Converting Cropland to Perennials: Kevin Wiltse's System for Better Water Infiltration and Soil Structure

0:00 Thanks everyone for joining back. We're back to our livestock integration producers webinar series and we're taking a little bit different tack today. Most of the previous ones in this series have been integrating livestock within an annual cropping system and our guest today is Kevin Wilty and Kevin and his wife Mandy have a farm and ranch operation in Timkin Kansas down by the Great Bend area and they are integrating it into their annual cropping rotation and system but he's also converted a pretty decent number of acres over to perennials and not taking old perennial ground and making new perennial ground but taking crop ground and turning it into perennials and so really he's going to be focusing a lot on that aspect of the grazing operation.

0:50 So just because he doesn't talk about integrating the annual cover cropping into the annual cropping system he's still doing some of that but we've asked him specifically to talk more about the perennial emphasis that he has been putting into their operation and the reasons why they're doing it as well.

1:10 Known Kevin for many years. Kevin was a customer early on in the life and history of Green Cover. He's ordered seed lots and lots of years for us. He's been one of our featured speakers at our Soil Health conference we have at our Iola Kansas facility. He's spoken at No Till on the Plains and Soil Health. So he's no stranger to presenting and sharing some of the great work that they've been doing on their farm and ranch operation there.

1:40 We're grateful for him being here and one last thing and he'll talk about this a little bit, or at least I think I can talk him into talking about it, he's also raising grass-finished beef direct to the consumer. We're just talking about this. I think he's got one for me that he's going to be bringing up next week so I'll be eating some great ribs from Kevin's herd here very shortly.

2:03 Again, so looking forward to the conversation here Kevin. I'll turn it over to you. Go ahead and you can share your screen and share the slides there and then kind of when you wrap that up I'll come back on and we'll have a discussion and again like Jonathan said please folks ask your questions, put them in that Q&A box and we will discuss those as we're getting going here. Right, is that working?

2:30 Oh it was, then it there you go. You bet. Yeah, you're good. Well thanks Keith for asking me to be on here and yeah, known you guys for a long time and that's one thing with this whole Soil Health journey, it's been for me it's been a blessing to meet great people and you and Brian are two of those and yeah, honor to be a part of this today.

2:56 So like Keith said we farm and ranch west of Great Bend Kansas and it's about 45 miles straight south of Hays if you're familiar with the area. We're in a 22 to 24 inch rainfall zone here. Yeah, cash crops and cattle primarily. There's my family, my two daughters are home this summer so they're helping with the labor force and then I also have one full-time employee, Hunter, that he just started in December and kind of threw him into the fire. He's learning a lot and he's doing a great job of kind of turned over a lot of the grazing management decisions to him and teaching him along the way.

3:45 So he's really observant and it's been good because he kind of gets what we're trying to do and he can see the results that we've been getting. And like Keith said we do a lot of grazing livestock integration on our crop land but that's really not going to be the focus today. If you have questions about it feel free to ask.

4:10 But today we're going to talk mostly about the perennial systems and kind of why really we decided to go this route and that's kind of a picture of this year of a perennial that we're on right now.

4:30 So initially, a little brief history or observations I made through the years. We started 100% no-till in 1997 when we came home from Dakota Lakes research up there in South Dakota and as Jay Fuhr likes to say, no-till by itself is not enough and we learned that pretty fast. We were trying to do no-till and we still were expecting our infiltration rates to go up and organic matter to go up and we just really didn't see that.

5:04 Our soils are silty clay soils and they're really hard to get them to take water in and even when we started integrating cover crops we still really struggle with water infiltration and then wind erosion is still a big problem. In fact this year in our area of Kansas I've never in my lifetime seen dirt blowing like we had this spring and these are on fields where people are trying to keep cover on them and really from July 2021 till now we've been in a drought and when you're in those drought conditions it's challenging.

5:46 Really hard to grow and to keep cover on your soil. So primarily, probably my number one reason, and this was back probably in 2013 or something, we really decided that I wanted to try to fix this in my lifetime. Like, how do we improve our infiltration rates? And you know, we're always supposed to mimic nature, and nowhere in nature do you see perennials unless we screwed up the annual system. So that's kind of the route I wanted to start experimenting with. And then also economics was a big driver too.

6:22 So that's initially kind of what my reasons were for trying to implement these things. And even today, you know, this is a field this year that, coming out of, well, still in a drought probably, but you know, we had decent cover on these fields. In this field in particular, we've implemented soil health practices for a long time: cover crops and managed grazing. And this was some 60-inch corn and we had really decent cover, I thought, you know, for the conditions this year. And then we interceded covers into that, and then we had a 5-inch rain that evening, and our soils, they really struggle to take water in, especially in those intense rainfalls.

7:12 That's a couple reasons, and then you know, as years go along, then we see stuff like this now. And it's not only pigweeds, but it's kochia and it's chinch bugs and it's army worms and all these pests. And every day we wake up and think of ways to try to kill all this stuff. And you know, as expenses are going up, machinery costs are going up, more and more herbicide, more and more insecticides in these programs. And really we just try to get away from that.

