Corn Interseeding for Soil Health: Scott Richert's Real-World Approach

0:00 Hey everybody, welcome to the Green Cover podcast where we have really interesting conversations with some of the top producers and experts in the regenerative world and we'll learn together how to regenerate God's creation for future generations. My guest today, Scott Richard, is a new team member to Green Cover, but also a very experienced farmer. So we're going to visit with him about his farming experience and why he is coming on as part of the sales team here at Green Cover. I think it promises to be a really enlightening and interesting conversation as he brings real world experience into the Green Cover team of cover crop sales. So, Scott, welcome to the podcast.

0:44 Well, thanks for having me. Thanks for having me. So we're excited not only to have you on the podcast, but to have you on the team as well. We've known you for many years. You've been a great customer for many years. You were actually Brian's roommate in college. You can talk a little bit about that. Maybe we'll share you can share some Brian stories on the outtakes or something here. But we've known you for many years. We know that you're a great farmer and the opportunity came up to bring you on as a part-time sales team member and we're excited about that. So tell us a little bit about your background because you're continuing to farm of course still, but tell us a little bit about your farming background and kind of what brought you to the place where you're at now.

1:28 Well, so if we go back far enough back to college, you know, Brian was one of my roommates. Not my first one, but my second set of roommates, I guess. And we graduated college and I got a part-time job with the at that time ASCS office. I was a field scout, but I was helping my dad farm at the same time. And what I found out was when it when everybody wanted their field scout measured or bins measured was when I was trying to help dad farm. And so that lasted about a year and I retired from that and that next year started renting some ground from my grandfather and just kind of went from there. So we were farming, dad and I together. I was buying some equipment right away, but he had the planter and we worked together and seeded corn was coming into the country. Pioneer had a plant at Donafan and they had started to eek into my area and you know the guys were calling and wondering about you know what are you going to have and trying to get their isolations right and we were growing white corn back in the '90s and dad started moving fields around to try to work out with the neighbors and I said you know what we're going to run into this issue going forward and maybe we should just try growing seed. So we started growing seed for Pioneer and it went well. We've been we did it for a long time, 20-some years or more.

3:00 And you know we you get into it and where the things started to change for me was during the pandemic and I think I heard that on one of your other podcasts the internet university. I was on YouTube during the pandemic and ran across this guy named Gabe Brown and he was saying some of the same stuff I was starting to think. I was struggling on weeds, trying to kill weeds with herbicides and we were spraying a lot of herbicides and I just thought, you know what, these weeds are faster than we are. They're adjusting faster than we are. There's got to be a little bit better way. So I had started with covers with you guys shortly after you started. I started using them and then we had kind of a lull where you know whether they had personnel to get it done or however it was. Started with radishes and turnips just trying to have something to help hold the machines up when they were harvesting because invariably at least one of the fields would come out a little wetter than you wanted when they in the seed corn acres. The seed corn. Yeah, in the seed corn when they had to harvest it. And we started there. And the interesting thing was, you know, we were always running a fairly high.

4:13 Parts per million nitrogen in our soil tests behind seed corn, which I couldn't figure out except for the fact that it had more time to recycle because the seed was coming off in September, early October.

4:26 And that year after we planted radishes and turnups, we sampled and we went from like 90 to 100 parts per million down to like 15 behind the radishes and turnips. And I said, 'Well, that's a nice unintended consequence.' You know, we had the tubers there to help hold the machines up to some extent, but then we also were sequestering some of our nutrients. And we did that for a few years. And to be clear, you weren't losing that nitrogen. It was just in the plants. So it wasn't leeching into the water systems, right?

5:03 So we continued that way and then guys were interested in grazing it and I was interested in getting them in there to graze it too. What was left of the radishes, turnips, and whatever kernels were on the ground. But what we found out with radishes and turnups and seed corn is by spring your dirt's blowing because there's nothing left.

