How Kevin Wiltse Built a Drought-Proof Grazing Operation with Perennials and Cover Crops

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

0:16 Hey, have you ever been to a conference or an event or something and you got really inspired to do something new and then you came home and you thought about it and you talked about it and eventually you decided to do something about it? That happened for Brian and I here at Green Cover. We heard a very inspiring talk at Noel in the Plains and then a couple years later we actually did something about it and we started Green Cover.

0:43 But my guest today had one of these experiences, but he didn't take a couple of years to think about it. He took action the very next day. And I'm really excited for you to hear his story about how that happened and how that affected him so much. So my guest today is Mr. Kevin Wilty from Timkin, Kansas down by Great Band. So Western Kansas. And Kevin has been a friend, a customer, our beef provider for many years now. So every time we eat a nice big ribeye, we we raise a glass and toast to him and his operation. But Kevin, welcome to the Green Cover podcast.

1:18 Thanks, Keith. I appreciate the opportunity to be here. Always always fun to have a conversation with you.

1:25 Yeah, absolutely. So, I want to get into that story about how you guys just changed your operation a little bit on a dime there. But before we get into that, give us a little bit of the background, the context of of where you are, what your farming operation looks like, things that you're growing. Maybe a little bit about your family. Just just tell us who you are.

1:46 Right. So, we farm and ranch like you said, it's south of Timkin, so southern Rush County, northern Pony County. So, which is about 20 miles straight west of Great Bend or 45 miles south of Hayes basically is where we're at. So we historically have grown grain sorghum. When we started no tail and we integrated soybeans and corn as well tried that. Alpha alpha. Cow calf has always been a big part of our operation as well historically. And then that's all evolved through the years I guess so.

2:30 Yeah I farm here. Basically, I have three kids and and they're all gone. So, at this point, Macy, my youngest, she comes back and helps in the summer still while she's she'll finish up college here this next year. So, and we have one full-time employee right now who's very integral part of the business. I grew up, my grandpa obviously I'm the fifth generation here and then my dad he was integral he passed away eight years ago now. So basically it's down to to myself and Derek and Mandy my wife fills in when we need and we seem to get things done.

3:13 So yeah, I don't know. I guess our kind of story is we started no tilling in the mid to late 90s. You know, we like a lot of people went on that Dakota Lakes bus tour and came home. My dad and I went along on that trip. Came home, we sold the tillage equipment and then we figured out or we thought we had to figure it out that, you know, we had to have a just a diverse crop rotation, stop tilling and and the weeds were going to go away and organic matter was going to go up and and infiltration rates of water were going to go up.

3:48 And I guess it didn't take us long to figure out that that didn't really like those results. We just weren't seeing those like we thought we would. So, like you know, we heard Adameir talk and we started integrating some cover crops trying that in like 2008 through 12.

4:14 And to be honest with you, then we hit some really dry years like 11, 12, 13, and where we were doing cover crops, it was really really affecting our following cash crops. So we kind of just took a reset or step back. And about that time I was really trying to figure out how we could fix this issue of water infiltration and and weed pressure. You know, at that time resistant weeds were coming on as well. And and then it I just really wanted to get back to what God intended and what nature always did before and to try to fix our problems and and so I wanted to start experimenting with perennial systems. And so initially that's kind of why we did that is try to rapidly improve soil health.

5:06 And then as we've gone along, that whole system has evolved. I went through those tough years like 11, 12, and 13. We raised nothing and cattle prices were on their way up, and we had to destock because of drought. You could just see your balance—inputs went up, similar to the scenario we're in today. And every year our balance sheet was going backwards to the point where we weren't paying off operating notes.

5:46 We really wanted to make a fundamental change to our operation. So for our 20th anniversary, my wife asked where I wanted to go, and I said I wanted to go to Ranching for Profit School. We went to Ranching for Profit, and we'd been to holistic management training as well. We heard all this stuff and it sounded good, but we just never got pushed over that edge to make those changes.