7:50 And then you know, kind of the opposite side of the coin is these perennial systems. And this is a field of mine. This is the third season on this field in particular. And we've got over 30 different species in this mix. And instead of going out in the field and trying to figure out how we're going to kill something, you walk out in this field and it's all about life. You know, we let everything live in this field: the wildlife and the insects and the birds and all the plants and the soil biology. We don't kill anything with two exceptions, and that's cedar trees or a thorny locust tree or something. So it really is refreshing. And if I'm having a bad day, that's where I go, and it kind of restores your soul to walk in these fields and just observe all the life around you.

8:41 Somebody asked me today the number one reason why we're doing this sort of stuff. It's that for me. I got this from Ranching for Profit: you have the perfect system in place to get the same results you're currently getting, and I tell myself that every day. So I try to think of ways to improve. And then the other quote I love, I got this off the Working Cows podcast, which I highly recommend, and Burke Tiger, anything he says you need to be listening. And he said you have to become open-minded. You have to figure out how to do it without being cable. And I think that's a really good quote when you're hearing things like what I'm trying to present you today about perennials or anything in the soil regen field. It's like a lot of this stuff sounds good, but you know, doesn't make sense to the economics. You know, maybe we need to start small and make sure we're not going to go broke doing something like this.

9:39 So I really want to share a little context with you because this makes a huge difference. And we're fortunate in our operation. We have a decent land base, it's all contiguous, and that's really helped with the livestock integration part. So we wanted to build this business that's resilient. We knew livestock were going to be crucial for that. When we think about adding value to our products, I also think about adding value to our acres. And livestock integration is a good way to do that to both your cash crops and your cover crops.

10:21 So when we're looking at this, we also rent and farm ground that's you know 20 miles away, and some of these practices, they just don't make sense for people, or maybe you have a lease arrangement that doesn't allow this. So that's okay. But maybe there are places where you can implement these sort of practices. So we knew this is what we wanted to build, and we spent a considerable amount of time and investment on infrastructure because this had to be easy to make this work. So we've put in lots of water lines and lots of tire tanks. And a lot of tire tanks were placed in areas like this field where we can still water crop land and also our perennial systems or native prairie. And we also implemented multiple, you know, PLA and

11:14 Valve risers along the way so we can get a quick cup of water and make this whole thing easy. We've also installed miles and miles of high tensile fence on perimeters. So in the summertime we use a lot of portable water, and we've switched this summer to using these Barber tanks, and I'd highly recommend that on anything you're grazing with pears so the calves can drink. You always got water and it's really—you can visually see the difference in the stress on the animals.

11:46 So today we built this system where we've—the yellow on this map we've implemented like 550 acres or so roughly at perennial systems. So about 30% of the crop plan we've converted. We're going to do another quarter in 80 this winter. I'd like to get that up to about 50% of the crop plan converted to perennial systems. The dark green are just native pastures, and then we've put in over 30,000 feet of water line and multiple tanks. The orange are pollinator borders and buffers that we put in, and then we fence those and we use them as lanes to move cattle around the landscape.

12:25 I want to get specifics into the different perennial systems that we've kind of looked at. One of them—this picture here is a cool season pasture. When we implemented this, it was kind of maybe before diversity was really at the forefront of my mind. There's four cool season grasses in this mix, chicory and alfalfa, and we just didn't have enough diversity. We terminated this pasture here just a few weeks ago actually to go to something different. Cool season pastures in my environment really don't perform that well. We might try to keep some in the mix, but we're really probably going to steer away from these.

13:11 You'll see at the top of some of these slides I pulled from some of my other presentations—you'll get an idea of kind of the animal days that were harvested off of those particular fields for that year. Another point I want to make is when we're on these perennials, we're on daily moves pretty much all the time trying to manage our grazing. That's better for the soil, better for the grass, better for the cattle, better for manure distribution and all that. So it's something we've really tried to focus on.

13:46 Keep in mind when you seed these things back to perennial systems, it doesn't mean they're native. So when you do get in a wet spell, we still have trouble with pugging. If it's an extended wet period, we might pull off and go to native. It just takes time for these things to build up, and we're just not there yet.

14:06 One of the first presenters you had on this livestock integration webinar series talked about pasture cropping annuals into perennials, and we've done a fair bit of that and we really had no success whatsoever in our climate environment. This was some sorghum sudangrass we seeded into that cool season pasture, and we just don't get enough rainfall to make this work. I think under irrigation or obviously some places this could really work well. The last three years under drought, our cool season pastures have really not done much. We've turned out on them in the spring just for a place to go, and we really tightened up these cattle into really small paddocks and just unrolled hay out there for them to supplement them along to get us through the drought. We've added a lot of carbon and nutrients to this pasture, but it just really hasn't performed like we want.