5:24 And so then just towards the time I started listening to Gabe Brown and others is about the time I started going with a more diverse blend. You know, we started throwing rye in and that changed how we had to apply it because I had spinner spreaders on my destroyer when we destroyed male. That's when we were able to intercede those covers late in the season. And I didn't have enough capacity if we were going to put on 45 pounds of rye too. But we ended up hiring a big rig to come in. And for a couple years, my last two years I think of seed corn, I had a diverse blend with flax and buckwheat and cereal rye and radishes and turnips and things. And I really like that. That was kind of exciting. That was the one thing I miss about not having seed corn is not getting that in there.

6:16 And so about three years ago now, I decided the seed corn companies want their covers terminated two weeks prior to planting. We're usually planting by now. This time of year, the 28th I think is today. Usually we're running by now, which means you're killing it the 10th of April or so. And there just is such little growth that you barely hold the dirt from blowing, which is my big why. I don't like dirt moving, whether it's wind or water. I just don't like it moving. That's our highest price soil, our best soil, and it's blowing. You work too hard to build it up, you can't afford to lose it.

6:58 Yeah. It's expensive to buy it and it's expensive to build it. And so I just assume keep what I have. And so that was kind of my sticking point, and trying to kill the weeds. I had been when my grandfather was alive, we got into some warm debate about weeds and seed corn. And I had told him I'm going to clean them up in the bean year. You know, we had the bean herbicide roundup. We were roundup ready beans and then we were cleaning everything up.

7:27 And here five years ago or so, I was—Grandpa was gone, but I didn't feel comfortable anymore. I couldn't say, 'Yeah, I'm going to get them all cleaned up in the bean year anymore' because we were really starting to struggle. And so that's when I decided I want to try something different. Got into non-GMO corn situation where I lost a seed field for isolation or whatever the problem was late, and I had to do something. And we planted some non-GMO corn, which I grew back in the early 1980s and 1990s.

7:57 And so that really worked well. And then we just kind of continued from there. And it's been interesting. It's a challenge. It's kind of like Rick Clark has said too. I watched him and he said, 'Well, you know, when you got to know why you're growing your covers and if you're wanting to cycle nutrients or you're wanting to get more carbon, you got to be relax and try to stay calm and don't get—

8:26 Out ahead of it too far. That's probably the toughest part for me is just, you know, middle of April and all my neighbors are running and I'm still trying to stay relaxed and just keep working slowly on getting my stuff ready to go the way I want so that when I'm ready to hit it, I can hit it. Yeah. And waiting for the ground temperatures to get, you know, you by waiting a couple of extra weeks, you know, that corn comes out of the ground so much faster, too, as many people know and understand. So, a great background, you know, very diverse farming background. And you're in eastern Nebraska, so kind of outside of the Seward area. And so, you know, and that's one of the reasons that we think you're very valuable asset to the Green Cover team is that you're bringing this practical agronomy and farming experience and expertise to the sales team. So you'll be selling some seed but also acting as a support system for the rest of the sales team as well with a lot of these agronomic questions. So we look forward to that.

9:33 So I want to jump into a couple of specific things here with you Scott that I think will be of a lot of interest to our listeners and one is around the topic of interceding into corn. That's been a real hot topic the last several years. We've done a lot of work, you know, with our own plots. I know that you've done a lot, you know, on your fields and stuff. So, I want to just talk about what you've seen, what you've learned, what you like, what you're still what problems you're still trying to solve when it comes to interceding cover crops into corn. And we're talking about early the early side of things here, you know, V2, V4 in that time frame. So, talk a little bit about how you got started down that path and what you've seen.