6:24 When we came back from Ranching for Profit, my dad's health was declining and we had some opportunity to rent more land, some irrigated land. This was all boiling inside of me, and we finally just said we're going to try to do more with what we have. We turned down this big opportunity to lease irrigated land. We let go of eight quarters of farm ground that didn't really fit our operation and was away from home. We wanted to try to build a resilient business that was less reliant on outside inputs like government payments and crop insurance, and that was more resilient to drought and market swings.

7:21 That's what drove us to where we are today, and I'm very thankful we've done what we've done. I think we made a lot of good choices, dumb luck or whatever it was, but it's turned out to be a good change.

7:38 That's awesome. I might have to have you on a future episode where you can give relationship advice to all of us guys and how you talked your wife into going to Ranching for Profit School. That's impressive.

7:55 Let's go back to that first Dakota Lakes bus tour. I'm sure you visited other places up there too. What was it that you and your dad saw up there that made such an impression that you came home and sold all your tillage equipment? That's pretty drastic.

8:16 I was blessed to have my dad go along because if I would have come home and tried to explain that to him, the change probably wouldn't happen. We went to places like Dan Forgy's, Cronin Farms, and some others up there. But what they were doing at Dakota Lakes with Dwayne Beck just made sense—we could grow a crop every year instead of a wheat-fallow or wheat-sorghum type system. Originally it was driven off the economics. If we could grow a cash crop every year and save enough moisture, that was the ultimate driver for us. And soil conservation obviously as well.

9:12 What Dwayne Beck did at Dakota Lakes and Dan and that whole group of guys up there influenced by Dwayne Beck—that was life-changing for many of us. My brother and I went on that as well. I would really encourage everybody to not only get out of your own neighborhood and see what other people are doing, but take other people from your operation with you because that's the fastest way to make change—get the whole team on board.

9:48 That's because when I was trying to talk to my dad about it, we had the same scenario.

9:55 Okay, we're going to use Polywire, we're going to move cattle every day and he's like, no, this isn't going to happen, like electric fence, side tensile wire. And then we went to a friend of mine that was doing it and he came home and like you see this stuff and he was like, 'Yo, okay, this can be done.' You know, this isn't a hard thing. So I agree with you 100% on that. You got to get out of your box and go see what's going on in the world.

10:24 Yeah, you know, I a lot of times us as farmers, we can be pretty hard-headed and pretty stubborn, but when we see it working and it starts clicking, farmers are great at making those changes, you know, but they have to be convinced. They have to see it first.

10:41 Yeah. Because it is a change, you know, it's and it's another big change that we don't like to do and maybe an investment. And if things are working, why do we want to change? And so it's if you see somebody doing things and sometimes that's just your how your mind works too. You can't really picture until you go to somebody's operation and actually see how, okay, I see how this works now and make the change.

11:08 So you're doing a lot of things that are just so counter to what, you know, the majority of farmers mindsets are, particularly in the opportunity, you know, you turn down all this irrigated ground because, you know, everybody thinks that irrigation is the answer to everything. And then there's no doubt it can help, but it doesn't mean you're going to be profitable. You gave up some eight quarters of ground that you were farming. Most people wouldn't do that, and you're more successful now than you were before. So talk a little bit about, you know, where did you find the courage to do that? Because that to me that just sounds like a really courageous thing to do, to not try to get bigger your way out of the problems you were having.

11:56 Yeah, that was those were some hard times. Well, I'll be honest with you, those decisions like because it is going against what every everybody else is doing, let's say. And we spent a lot of time thinking about that. And I guess for me it was just I was tired of working more and not that landlords aren't a key role in everybody's organization but I was really tired of working more and landlords making a pile of money and we just weren't making anything on a lot of this land and here we are taking all the risk doing all the work and I'm like if I want to do that, put in those kind of hours and labor. There's a lot of opportunities on your own land to get more out of it, you know, and not only get more out of the land, but also improve the land. I think we get caught in a trap where we get bigger and bigger and bigger and then we kind of do the same thing on all those acres. You know, it becomes a recipe almost and I think it allows us to focus more on the land and more on those acres and how, you know, if we can catch more water, if we can fix the water cycle, you know, what can we grow out here?

13:20 So it was just a combination and the courage to do it. I just, you know, like I say, that was kind of an emotional time in my life when dad's health was declining and he passed away and here you are. Everything's up to you now. And I finally, you know, I'd been thinking about this for 20 years, you know, quite honestly. And then so we finally just like sink or swim. Let's do it and see what happens.