15:10 Another perennial we were kind of excited about was kernza. Put that into a field in the fall of 2020, I think, part of the Farms program. We seeded it as a monoculture. It's really kind of intriguing to me to have the opportunity to maybe harvest a high value grain or seed crop off of it and then still have the flexibility to graze it. As a monoculture you can tell kernza has a lot of potential for forage when it rains. The first year it did really well—we harvested the seed and stripped it off. They really want the residue taken off the field so they get the sunlight back down with the crown. So we swathed and bailed the residue. Part of my project for the Farms program was to pasture crop diverse annuals into this, and that's how we were going to add diversity. But they just never performed for us. We've since taken this kernza out of production as well.

16:22 That was just that first fall when we tried to pasture crop—you can see very little of it emerged or survived the hot, dry summers. This particular mix is probably by far and away what we're going to today, and we've tweaked this through the years. Jim Garris kind

16:43 Doug Spencer, he's a state grazing specialist at Kansas within our CS, and he's been a tremendous resource for me. I've learned from Doug that the native prairie in our area was 85% by weight grasses and about 13% forbs and 2% shrubs. The forbs by population or plant species far outnumber the grasses, but by weight the native prairie was about 85% grasses. So when we try to design the mix, I think we should probably look at that when we try to design cover crop mixes as well.

17:32 We've got the tall grasses, the mid grasses, short grass, a couple cool season grasses in there. Alfalfa is not a native, but I like it in the mix at half a pound. You don't want too much alfalfa because it'll overpower those natives when you're trying to get them established. Sweet clover is good. The cicer milk vetch I really like at half a pound in the mixes. The Illinois bundled flower is good. Maximum sunflower we backed that down to about a tenth of a pound. Purple prairie clover we've seen all these except lead plant, which would be a shrub, and we have not seen that in any of our mixes.

18:17 Heath aster we've seen. Dogtail feather, chory and plantain we threw in the last mix. Again, those are two that you're not going to put a bunch of that in because it'll overpower those natives when they're trying to get going. I think even that quarter pound rate is probably a bit much. I think next time we'll be down to maybe a tenth of a pound of those two.

18:38 The cool season mix has two advantages: one, they're a lot cheaper, and two, they establish faster. One of the big drawbacks to these more native mixes is it takes some time to get them established. But year one, if we do this right, we can still harvest 45 animal days per acre typically. In this picture here, this was a lot of volunteer grain, storm and pig weeds and other weeds, but we still grazed this year one with managing our grazing.

19:13 Year two you really don't see much. A lot of the weeds go away. The perennials are just trying to take hold and the whole thing kind of just sleeps for that year. So a lot of times in year two we're not taking any grazing off of it. If we do, it's very light. But then the third year these things just explode. It's hard to believe it goes from this to this in three years. That's what we've seen. It's kind of been a challenge through the years trying to match what cattle numbers we need and how these things are going to perform, but we've kind of fine-tuned what we can expect out of these. They're just really unbelievable when you go out in these fields and see all the life that's out there.

20:03 Managing or grazing on that's absolutely key. Trying to maximize grazing utilization and trampling and all that stuff. This was another mix year three. We went through this later in the season. It was obviously stage three grass but that's okay. I don't mind if some of this goes to seed some years.

20:29 This was another field, the fourth year on one field. When you look at these pictures I want you to keep in mind the drought conditions that we've really had from July of 21 till really present. June this June we've had about nine inches of precipitation. But in and out of D4 drought and to see these things, the resilience that we build into this is really quite amazing.

21:00 This was in June. The 1st of May of 22 we didn't know if we were going to have much to graze and we got rain in 22 and 23. We both got rains in May and June both years and these things just really exploded. The diversity out there is just amazing.

21:17 This was that same paddock that we were leaving behind, and then this was the same paddock in September. At this time we were in D3 drought going in to D4. This was the regrowth that we had on that same paddock. At the same time our neighbors' pastures were completely grazed down, overgrazed, and starting to feed hay already. This was the regrowth that we saw.

21:44 Last year, when trying to figure out how many cattle we should have, going into May last year we were so dry we destocked all our yearlings and tried to keep the cow herd intact. Then we got rain in May and June and we got ample forage again for the year. We ended up not grazing about 320 acres that didn't get grazed during the summer at all. So we went through that this winter with stockpile grazed it.

22:15 I wanted to get it trampled down so we had rain and some moisture in December and January and the Western wheat grass really took off so the cattle were getting their protein out of that Western wheat and making them meet some of that dry with it so that it's just really neat to see these perennials take advantage of the moisture when you get them and that's the big thing with the perennials versus the annuals. We have living roots 365 days a year, we have soil armor 365 days a year and from my observations I just don't believe that in my environment we can do that with annual cropping because we go through these extended periods of drought where we just can't keep living roots in the soil and we can't keep the soil covered.

23:04 So yeah that's what this spring again in May we're really dry in May, we're making plans to move cattle out and then in June we started getting rain and then this is what it's turned into. So starting to get questions from neighbors about this, they come by and they're asking me like they just can't believe how much grass we have and it's just a testament really to the grazing management more than anything but here's what we're leaving behind. Again this is that a third year on this mix, just took this picture a few weeks ago and just all that diversity out there is just really amazing.