10:16 So it kind of was the whole diversity thing. You know, corn and soybeans not real diverse. Both warm seasons, both growing basically the same time of year. And then, you know, by the end of September, you don't have anything growing again till end of May, end of April for sure, in that situation. And so that's kind of where it started was trying to get more diversity out there. And I had experienced that in the seed corn where I was able to go late because we had a pass going through and we could make it work. And so I wanted to do that. But late in regular commercial corn I just don't I'm not necessarily excited about running a rig through, you know, when the ears are hanging in the rows. And I've got hills too on other fields where I was growing seed corn and I just don't like running stuff down. You've got it that far. Why run it down then? I'd rather hit it with a combine first. So, we looked into the interceding and I had done a little bit in soybeans back in the 90s on a rough field with some rye. First year worked great. Second year didn't work at all. It just didn't it was too dry. We didn't get the rain. And then the squeeze of the 90s kind of slowed that whole thing down. So, we looked at it and I talked with you guys and we got a mix together that was fairly diverse. We've gotten a little more diverse the last couple years, but we've I first year I had thought I had somebody coming to do it for me and then turned out well no that wasn't going to be available for a couple more months and I thought well this is kind of a time sensitive thing. So that first year we got it blown on. It was a boom a dry fertilizer spreader with a boom on it. They showed up the wind was blowing 18 miles an hour, the corner is already V7, you know, and it just it didn't work well because there's too much interception and but it worked a little. It worked enough I got to see it and so then I had to work on well how am I going to get this stuff on and what I've done it's not where I'm hoping to be yet. I've got a rig that we just haven't got to the field last year to try it out where I'm going to be blowing it in on my own at the ground level with a ground rig. But the last two years we've flown it on with an airplane and they've done really

12:36 Well, last year it was one of those exceptional years where we caught 90 hundredths of rain the next day and I didn't have to water any of it. I am basically all irrigated just pivot corners. That's not, and so I've gone the track of blowing it on top even though it's going into what was a rye and veetch residue, balansa clover that was fall seeded, blowing that in. And if I don't get the rain we start the pump, we start the irrigation up right behind it, water it in and get it going.

13:08 Now I'm sure I could get by, I'd have a better stand if I went and drilled it, but I don't, I'm just not set up for it yet. And I'm trying to cover, you know, a thousand acres or whatever, so you don't have a lot of time. It's a time-sensitive thing. And I've got an aerial company that has done a good job the last two years. You know, you get out on the edges and it's not as thick as you'd like maybe, but really it's worked pretty well.

13:37 I think if you're able to drill it, you could. Yeah, earlier you talked about when you were at having it blown on at V7, you know, there was interception. Are you talking about, did the plants intercept too much of the seed coming down or are you talking about sunlight interception?

13:55 I think it was both. It was both. Some of the seed just didn't get to the ground, got stuck in the plants, and so it just didn't make it. But then there's just no light. And you can, the really neat thing about it is, you know, like pivot tracks or if you've got a ground squirrel hole that clears some of your corn out and you get this pivot crop growing and it's thick and it's big and you go, 'Well, yeah, it's light.' That's where the problem is. We don't have enough light in big healthy irrigated corn.

14:24 So that's the good thing. So we're harvesting the light even if we don't have our cash plant there, at least this cover that we blew in or flown on or whatever is going to catch that light, intercept it, and it really does sequester weeds. Even that second one, if you get something else growing, now it's not going to stop them if they're going, they're ahead of it, you're not going to catch them. But in my fields, we're going, you know, if it's going into corn that means it was beans last year and it was drilled with rye, hairy veetch, balansa clover, and cholina we added a year ago. And so it has those things growing through the winter that we spray off after planting. We plant green and then spray it off.

15:14 And if what we learned this last year, if we get it as big as it happened last year, the rye got out of hand last year, it was two weeks ahead of schedule and my planting wasn't, it needs to be rolled down to get that mat to the ground. Normally if it's, you know, waist high or shorter, it's probably going to fall down on its own. Once you get up over waist high very far, it's got a lot of lignin in it and it may not go to the ground. And I think we're better off getting it on the ground. But even then, that cover that we flew on, as long as we watered it, you know, it we got it to the ground and it grew and kind of filled in.

15:52 And with the light interception, you know, that's what we found anyway is that's the biggest limiting factor in trying to do this is if you wait till, you know, V5, V6, V7, you know, the corn canopy closes so quickly after that that your covers just don't have sunlight to get established. And it's hard for a plant to stay alive with limited photosynthesis. So it has to get a root system established while there's sunlight, right?

16:22 Yeah, it's, and that's what we found that first year, that it just, or when they got in there late, it just, you can't get it done. You're going to have a few things that might survive like if you've got, you know, a sparse planting somewhere or a hole or something that might survive. But we've even had where we've had a cover growing in there, you know, in August yet. It's still alive in August, but it didn't quite make it all the way to September when the leaves started to senescence. It just ran out of gas.