13:49 Yeah. Love that. And you know, my I remember my dad saying sometimes bigger isn't better. Sometimes bigger is just more.

14:00 And that's I think that's kind of what you were saying that you were feeling there too, because it doesn't guarantee that you're going to make more profitability. It certainly doesn't guarantee you're going to have better quality of life, right? You know, and if you're going to lose $10 an acre, why do you want to farm 10,000 more, you know? So I mean it comes down, you know, in ranching for profit that really did resonate with me on breaking down your enterprises and why, you know, what if we're losing money, you know.

14:31 It's like stop the bleeding first, you know, is what they teach you. And that's really, and a lot of people go to ranching for profit and come home and don't do anything as well, you know. So I think you have to be the right mindset, the right stage of life. I don't know what it is, but it's just something that triggered me to try to make a change.

14:56 And you really need to go with someone too. So you went, you know, with your wife because it is difficult to make these huge decisions in a vacuum by yourself. You need other partners in there with you.

15:08 Yep. And it's so Mandy, my wife, she actually is very integral. She went to Ranching for Profit the second time and she works for a company called Ranchrite and they do accounting and bookkeeping based on ranching for profit principles. So she's engulfed in that realm too. So that helps too where we're both kind of on the same page of what we're trying to do and she gets the opportunity to chat with a lot of really bright people as well and see a lot of their operations. So that's been really helpful as well.

15:48 Yeah, that's great. So let's, I know we were talking a little bit earlier about, you know, you were very dry, you know, 11, 12, 13, you guys had a wicked drought there. You're kind of coming back into that cycle or you've been in that cycle here. Talk just a little bit because I know, you know, this is spring of 2026. There's a lot of drought across the country. A lot of people are facing, you know, below normal rainfall. Talk a little bit about where you guys are at there in western Kansas with your rainfall, not just right now, but kind of the last several years. And then let's talk about how your system is handling that.

16:27 So right now we're almost our full fifth year of drought in our location. And even last year, southern Rush County, northern Pane County was a really dry area. So we were below normal rainfall for like say five years. Last year we were, I think, sitting about 14 inches and our average for the year is about 24 inches, zone is about where we're at. So put that in perspective. So last year in August we were sitting at about 14 inches and then we got really good rains. Last fall we had 10 inches of rain, got us up to normal from end of August till through November basically. And then since then we've gotten very little. We got like a six inch snow in January. And where we're at today, of course, everybody knows March and April, we've had numerous record high temperatures and wind.

17:26 So sitting today, I'm very concerned, like it's dry here today. But I will say the last five springs have been like this and we've gotten, you know, maybe 75% of normal to near normal rainfall in May and June. And that has, in our system, has grown all the forage that we need for the year those years. So I'm really hopeful and optimistic that if it does start raining, the way we've managed our grass and our perennial systems, there's a lot of cover, it's going to take the water in, then it'll rebound quickly and we'll grow a lot of forage. Now, if it doesn't rain, then, you know, it's game over for everybody. But it's not going to take a lot of rain and I think we'll bounce through this pretty good and that's what we've seen the last several years with limited rainfall.

18:25 We really have designed a system to where, you know, in 11, 12, and 13 we destocked half of our cow herd. So now five years of drought we keep increasing every year, bringing in more cattle. So our herd today is bigger than it's ever been and we just keep growing that and it's just simply a function of, you know, the system we build, how we're managing our grazing, how we're utilizing our crop land, you know, for more forages than for grain production now. And right now that looks pretty smart, you know, with the cattle prices and stuff. But that'll change, you know, it'll go back. The cattle prices will tank and the grains will go back. But right now, you know, mostly concerned that hopefully we do get some rain so we can keep the cow herd intact.

19:19 Yeah. And I would agree those markets will change, but I don't know that they're going to change anytime soon. If you just look at the number of cattle that are out there, you know,

19:28 It's still historical lows on cattle numbers and the number of bushels of grain carryover is pretty high. It's going to take a while to change just simply because of those supply and demand factors.