23:45 Just a few pictures of, I like to do fence sign pictures of where we're what we're taking off, what we're leaving behind and what the next paddocks look like. This year we're moving, we're changing our grazing up on some fields and kind of gave Hunter this idea and he's taking off on this and doing a really good job where we're changing our grazing from one direction to another so now our paddocks this year are on these, some of these perennials are long and narrow and on the paddock on the right the day before we just had first turned them in there so we were kind of just guessing 45 animal days to start, that's what we gave them and after a day of grazing then we were leaving too much so we've got those pinched down, we're taking 60 animal days off of this now but when you leave these corridors or paddocks long and narrow, these cattle will go up and down like two times before you're done moving the poly wires, just it completely changes their traffic pattern and grazing habits. It's kind of fun to watch and observe.

24:54 So I want to spend a little time here just talking about results that we've seen. This was a kernza in May 22, up there it says this was obviously very droughted, this is monoculture kernza, keep in mind the kind of a point I want to make here and then this was in June, we didn't harvest the kernza for two years, we just swapped and bailed it because of drought but we would get a rain and it would green up for about a week and then it would go back to drought conditions so we ended up swatting the bail on this kernza but I took these other pictures, this is the same day. Drought stressed monoculture perennial versus diverse perennial mix and these fields are within a half to three-quarter mile apart, these fields are just thriving and there's another one same taken the same day so just the power of diversity is truly amazing.

25:50 More pictures of just kind of resilience in the program that we're developing and these are the grass finish beef, he kind of touched on this and we harvest our grass finish beef towards the end of June and we time that so we have it kind of matches up our spring rainfall so we have lush growth and we're finishing on these beef on this diverse perennial pastures because we feel that's important to produce quality beef. So and you really need 90 to 100 days of good quality finishing towards the end I think to really put the finish on the animals and so we the last two years have been a struggle. We're at almost the end of April in a drought and we don't have anything green to graze to speak of, there's a little bit of the deep rooted forbs, the alfalfa and the cicer milk vetch just starting to green up but it's just so dry so we need a place to go with them so we turn them out and we slow them down instead of speeding up the moves and we would let them graze for a day and then we supplement alfalfa for two days and then we'd move them to a new paddock and then we started getting some rains and they really took off and then this was in July that year.

27:10 Yeah and the cattle, they still finished, I mean they got fat and the beef was excellent. Those 23 beef we sent three of those beef samples off, we're taking part in the bionutrient food association beef study so we sent.

27:25 Ribe eyes from three different animals off to them along with forage anal or forage samples manure samples soil samples. So we're anxiously awaiting all the results from that. I will share that the three beef the average Omega 6 to omega 3 ratio was 1.41 to 1. So that's a good deal.

27:48 I talk about life in these fields. It's fine to go out there and then move the polywire and then you see something that wasn't in the mix and hasn't been there for years and all of a sudden shows up. This is wild bergamont and we see this in the fields all the time. Species that we didn't see that are just showing up. And then the birds, the brown headed cowbirds and we have Eastern Western Metal ARS, the dick sisle Bob White quail and just all these birds and numbers in these perennial fields is just really cool to see and a sign of a healthy ecosystem.

28:24 The dung beetles are tremendous. It's amazing how many dung beetles you must have when you move the polywire and the next day all the manure paths are just covered in dung beetles. It's just amazing to think of that the numbers that biology out there. There's different species of dung beetles as well.

28:47 What do we see in the soil? When we're annual cropping we see this a lot on the left plating us where you don't have something growing for a while the biology collapses your soil structure collapses. And then when we move to these perennial systems it doesn't take long at all for all that platin to go away and you start to build good aggregation.

29:07 This is another one. These fields are all in the same section literally across the fence just managed differently. The one on the left is long-term noil with some cover crops grazing. The one in the middle is very intensively cover cropped and grazed with progressive practices for a long time. And then the one on the right that was like years in a perennial. So big make big changes fast.

29:32 How does this happen? It's the roots. Those warm season grasses have tremendous fibrous roots but these Forbes in here the cyer milkfish and the alal and the CH. I mean you just can't do this with annual crops. The roots of those perennials are just amazing. And the thing you notice is the aggregation at depth. We're putting aggregates way deeper than we ever could in our annual system and I think that's really important because then when you have aggregation to depth you have oxygen going deeper into the profile. Your water's moving better through the soil. You're going to have biology more life deeper into the soil profile as well.

30:14 Jay fur did this on my place a couple winters ago. This was we were in D4 drought. This was in January so middle of the winter and the soils were beyond dry. Dug three soil pits and the one on the left was that annual crop you know intensive so health practices is good doing a good job on it. The middle sample was the monoculture kernza so monoculture perennial. And then the one on the right is a diverse perennial mix. So the aggregate stability is far and away superior in those perennial mixes.

30:53 Yeah so I think that's kind of about all I had.