16:53 We had stuff survive everywhere. I haven't really adjusted. I'm toying. I'm going to do some checks this year. I'm playing with my population a little bit. Try not to over push it. Let the stuff that has semiflex ears flex the population of the corn. Trying to adjust the population of the corn just a little bit so we can keep those alive a little longer because one of the tenants is a living root as long as possible. And in my corn I think we're pretty close to almost 100% of the time, as long as it's not totally froze up solid two feet deep.

17:35 What is your typical corn population and what are you thinking about, playing around with? It varies. Our dryland is around 24,000 and that's fine. We seeded in the dryland a couple years ago it was so dry I didn't think any of my dryland was going to survive. The corn crop, I didn't think the corn crop was going to survive. It was starting to turn gray and I decided, you know what? I'm going to fly that cover on anyway because what's probably going to happen is we're going to get a rain right after the last cornstalk dies and then all I'll have is weeds.

18:16 We did it and then we got like 5 inches of rain from January 1 to June 25th and then it started raining and we had 7 inches in the next two and a half weeks and somehow the corn survived but the covers just exploded and they filled in. If there was a little weak, it filled in. It was crazy how they covered up the ground and really kept the weeds out for the most part. We had a couple spots that were a little rough where nothing really survived because it was really tough ground or something, but it really worked out pretty good on that side. It dinged me. I got dinged on my corn yield, not by the interseed cover, but by the rye that grew too long.

18:59 I kind of went with the thought that I want to plant it green and then kill the rye after it's planted because it just plants so much nicer even on your dryland. It's pivot corners which then you got a whole other situation if you're just going to kill pivot corners. That's kind of a pain and then you've got two different situations when you do go into plant. If I'd killed them and we got that rain the second week of May and I hadn't planted the corn yet, I don't know when it would have dried out because I would have had a mat that would have sealed that really well and then you'd be in the mud trying to get the stuff in the ground.

19:43 It's worked really well planting green and then killing it right away or pretty close as soon as you can get to it. It can be a little more difficult to walk through if you get a good growth, but it's really worked well. I think we had at least five different families in the field last year. So talk about what all was in that mix last year, and this would be the cover crops that you're interseeding into the corn at V2, V3, somewhere in there.

20:17 I'll start with my herbicide for in corn. Dwayne Beck and I were at a meeting and he confirmed this. My thought was, we've got these adjuvants we're spraying on our crops on our fields to get the wax cuticle burned off of the weeds so the chemicals get in. I thought, well, we're probably doing that to our corn, too. And Dwayne says, 'Yeah, there's research on it. It's true.' When I started this, I kind of went to the point where I don't, I'm going to try to not spray my corn. Now, my corn is non-GMO, so I can't spray Roundup on it anyway. And I thought, well, if I go from a cover to a cover, maybe I can get by without a post spray. And so for two to three years now, two years on everything and one year I did have to spray, I did spray some status.

21:08 I've just sprayed Roundup and Verdict to kill my covers that are there. And the Verdict has Outlook in it, which is a short residual so that I can come back in and seed my inner seed covers and so the herbicide doesn't interact with them because I'm throwing my seed on top of the ground. If I was putting it in the ground and drilling it, I could do other things, but this has been working for me.

21:38 Harry Vetch will survive that spray of Roundup and Verdict or it can. You'll knock it back, but it may not kill it. So the Harry Vetch was still growing. And then we had fenugreek and mung beans and buckwheat, flax, annual rye grass and African cabbage. I think that's what we had in that thing. And crimson clover. So we had eight species growing out there with the diverse mix.

22:15 I didn't see a lot of the crimson clover. That was the first time I stuck that one in. I didn't see a lot of that one necessarily, but I found some of all the other ones and different color flowers and everything else, which is kind of neat to see in your field. Something besides corn. And I think it probably screws up some bugs a little bit when you've got other things going on out there. And I think that happens in the spring also.

22:42 We added Camelina a year ago. We tried it and the goal was to have a flower early. Something to help bring some beneficials in early. Didn't quite make it. By the time I had to knock my covers down, burn them off in the spring, the Camelina was budding, but hadn't shot flowers yet, hadn't popped yet.