19:45 So Kevin, you talk about the system that you have in place now is allowing better infiltration, allowing better growth, that's allowing you to maintain your cattle herd or even expand it even in difficult drought times. Let's talk a little bit about what does that system look like? I know that you've converted some of your ground back to perennial grasses, you know, what all of this would have been initially as we built these soils. So let's talk a little bit about your system and let's start with the conversion to perennials. What drove that decision and what have you seen change in your soil because of it?

20:26 So go back about 10 or 12 years and I'm talking about predominantly a lot of these practices we're doing, they're contiguous with our farm headquarters. We do just to be clear kind of conventionally no-till, you know, some rented land farther away from home, but where we've really focused this is on our predominantly contiguous land base around the farm that's either I own or my I cash rent for my mom and we do have some rented land that's contiguous as well that we implement these practices on.

21:08 If we go back then, we were probably just looking at this land base, we were maybe 20% native and the rest was all crop land, annual crop land. Today, we're about 50/50 either native perennial systems and 50% probably still in annual cropping. So that gives you a kind of a context of the land and the changes we made.

21:39 Initially why I did it was like I mentioned before was just to try to rapidly increase soil health because our water cycle was broke. Our infiltration rates are terrible here and even with cover crops, we still really struggle getting water to grow in the ground. So that was my biggest thing was like if we could get this back to perennial systems and actually catch most all of our water, then what would this look like? How much more forage could we grow? How resilient would we be in a drought?

22:12 And then part of it too was the economics of I knew I wanted to build this type of system and I knew that livestock and for me that's cattle were going to play had to play a key role in providing the income from all those acres that were converting. So I guess it's a function of all those things, so of how it looks today.

22:39 And of the so about 50% of your ground is still crop ground. How much of that are you growing grain crops on versus forage crops?

22:49 Not very many grain crops. So we might sneak in a harvested triticale or something for seed, that we've grazed. We might sneak in a milo grain sorghum crop mostly because then we can still utilize the stocks for grazing. But as far as the conventional system of wheat or beans or corn, we really on those acres we really very little.

23:24 So you're planting annual forages to graze predominantly. Yep, right now, you know, as the market shifts, we're flexible. We can do that.

23:35 Yeah, it gives you a lot of flexibility. So let's talk a little bit about because I personally think that's a really good economic call right now. It's a really good soil health call because you're not exporting nearly as much off your ground when you're grazing it versus when you're hauling it away in a truck. Talk a little bit about the amount of moisture that it takes to grow a pretty good forage crop versus maybe even a mediocre grain crop.

24:07 Yeah, and a lot of that, you know, if you look at the forage curve, you know, or the water use with your forage as it matures, you know, it doesn't take a lot of moisture to get your vegetative growth. It's once that, you know, once your crop, annual crop hits reproductive mode that that water use curve or that graph really starts to skyrocket. So you can grow a lot of forage with not a lot of rainfall.

24:35 So that's what we've found and done. And we use those annual forages to fill gaps kind of in our forage chain, if you want to call

24:44 It gives a lot for winter, you know, winter grazing, late summer when it gets dry or early spring type things when those natives and perennials aren't growing.

25:00 It really does give you a lot of flexibility because once you get perennials established, you really can't change what's growing out there. Now, you can change when you graze it and you shouldn't be grazing those on the same schedule all the time. But with the annuals, you can plant trite and veetch in the fall, you can plant oats and peas in the spring, you can plant a sorghum-based mix through the summer. So you've got a lot of flexibility there.

25:27 Talk a little bit about what kind of stocking rates, what kind of carrying capacity are you getting on these annual forages? Because if people are going to think about this and we've been really encouraging it this year, you know, with commodity prices where they're at, with cattle prices where they're at, with a million acres of the sand hills burning up this year, there's going to be a huge need for extra grazing as drought is in other areas. I think the economics are there for it. But talk a little bit about what kind of stocking rates and carrying capacity are you getting on those annual crop acres when you're just grazing annual forages.