31:04 Keith all right well thank you Kevin. That was go go back a couple slides to some of that soil. That's just some beautiful looking soil. And then some of the other ones where you were comparing them. There's just incredible soil structure. And I will come back to the concept of aggregation at depth because that is a concept that Christine Jones was recently through the United States here and talked extensively about that. So I do want to come back to that but I want to go back to the beginning.

31:42 First of all put in a plug for you mentioned that you went on the Dakota lakes bus trip. Brian and I went on that too. Really a life-changing moment for many of us who are in this whether you call it soil health or regenerative. What made that trip such a powerful impact on you? I was blessed to have my dad go along with me at the time. So I was fortunate that he went along and saw it as well. So it made the transition easier but you know and this that was at a time where there was no mention of cover crops Dakota lakes as well. But I guess initially it was just the lure of growing more crops. Instead of a wheat fallow system or wheat sorum fallow system we're going to grow a cash crop every year. The idea that organic matter was going to go up. Infiltration was going to go up. Weed pressure was going to get less. And a lot of that was true in the beginning. And then you know the wheels kind of fell off the bus on the notel by itself yeah. So it didn't take long for us to start experimenting with cover crops.

32:59 And that when Amir Calgary was a no-till on the plains, you know, then people started going home and experimenting with that. But like I say, even with cover crops and stuff, we still, our soils just really struggle to take in water. And I guess for me, I really want to figure that out before I'm done farming. So that was one of the primary reasons when I started why I started doing perennial initially. But well, the way those pictures look, I think you're very well on your way.

33:31 Do want to put in a plug for the Dakota Lakes or the Northern bus tour if you're interested. No-till on the plains is doing another one this year. I don't know that they're sold out yet, but they probably are getting close. If you go to no.org, you can get information. That's July 29th through the 31st. And it's going to be kind of fun because I can't remember what year Brian and I went on that, but it was very impactful for us. Brian's going again this year and taking one of his grandsons with him. So again, it's cool to see, you know, you went with your father, you know, I went with my brother. It's just cool to see the generational type things and the family connections because it does make a difference and an impact. So if anybody that's watching this is interested, go to no.org and you can get all that information. They'll be going to Dakota Lakes, they'll be going to Rick Bieber's Farm, they're going to the Boeken Farm, which Gabe Brown kind of started. Jay Furer's still very involved in that Black Leg Ranch up there. So going to be a great trip and hopefully you can get in on that yet if you want to.

34:39 And that bus tour, we came back from that and like we went to Dan Forgey's place and you know Dwayne Beck, and we literally came back from that and Dad and I, the next day, we went to John Deere and ordered a new no-till drill. Like, and sold all the till equipment. It had that much of an impact on our operations.

34:59 So that's incredible. Yeah, the John Deere dealer should have been sponsoring, right? Exactly. But yeah, and you're not alone in that. There were a tremendous amount of people, and you know I've said for many years I think Dwayne Beck has had more of an impact, especially an economic impact on farming in our area, you know, these Southern Central and high Plains, than anybody else in our generation because he's just fundamentally changed the landscape of agriculture for us.

35:37 So impressive. If you can get to that, I want to go back. Early on you said economics were a big driver for you and switching over to perennials. There are lots of other reasons too: the infiltration, the erosion, and all that. Can you talk a little bit more about what those economics look like? I mean this year, yeah, sure. You know, probably 80% of the people growing a row crop are going to lose money this year even with a good crop, right? And that, I should have tested more on that. That's key.

36:06 And especially when you look at expenses, the way you know we saw this in 2011, 2012, and 2013, and you know everything goes up, and then now it's at a new level. Machinery costs and all these inputs we're putting more and more chemicals on. And then for me, it's the realization of trying to grow these grain crops. Should we be growing them anyway, you know, in the western Great Plains in these brittle environments which we're in? Does it really make sense to be growing some of this stuff? So yeah, the economics for me, and I'll just be blunt, in 2023, so we, our gross revenue per animal day grazing was a little over $4. So when you look at that, so say we harvest 60 animal days off of a perennial and we grow over $240 an acre. And then you know our expenses are coming out of that, and I pay, you know, I paid cash rent on some of this farm for crop land rental rates. But beyond that, you know, we had our infrastructure, we advertised some of that out. Some of it we got funded, helped funded through equipment. You know, other than that, in labor we just, we don't put anything into these systems anymore. There's no chemicals or fertilizers. It's just the time that it takes to move the cattle. So when you look at that, the return on that and compare that like in our environment where you know most farmers are wheat, sorghum, and milo, and the wheat is break-even at best. And so it takes you two years to grow a wheat crop that's going to break even probably most years, maybe. And then maybe you make, you know, milo we usually can make some money on. And then, like, does that really make sense? And for me, it really doesn't. I would rather, you know, I look at this more like it's a lot less risk and we're making money every year. Maybe it's not as much in the good year, but we're certainly not losing any money on any given year. And I might add that that $4 gross, that's figuring all everything. And when we look at that.