23:06 You had some good growth out there. So then are you grazing this or do you have livestock incorporated into this system? I don't have my own livestock but I have found guys. This year was the first year I've got all my corn stocks grazed. I've got a couple outlying small fields that are tough to get guys to. But I did find somebody this last year for the one that I had never gotten anybody on yet, and I've got somebody for next year on the other outlying farm that I have struggled to get cattle on in the fall.

23:40 In my corn stalks, we are able to graze them. That's why we put in the African cabbage. A couple of those things are really for the cattle if they can get in there early enough before they're all dead. I think that's an important part of the whole thing is the livestock integration. I think we've got some other tests going on, but I think that's an important one for cycling of nutrients and things.

24:10 Do the livestock guys that are coming in and grazing that, what do they say about that scenario compared to just grazing someone else's regular corn stocks with nothing growing? They seem to like it. The problem comes a lot of times there's they can't get in there early enough before the foliage is all dead. And so now they're harvesting dead stuff. But I think if they can get them in early enough, I think they like it better.

24:38 It does give them something else. There's a lot in our area, there's a lot of seed corn with radishes and turnips growing and the comment is don't get within ten foot of the back end of the cow if that's all they're eating out there because it can get kind of messy. I think it's a good blend, the dry corn stalks and then the other things that are out there kind of keep them, give them a little something to work on.

25:06 I'd be curious to know too if those guys think that there's a difference in utilization of the non-GMO corn stocks versus probably the typical GMO commercial corn in the area. I haven't asked that anecdotally. I've heard that also that if you have give them both, they will go to the non-GMO. But I know they be in the non-GMO stuff.

25:30 I haven't asked them that question. If they think they get into that, if they like that better or not, I haven't asked. I've got about four different guys that are running cattle. Sure.

25:44 I want to transition over. I want to pick up on something you said earlier about testing and experimenting and doing different things. And I know that you work a lot with — you don't just go out and try this across the whole farm the first year. You do a lot of different testing and experimental type things. Talk a little bit about how you do that, how you're working with Jenny Reese and the Nebraska on-farm research network. Especially to our out of state folks listening to this. You know, that's a great resource that we have here in the state. You know, Jenny's a great resource that we have here. So just talk a little bit about how you've been doing that and how that's helped you in your farming operation.

26:28 So Jenny had been after me for a long time to try more than just doing my own side-by-side stuff. She wanted to do something that had statistics behind it. And so here a couple years ago I finally relented and we did one. And I had gone out and bought my own seed treater because I had some theories floating in my head that I wanted to try. I wanted to use some heads up for white mold in soybeans because we've had white mold.

26:58 And it could be, you know, the seed corn rotation, you know, fields are fairly fertile. If you're putting radishes and turnips in there, they can be a host to kind of hold on to it. They may help it get through this season for the next year. And so I wanted to try heads up and I had a theory that we're throwing some stuff on the fields that are causing us to probably go and buy some different things from the same companies to go fix a problem we created in the front end. You know, I don't know whether it's true or not. I don't know. But it just seems like it could happen.

27:40 I'm planting green into this rye and we the first year we did three different fields, three different tests, we had different maturities, we had two different products or companies. So we had an Alivo seed treatment full seed treatment and we had a sulteterol, and if you average all three together, I had a biological treatment with some root stimulants, heads up, and inoculant and that's what I had. I didn't have any insecticide or fungicide in mine. The others had insecticide and fungicide. And when we average all three of them together, there was a tenth of a bushel difference in yield that the full seed treatment from the seed companies were a tenth of a bushel higher. But when you look at ROI, the one company's product was about $28 a unit. The other company was about $18 and mine was about nine. So ROI-wise, mine was better. I didn't have any poisons out in the field and I didn't have any white mold either, which was the other thing we're going after. Didn't really have any bug issues to speak of.