26:12 Yep, so I'm going to talk in animal days per acre carrying capacity. So for people, that's a 1,000 lb animal that's going to consume 26 to 30 pounds a day. So that's what I'm going to talk in so everybody understands that. But on our, it depends what annual we're growing. So if we're talking, let's say summer diverse summer mixes that we're going to be seeding here shortly if we get some rain, even in these drought years like at a minimum, like we talked about not much rainfall, we're going to get some forage. Even at a minimum, we've been getting about 60, has been the lowest animal days per acre and that can go up to 150 animal days per acre in a good year. This is all 100% dry land.

27:04 So I'm pretty conservative, so I figure 60 animal days in a dry year, I think if we have any rain at all, we can hit that. Last year we were grazing a winter stockpile, some of these things we didn't graze in the summer and we were taking 100 animal days off from October through January off of some of these. So I would say in that ballpark 60, hopefully at a minimum, up to 150 animal days.

27:42 So I guess for a little while we're on topic of economics a little bit, I want to kind of explain how we do it on our farm.

27:55 It's pretty easy if you're custom grazing. You know what you're going to take in, the revenue you're going to be getting. It gets a little more blurry when you run cow-calf, grass-finish beef, stalkers, custom grazing all together. It's a little harder. So we started looking at what value does that animal day give us on average across our farm and ranch. So we started looking about three years ago, we tried several different ways to do this. We started just looking at our gross profit for the livestock as a whole enterprise per animal day, like what is that return on our farm and ranch. So gross profit is you take your total livestock sales income, subtract off your purchases, and then it's plus or minus your gain or loss in value of your livestock herd that you own and then you take away all your direct costs, all your feed, all your vet expense, freight, all your expenses except for your overhead. So that gives us our gross profit for the livestock enterprise on our operation. Gives us a number. And then I look at track all of our animal days of grazing 365 days a year on our farm and ranch. And last year our average, we took 48 animal days per acre off is. So we've been averaging about 50. So that's on perennials, that's on cover crops, that's on, maybe we graze alfalfa for five days and only take five animal days. That's everything across the farm and our system is built on grazing.

29:39 So then we divide the two and it gives me a number that I then I can say, you know, on average on our farm, if I say that number is $2.50, 50 cents or whatever it is. If I think we can take a hundred animal days off of a cover crop, then that's $250 of gross profit from my livestock enterprise. Then I can take out, you know, what is my cover crop, you know, your overheads, your cover crop expense, your land and labor, and kind of gives us an idea of where profit per acre we're going to be. So, and that's probably been the best way that I found to do it, at least on a diversified. We still look at individual enterprises, which ones do better, but as a general rule, that just makes it really easy for me to come up with a number, you know, profit from our livestock and give people an idea if it's going to pay.

30:42 Yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense and how you're doing that because you got to have numbers. You can't just be guessing. Do you see more profitability or profit potential? You know, you talked about cow calf, you talked about grass-fed beef, you talked about custom grazing for others, and I think you do some of all of those. Where do you see the most potential for profitability both now and into the future between kind of those three enterprises?

31:17 Right now that's tough. Like, say grass finish beef right now is probably, it's not going to be because like in our system we're taking the females and going to grass finish program. Well, right now those are probably, though, those are definitely worth more as bred animals. So we're probably losing some there. So it's going to fluctuate. You know, right now, if you're just, if you don't own the cattle, I mean, it's kind of a scary time to go buy a bunch right now. I mean, custom grazing, I think, is a good option for people right now. If you're going to plant a cover crop, bring cattle in custom, I think you can make that work. And it's probably going to be your less risk option. So I think right now that's a good one. So I mean, if you're, if you own all the cattle already, you know, that's one thing, but it's for a producer, I'm not going to tell a producer today to go buy a hundred cows and get started in this. It's just, it's a scary time to do that in my opinion.

32:28 The other nice thing about, you know, we always talk about diversity, you know, resilience comes through diversity, and it's no different in your enterprises, but where you have a percentage of your grazing portfolio and custom grazing, if things do really get tough and you don't get those May, June, July rains at all, you don't really have to destock your own herd. You just don't take in as many custom animals, I'm assuming, and that allows you to maintain the genetic integrity because I'm assuming you are pretty happy with the genetics that you've built and developed and they fit your system, and it's horribly expensive in the long term if you have to destock them and then rebuild.