43:51 You've had three plus years so we've tested infiltration rates and a lot of times it doesn't show a lot better like in those perennials and I don't know that I put a lot of faith in that. I think if you did a transact and you did an infiltration ring exactly every 3 feet for you know 50 whatever transacts I think it would look different but just based on observation and that's strictly what I'm going by here is yeah we got that 5 in and it was about a three-hour rainfall event and we had runoff in those perennials and I can tell because you know a lot of those fields are terraced. So when you go out there and there's water standing in the terraces you know we there was water moving off of those fields at some point but what you notice is I have no doubt that we took in more water because when you walk out there and you go to move cattle I mean it's just it's like a sponge and that soil is so wet compared to the cropland fields and then it stays wet so much longer like the cropland fields. And that 5 inch rain and three days later there was dirt blowing in this area like it sealed them off and those perennial fields stayed wet for a long time.

45:15 And that goes you see that all summer long like especially the last two summers we've got rain in May and June and then it's shut off and we're still growing forage all summer when the set stock pasture are burned up. So yeah that's a big deal like you know I would venture to guess that we might lose half of our rainfall to runoff. So what can we produce if we can catch all of it or you know three quarters of it or 90% of it and we're seeing that and a lot of that is the resiliency that I've been showing in the pictures too is how well these things are bouncing back.

45:50 Yeah and the picture where you had the comparison of the three-year perennial versus is your KZA I mean that's pretty stunning. It is yeah it's amazing and not you know I think a lot of that's just diversity you know we don't know exactly what's all going on underneath there but I think it's there's a lot to the diversity.

46:12 Yeah yeah so just like no-till by itself wasn't enough you know we all kind of learned that after a few years of no-till and you saw those benefits start to tail off perennials monoculture perennials by themselves aren't enough either you need that diversity key in there.

46:30 Yep. You made the comment when you were talking about all the infrastructure the time and the money and the energy you spent putting that in you made the comment it has to be easy to make it work. Talk a little bit more about that. You know when you say it has to be easy what pieces or what parts of it have to be made easy? So the first year we tried this and we've hauled water for years with livestock integration but the first year we did this we had a 2,000 foot reel of HDPE of I think it was inch and a half or inch and a quarter HDPE and we would try to move this water line you know and reel this thing up and we were moving cattle across the roads and we didn't have our you know the perimeter hot wires and all that established and it was just to be honest with you it was a lot of work you know to physically to make that happen.

47:30 And it so now with our infrastructure in place like we just we don't haul water anymore we can get water within you know easily within a quarter mile of any place on our on those all those contiguous acres now easily. So that was probably the biggest thing and we knew you know then it it goes a function of time we can go out and move cattle you know quickly if we need to and yeah just if it's not easy you're not going to do it very long so we've learned that.

48:04 Yeah you know but one of the favorite guys that I ever heard talk just very entertaining incredibly educational and I'm sure you heard him before to Neil Dennis he spoke at no till on the plains many times unfortunately he passed away number years ago but he was so great at sharing his story and I remember one of the talks he had was entitled 'if you're going to be lazy be smart' and that's that's kind of the same concept you know it's like you know not that he was lazy because he was an incredibly hard worker and as all of us are and you're not making it easy because you're lazy you're making it maybe convenient is a better word you're making it convenient so it actually gets done right it doesn't take the entire day to do.

48:52 Exactly and then so I had a visit with a neighbor here that was a week or so ago and he tried this for a year and he saw results but he just commented to me on the time it takes like we spend you know it takes time to do this every morning somebody's got to do this and I got to thinking about that comment on the time and I really it really got me thinking like there isn't anything that I have done on my farm or ranch that I have seen the results that we see by devoting this

49:29 Time to managing our grazing like that. We can physically see there's nothing on our farm that compares to this. So if that's true and it is true on our place, why would you not want to devote an hour a day to that type of management practice? How many hours a day do we devote to things that show no results whatsoever? So that's a plus, plus, like you said it's somewhat therapeutic. It's kind of your go-to. It's very therapeutic.

50:03 That's a great point, you know, how many hours a day do we spend working on things that have no return? Yeah, I may not want to know the answer. Yeah. So you mentioned neighbors again, and you mentioned that you've got some neighbors starting to ask questions. And I can imagine, you know, they look across the fence and see all that ag you have and the golf course that they've got out there with nothing growing. Have you seen any of the episodes from Peter Bicks Root So Deep? Yeah, we actually as a family we watched that over the last few weeks, watched the whole thing.

50:47 I just make a comment on that because it's such a powerful testimony, not only to the type of grazing system that you're doing but more so the power of connection between neighbors. That I highly recommend watching. You know, it's twenty bucks I think to rent the thing. It's well done. And that's for all four parts.

51:11 We watched it as a family, and yeah that was a surprising thing at the end, you know, the last one I don't want to spoil it for everybody, but it was that connection and how these neighboring farmers really never talked to each other before, and now all of a sudden these neighboring farmers are interested: how do we start to implement some of these practices? So very encouraging to see that.