29:00 I did it so that I had a like a 25, a 30, and a 33 planted in actually three different counties on three different days about a week and a week apart from each other. So then last year I ran another study and I did the same thing although I added naked beans and some inoculated only beans. And this is a pretty good field. My organic matter is in the mid fours, four, five and a ten-inch sample. So pretty good soil. And everything was within, you know, like a bushel. The full seed treatment, I just did one big test last year. The full seed treatment, my biological what I call biological seed treatment, and then the naked and the inoculant only. So they're all basically the same. The inoculant only actually for I—

34:14 I imagine, you know, I know there's at least 6 to 10 that show up about every meeting, but I think her list is probably more like 30 to 40 people that she invites and sometimes, you know, schedules work. So she's got a list, a group of people that are trying different things from livestock guys to livestock and crop guys and then crop guys only trying different things around the soil health issues. We this last year we actually she sent we took root, she pulled out, she I didn't do it. I walked and showed her where to do it. She dug out root balls and we sent them in. We were looking for relationships, mycorrhizal associations, how they might vary between hybrids and sent them out to Ward Labs and Willie Ptorius worked on them and then they also got sent up to Dr. Laura Kavanagh at AEA to run DNA sampling on them and it was really interesting.

35:19 I had a field that I happened to get some Johnson Sue extract from one of the guys in the group last year and I did a side by side with corn with a white, a non-GMO white hybrid and that one had like over a hundred associations and the next closest field was an organic field at about 50 and then I had three other samples because I had an unintended test where something didn't go into the system right and so I had a test with the pivot bio with and without pivot bio with and without Johnson Sue extract and the best one of the four was actually the one with the Johnson Sue only and the other three though were in the top seven I think so we apparently that hybrid at least does really well with making associations. That's really interesting and so a lot to unpack there.

36:18 You mentioned Dr. Laura Kavanagh with AEA. She's going to be here in Bladen. We're having our Nexus in the field event with Nicole Masters, but Laura Kavanagh will be here as well and she'll be talking about the DNA testing. She'll be talking about some of the things that her lab is working with on you. And then, you know, Willie Ptorius also has a really good testing service for mycorrhizal fungi.

36:47 I know Scott, I think you're planning on being here for the Nicole Masters deal and we hope some of the folks listening, if you can come and join us, we're going to have a really in-depth learning experience with Nicole out in the field. That'll be very exciting. And then, you know, we're going to Jenny is going to be scheduled to be on our podcast as well and we'll talk a lot more about the on-farm research network because folks, we just can't overemphasize how important it is for you to be doing some of your own research, collecting your own data, and having a resource like Jenny or someone similar who can just help you think through the processes makes it so much easier, makes it feel less daunting. And then the ability to share information within a network is really important as well.

37:36 Yeah, she it's great. You tell her what you want to try. If she usually she might try expand on it too. That might happen. But you know she'll send you the how you need to plant the strips in so she gets her statistical errors can lower those and she'll come and walk it. She'll check it during the season and then she's there to help harvest it and runs all the data through for us and does a really good job getting it done. Yeah, so it's a great asset we have here in Nebraska and hopefully other areas have similar situations and folks there as well.

38:17 I want to switch topics here just a little bit, Scott, and talk about the timing of seeding. You've talked about how important it is to have that cover crop there for, you know, all of the spring benefits, the weed suppression, you know, that nutrient cycling, the biological stimulation. But some of yours, it's difficult to get things in the ground in a timely fashion because of harvest, you know.

38:41 Know, labor situations, things like that. But I know that you are very committed to that. And even after most people have stopped planting, I still see you pulling into green cover here with your truck and getting seed, even into November. And I think you've probably done some December seeding even. Talk about why it's important to get something planted even if it's late.

39:06 Yeah. I think that one year I rolled in and I cleaned you out of Elbon Rye and we had to switch it up because you guys were out that last, that was a November deal, when I thought I was done and I came back for just a little bit more. But you know, it really depends what you're trying to accomplish. But for me, if it's a soil health thing, it doesn't have to be great as long as it gets out there and grows. And I have not had Rye not grow. Now, this year is probably my toughest because we were so dry late in the year and we didn't have a lot of rain to help degrade the stocks or anything, and I had a lot of residue from my rye the previous year. So I've got some spots that don't look great and they're coming along.

39:49 Some of it I don't think got sprouted last fall, but it's there. The roots are there. They're growing. They're cycling, they're cycling carbon. They're photosynthesizing. I haven't seen any of my neighbors with corn out of the ground yet. So I'm still months ahead on my cycling of carbon through the soil and livening up the microbes in the soil. And so yeah, this is my third year of getting everything drilled.

