just all these aspects. So yeah, it's going to be fun. It's going to be fun and interesting.

50:55 One of the things I think with the three young families coming in with the regenerative mindset is that my wife and I talk back and forth and do different things and the hired help is on board and they do what they need to do, but they're not into it like these three young people because they're going to be vested monetarily and idea wise and I would think that would be so neat. The one young fellow I've had here for a year, the neighbor that grew up within two miles of me, he's really gotten into the regenerative aspect of it. He had mentioned when he came on a year ago that he says, 'I always wondered why your fields look different. You know, they didn't look as good as the neighbors and I couldn't figure out how this is all working.' And then I showed him numbers, you know, financial numbers or, you know, input numbers and different things, too. And the reason why I did this and he, there's other young people in the community his age and friends that he has, you know, various ages and he says, 'I just don't know why they till the soil anymore.' He says, 'I just cannot see that.' He said he's just going about all these different things. He sounds like an old me, you might say. And but he's picking this stuff up so quick. And I'm we're actually going to a two-day grazing platform here Friday and Saturday. Then there's another meeting up at University of Wisconsin Platteville on the University farm up there put on by the Fields of CNA. And yeah, I'm getting him involved with a lot of these things and it's just eye opening. It just totally is.

52:33 Three families. These three young people can talk back and forth every day on this stuff, whereas I'm just kind of talking to myself most days. And I just think it can be expanded so much quicker and better. And yeah, the ideas would just be unbelievable.

52:49 Well, again, I love that. I think it's a regenerative way of thinking about transitioning and not just farming, which you know, Greg, that's the thing about regenerative agriculture. It's about more than just the soil. You know, soil health is part of it. Soil health principles are part of it, but it goes way beyond the soil. It's about regenerating relationships. It's about regenerating people, regenerating communities. And what you're doing really is a great start to regenerating your community and investing in those future generations. So, please document what you're doing. Please, you know, we'll help you write your book in a few years to tell other people how to do it because again, I think it's a wonderful thing that you and your wife are doing. So, Greg, as we kind of pull this episode here to a close, anything else that we missed that other cool things that you're doing that you want to share with folks?

53:53 Oh, I've got so many things in the hopper. I'd have to spend another hour with you, Keith, and we neither one of us have time for that right now. But yeah, just someone asked me, 'What are you going to do different next year?' And I said, or this coming year, I said, I don't have anything planned, but you never know, but I just want to do better of what I've been doing. I want to you never perfect it, but I want to do better. And I think we can do that with there again with the people that we've expanded our relationships with and the knowledge that they have. We can do better.

54:27 Well, I love that. That should be each of our goals is to do a little bit better each and every year and help others do better along the way, which is obviously part of your passion. So, thank you for that, Greg. Thank you for all you're doing. Thank you for sharing with us and we look forward to watching the progress of how things go for you. So, thanks everyone for joining this episode of the Green Cover Podcast.