51:35 So if you haven't seen that, Jonathan just posted in the chat there too: go to RodDE.org. Peter Bicks is a filmmaker out of Arizona State. He's actually been in person to a couple of our Regen Nexus events in Scottsdale. We've showed some of the episodes at our conference, Regen Nexus conference in Omaha. But it's a very powerful, again, super scientific deep science study of the regenerative grazing like what Kevin is doing and conventional grazing, and with paired sets of neighbors right across fence lines from each other. So they pull the science from both sides of that fence, which is a fascinating study by itself. But the sociological aspect of the neighbor connections is—and it's a sensitive subject—but I think Peter Bicks just does a great job of handling it, taking something that could be very uncomfortable and really making it work. So if you haven't seen that, please go watch that. We'd love to know what you think about that. But I definitely think it's well worth the twenty bucks to you. Where else can you watch four hour-long episodes for sure? Yeah, that's pretty cheap entertainment for sure, way better than most stuff that's on.

52:58 Want to get to a few questions that people are asking here. Kevin, Buck is from Southwest Oklahoma. He's asking: do you have any cool season perennials mixed in for grazing in the winter? I think he's talking about, you know, you talked about stockpile grazing. Are you doing the stockpile grazing mostly with your warm season or the cool season? Both, but our cool season pasture, just with the drought the last three years, just the cool season by itself just really don't perform in our environment. We do have the Western wheatgrass and the Canada wild rye in our diverse mixes, and those, if we get rain or snow or whatever in the winter, those will green up, and that's what we stockpile graze.

53:51 I'm tempted to try another cool season pasture just with a lot more diversity just to see if we can make it work here. So I don't know if that answered that question or not. You know, as people think about converting to perennials, one of the questions I always ask them is, you know, how long are you planning on leaving it in? Because if you're only going to leave it in for five years, well, you can't spend a hundred plus dollars an acre and have to wait till the third year to get any production and then take it out a couple years later. Like with warm season, that's got to be, what do you think, at least a ten to fifteen year commitment? Yeah, I think on what I've done it's about ten years. Yeah, that's a good point. The cool season mix as they established faster, they also seem to kind of peter out faster too. Five years is very reasonable. Yeah, I think five years is going to be a good number. If you can get five or six years out of them, you're probably going to be.

54:50 Terminating them anyway and doing something different. I think it kind of depends on what your goals are and then it'll be really interesting to hear your report down the road what the long-term effects, you know, as you rotate these systems in and out of perennials. You know, how did the annual cropping go behind that? I can only imagine that soil structure, the organic matter, the biology is going to really get you some good crops for a number of years. And that's something they did at the Manokin Farm, obviously they have the perennial pasture and it's I think five years maybe, and Jay will say, you know, they see the organic matter ticks up in those five years and the pH goes to neutral but then when they start cropping it again, the organic matter goes back down and the pH goes back the way it was before. So it's not like you're going to plant these perennials and that's going to stay that way if you go back to annual cropping.

55:46 Yeah, it's a good point. The warm season mixes I've grown, I think, you know, 10 year, that's what I amortise the cost out over 10 years. And you can spend, well, I mean you could easy spend $150 an acre on that mix, so which sounds like a lot but if you say $15 an acre per year for seed, well hey, that's pretty cheap. And some of these, I don't know that'll ever break out. I mean, they just keep getting better and better. And you know, if we can make money, keep doing it. I don't know that'll ever break them, at least in my lifetime, back out, especially if corn stays $3. Exactly, there's no incentive to do that. I mean, you've got you've got that set up really well for future production and for future generations there.

56:39 You mentioned aggregation at depth, and I don't know if you've listened to or if people listening here if you heard the podcast that John Kemp did with Rick Clark. Yes, came out a few weeks ago. It was when we did a deal at Rick's place in Indiana. We had Christine Jones come in there, and so that whole podcast was kind of a rehash of what a small group of us had learned with Dr. Jones there. And one of the things they talked about extensively is she talked about how important it was to fix carbon and have aggregation at depth, 30, 40 inches deep, you know, a meter deep as she was saying. And that's just such a concept, you know, when we soil test, you know, 0 to 6, 0 to 8, what's our organic matter there? And you know she's saying that doesn't matter near as much because that's always cycling, it's always changing but what matters is getting it deep. So how deep do those chicory roots go, those alfalfa, crown digging, how deep are those?

57:37 I don't know how deep they are. I know we dug those pits when Jay was here and they were three or four foot deep and they were still big, big, yeah, they were still big down there. So how far down they go, probably 10, 12 feet, I would guess.

57:57 Yeah, so that's one thing that you know I listened to that podcast too and they made a comment on there about, and you were there obviously but it was a comment on the fastest way to build soil or something that was plant to diverse cover crop, let it get at the almost reproductive stage, terminate it however way and then plant another one. And so we do some of that full season stuff, you know, with cover crops, annual, but I guess part of that is your context too. Like for us in our environments and brittle environments in the western Great Plains and in general we go through these times where we just can't, we just don't know if the annuals are going to grow and sometimes they don't grow. Where at least with these perennial systems there's always cover on the soil and there's always a living root there, and I think that's why we're seeing, you know, a lot of the results we're seeing.