40:18 The latest was the 28th of December. That was my last seed year. I had them go in and had cattle in the circle in the irrigated part of the seed corn because I had some pretty good covers growing. And then I got my Milo harvested off the corners. And once they got the fence out of the way so I could get in there, I went back and drilled the corners into Milo. The rye didn't get as tall, but the rye was still there and it still did its job.

40:45 If you're going for weed control, which is kind of one of mine, weeds and disease control, the white mold if you're going into soybeans, you want a pretty good cover and we may not get as much as we want this year. It's like last year the stuff was just going gang busters by now. This year it's slower and I think it's the drought that we've been in is dinging us kind of hard on that one. But you know, you never know when the next rain's coming. You don't know when that four inches is coming. And I got roots growing. It's amazing to watch even if the rye is small or whatever you got out there, those roots are still in the ground and they're trying to hold their own. They're trying to hold the soil.

41:28 You don't have to have a big growth to slow the wind down from hitting the surface. One thing you got to get used to is your ground stays damp on top after a rain a little longer because the wind's not getting to the soil. The sun's not hitting it as hard and you're going to go out there and go, 'Well, man, it's still a little black.' But you know what? For us at least, it's worked to where you can go and plant it if you want because there's so much residue there that it's really hard to crust the soil. And so you go back to having a living root growing as often as possible. And that's what I'm trying to do. I don't want to starve the microbes if I don't have to. I'd really rather have something growing there.

42:10 We don't always have snow cover anymore. If you don't have snow cover and you've got 38 to 40 degrees, you can photosynthesize if that rye got out of the ground. Yep. And so I just assume capture sunlight and extract carbon from the air and stick it back down in the soil.

42:29 Yeah. We're a lot like you. You know, we got some cover crops planted late. It was dry. They're not huge, but I was just out there this morning doing a little bit of digging and you know, we I planted some winter lentils with the rye, you know, so there's some

42:43 Little nodules coming on that. The rye roots look great and I found, you know, three earthworms just in, you know, a small shovel full of soil that I dug up under some roots. So that soil is active and it's working and it's alive.

42:56 Yeah, I got one yesterday in my with my knife when I was digging. Got part of it and he's split in two now unfortunately but I was digging too and I, you know, I've got the little dreads showing on the rye and I've got some vetch growing out there. I'm still looking for the clover and but the chamealina I found in different spots too yet. So it's starting to move towards the sky. It's out of its rosettes and starting to move. So things are moving. It's just a little more subdued this year than it last year was just crazy. It was going gang busters by now.

43:32 And it was like, man, we should be planting faster, I think. But we caught a rain, you know, and yeah, didn't get done. And in my situation with my non-GMO stuff, I'm looking to delay my planting dates around my neighbors so I can minimize my cross-contamination of GMO into my non-GMO corn. So and the warming up cuz like this year there is no more white non-GMO corn. I gave up 18 bags. They needed whatever I didn't think I was going to have to have. And I kept six spares just in case. But you know, if we screw something up, there's no replant. It's that everything that is out is out for that non-GMO white.

44:15 Yeah. Yeah. Well, great conversation, Scott. We're excited that you're bringing your knowledge and expertise to the Green Cover team and we'll be able to share that with our customer base as well. A lot of times I'd like to kind of close these podcast episodes with just asking, you know, for someone just getting started, you know, so maybe in a place that you would have been, you know, a number of years ago. What advice would you have for them as they kind of start down this path to regeneration?

44:46 Things that either you did that worked really well or things that you wish you'd have done sooner. Well, I wish I would have kept up with it when I first started years and years ago and just kept moving that direction. But I really, it's about at some point you just got to get started. My dad always liked to say, you know, you have to decide who you want to call, who you want to call you stupid, you know, because somebody's going to. If you go to the co-op or go to the coffee shop, somebody's going to think you're doing the dumbest thing in the world. But if you're okay with that guy calling you stupid, then you're fine. You know, if your wife's, you know, you got to decide who you want to call you stupid because I'm sure there's somebody calling me stupid more often than I can count.