58:55 Yeah, it's funny because they talked about it a little bit in that podcast but throughout the whole course of that day it was a bit of a running joke because Rick Clark, you know, chicory is a bane plant for him because in an organic no-till situation it's really hard to get rid of, and Christine just kept saying why do you want to get rid of it, it's such a great plant. She kept pointing out dandelions, dandelions are such a great plant. So he's having to kind of rethink these things that you know he thought are problems, how do you embrace them? But well, obviously chicory is huge, hugely beneficial in a grazing situation. Yeah, in a grazing situation I don't know. Yeah, they're all good plants, you know, I guess some are better than others but yeah, so that's the advantage of that.

59:41 Yeah, so we, one of the people asking a question here, they're asking could you go back and show the quotes again that you had in your presentation? Sure, figure out how to do, maybe didn't catch the quote there.

1:00:04 Whoops, yeah, the first one I got from that was from Ranching for Profit and I, like I say, I tell myself that every.

1:00:11 Single day there's the first one you have the perfect system in place to get the same results you are currently getting that is if you're happy with where you're at don't change anything. Exactly, if you're not happy you better change something. And we talk about making changes, you know everybody does and it's like unless you make those changes or any change then it's not going to change.

1:00:35 So there was the first one and the other one I soon as I heard this on Working Cow's podcast I stopped and had to write it down from Burke Tiger. So he was I really enjoy him. Yeah, yeah, so become open-minded, be open to new ideas, different ways of doing things but right, don't go broke doing it, don't be gullible. Yeah, and you know don't make the switch on all your acres at once, exactly. Yeah, yeah, we hear a lot of things you know, it's you know quit putting fertilizer on or put this on and it's like you might not want to do that on your whole farm or plant perennials you know you might want to play with a little first.

1:01:17 Yeah, well and that might be we're running up against our end of our hour here actually just a little bit over. It's been such good content but maybe that'll be a good way to kind of close out Kevin. Is what advice would you have to somebody who wants to get started who wants to be open-minded, doesn't want to be gullible, doesn't want to risk the whole farm doing it. What advice would you give to them of how they could get started doing some of these things?

1:01:42 Yeah, the biggest thing is just get started, you know it is truly a mindset shift and you know to be honest with you I struggled with that for a long time as well and I don't know if it just came with age you know or why but now I'm just never content with what we're doing and I want to find ways to be better and do better. And I guess as far as advice is you just have to start somewhere and go out and you know go to all these things we're talking about, no-till on the plains and CCTA meeting and watch these or listen to podcasts and go to Dakota lakes and Monoin farm and get these ideas and think about how you can implement them on your farm because everybody's context is different you know and that's okay. Some things you're just not going to be able to do but the biggest thing is just you have to make your mind up that you know we're going to try some of these things.

1:02:50 A great point and it's never been easier to get that information you know, YouTube you know, we this whole series will be on our YouTube channel, there's never been an easier time to get the information. Fact, the biggest problem is there's so much information, be good at filtering out what's the most important. Yeah, and that's where that quote I think is important because there is a lot of information out there and some of it looks really cool on a YouTube video or whatever you know and some of it yeah just might not work but probably the biggest thing, the biggest advice I'd have to any body is go visit people's farms and get out of your own zone. And I you know I'm not on social media or you know I look at some of this stuff, go to conferences but I invite anybody in the world you know, if you want to see what we're doing the best way to learn is to come, I will be happy to show you what we're doing and tell you what we've done wrong and try to help you and teach you and I've learned so much just doing that is just going to other places and trying to figure that out. So for me that would be my number one piece of advice.

1:04:01 Because go, yeah, if you never do that, go back to that first quote, if you never get out and see other places you're stuck right here. Yeah, that's right, that's where you're stuck. So yeah, so you got to get out and meet people and see what's being done for yourself.

1:04:22 So well that's great advice to end on I think Kevin, again we appreciate you being on here so much. You'd like to get a hold of Kevin to either tour a place or buy some grass-fed beef, just contact Green Cover, we've got his contact information, we'd be happy to pass that on to you if you're interested in that.

1:04:40 Next week will be the last episode in this series of integrating livestock producers. We're closing it out with Brad McIntyre. Brad and his family farm up in the Treasure Valley of Idaho, the Boise Idaho area. In fact Brad was just here touring our place a couple days ago. They got a family reunion but he'll be back in Idaho and we'll be on speaking even more specifically about marketing their products. They've got 3,000 layer hens, they raise hogs, they raise beef and they're marketing all of this, most of this directly to the consumer. In addition Brad also grows our turnips and our collards and our Ethiopian cabbage and teff grass. He's a big seed grower and cleans a lot of seed for us up there in Idaho as well. So be a real fascinating conversation and a great way to end a great webinar series. So thanks for watching everybody, have a great day. Thanks.