45:28 But, you know, they all say don't start, you know, start small. Start in a small area. And I, that's true. And something Rick Clark has always said is, boy, you really want it to work right the first time. And the first time I planted green, it was it got bigger than I was planning, but it worked so well. And the crop was my corn. And I was planting corn in the rye. Now, I've got nitrogen going right next to my corn at planting because there won't be any nitrogen available for the corn if you've got rye growing, but I had nitrogen going down next to it and it was the most even that I can remember up and down the hills through the draws. It just was there and so it worked and it worked really well that first year and then I did make a big step the next year and we were doing basically all of it because it worked so well.

46:16 And you don't have your dirt. You can be out there planting and you'll have a little dirt cuz you're, you know, you're moving the soil a little bit. I don't, unless it's really dry, I try not to run fur openers, but it worked. And it pulls through nice and it just you get a little dust blown, but not much. Not much. Not like you're running in a work field. And so it just worked. So I would start small. I would

46:45 Not get the covers too big. If you're going to plant green, that's a whole another deal. You know, you may want to start and kill it off and you either want to plant when the cover crop is brown and crisp or green and growing. It's that in between where it gets tough and it drags and it plugs and when it's dying off is just a problem, I think. So, you either want it and probably the easiest is to kill it early. You'll get some of the benefits.

47:15 If the rise is over 6, 8 inches tall, it won't melt away. If it's 4 inches tall, it'll melt and you won't even know it was there. But if it was 6 or 8, it'll stay. It'll help slow the wind down against the soil and everything else. So just start small, but you got to start. You just got to decide you're going to start and watch the guys planting this year and find out who's got a drill or who's got a spread it with a dry spreader from the co-op or something. You know, you can get some out there to try and then just decide you're going to take that 5, 10, whatever acres you want to designate that and just try to you might have to, you might be wondering what in the world you're doing some days because some days you run into that and you go, 'This is going to be the dumbest thing I'd ever did.' But you might be the one calling yourself stupid.

48:06 That's right. And I believe I did that last year. And that's okay on a few acres, right? Mine was a little more than a few, but it all worked. You know, we worked through those problems. It took me five years to find out which press wheels wouldn't work in tough covers. And I did find it, but the rye was pollinating. It was 6 feet tall and it was damp that morning and yeah, nothing. We were with rubble tires before the end of the day because nothing else really anything with a spike really didn't want to work very well. But so you do, you know, sometimes it's working really good and then all at once that's the fun about this job is the weather changes every day. So an event can change and then it doesn't work like it did the previous two years. But get started. You just got to get started now. We only have a certain amount of chances. That's my biggest concern at this point is that I'm going to run out of time before I figure this thing all out.

49:01 Yeah. But we appreciate, you know, you and so many others. You mentioned Gabe and Rick and so many people are willing to share these experiences and we can learn from each other and so that's the great part about this regenerative agriculture community is there's a lot of sharing, a lot of willingness to share and with you coming on the Green Cover team now, you know, that knowledge, that wisdom, those resources will be available. So if you have questions don't be afraid to contact us. We can get you in touch with Scott. Come to the Nicole Masters event June 3rd and 4th. We'll be having our summer field days later in August this year as well. We'll be doing some of these corn interseeding experiments. We're going to continue with that. Scott's going to be helping us, you know, just kind of think through some of these things. So, good things ahead. We're looking forward to it.

49:50 Scott, welcome to the team and we're excited about moving forward together. So thank you everybody for listening and watching and we'll catch you next time. My brother and I started Green Cover in 2009 because we understand what it's like to be a farmer starting out on the journey to improve soil health. We saw the power of plant and biological diversity on our own farm here in Nebraska. But we found that it was difficult to get the right cover crop seed mix. We also learned that there was a big learning curve in successfully implementing cover crops. That's why we built Green Cover so that farmers like you can access the highest quality cover crop seed put into the right diverse mixes along with the technical advice and the educational resources to help you successfully implement cover crops on your own operation. So contact us today and we'll help you with the right cover crop mix for your farm or ranch so you can regenerate your portion of God's creation for future generations. Patience.