33:13 It is. And the genetics play a key role when you're trying to do grass-finish beef or, you know, so it, like I said, it's all kind of tied together. And like the grass finished beef deal for us, we know right now it's probably, it's not going to be, we could be doing something that's going to make us more money now, but we started building that business like to be profitable 80% of the time, not like for the time we're in right now. We're still very profitable doing the other things. But when the cattle market goes down, that's where like that grass finished beef business then all of a sudden looks better.

33:50 So yeah, and you're right on the genetics and trying to keep them intact, and the custom grazing, you know, everybody should have a grazing plan, which you know, which cattle are going to leave the farm first, you know, and if you don't have to bring in custom grazing, that's part of it. Better if you're going to destock, you know, whatever classes you're going to start destocking, you need to kind of have a plan for it.

34:14 Yeah. Maybe since we opened up that can of worms, talk just a little bit about your genetics. What kind of cattle are you running and how have you developed that over the years?

39:34 I think the main advantage for us is we already got the infrastructure in place, so it's not like we really need them in the summer for daily moves. For me, I think the main advantage is going to be combination of things, but I want to do multiple moves a day to try to get more impact on the land. And we're not doing that with Poliwire. You can, but we don't take the time to do that.

40:04 Yeah, so it's going to be huge time savings there. We really struggle with on daily moves still getting the trampling effect that we like and we're hoping with moving multiple times a day, changing the paddic shape, longer narrow paddics, it's going to be easier to do that sort of thing. So we're hoping to get that animal impact kind of where we want to see it. So that's going to be during the growing season. And I think the big deal for me is going to be winter grazing.

40:37 I think we kind of get lazy if we rent stocks or Milo stocks or we'll put cattle on a quarter section for 3 weeks or whatever and move them to another one. I think that's where we're going to see the biggest gain is if we can, even if we can take our stocking rate times one and a half in the winter, then we're going to have less acres in the winter that we're going to need and then we can expand our summer grazing stuff, growing season stuff to where maybe we can even add some more cattle. That's kind of where I'm hoping the economics work for us.

41:18 Yeah, we're looking into some of the virtual fencing ourselves, but some of our other customers that have been using it for several years, they have lots of good things to say about it. And it goes back to or reminds me, and I'm sure you remember Neil Dennis from, you know, great grazer from Canada. He since passed on as well, but I always remember Neil and he was such a humble guy, but he always bragged about how lazy he was. And he says, 'If you're going to be lazy, be really good at it.' And really what he meant was when you get the system set up right, it doesn't take a lot of work. Now, he put a tremendous amount of work and effort into setting the system up right, which is exactly what you're talking about with the perimeter fences, with the water system, and now the virtual fencing is going to allow us to be lazy, if you will. But it's really not lazy. It's just being very efficient with your time. And I think it's going to be a huge tool to doing what Neil Dennis talked about, that deep massage in the land where you just have a tremendous stocking rate for a very short period of time and you move them on. You can do that virtually anywhere now with the virtual fences.

42:38 Yeah, that's I remember him well and I remember if you're going to be lazy, be good at it. He always said that. Yeah. So, but you know that's part of one of my biggest hesitations had been is actually I enjoy going out and moving the poliwire and walking a mile a day and observing the land. I mean, so I don't want to not do that because that's crucial. You can't just give them two acres a day all summer and not go look at them. So you still got to get out there and observe what you're doing to the land and how it's responding. But I do think it is going to be a lot easier and save time, especially the way our system's set up, it's very easy to do. Like say you cut a quarter section into thirds and you got 880 feet of polywire and then a few years ago we switched that up and did long runs. Well, then all of a sudden you're moving a quarter mile of polywire a day, which is doable, but it takes more time. So now with these collars, we can do these long narrow paddics, move them three, four, five, six times a day, whatever you want easily to get that change, that disruption on the landscape. I think that's going to be a big game changer. And then we also rent some pastures and some of our native where we don't have this infrastructure in place where we can't move them every day and I think it's going to be a big game changer there because it's going to allow you to do that type of management in a place where

44:22 Where somebody else owns the land and they don't want to make those improvements, you know, you don't want to put the money in on their land to make those improvements. So, I think we're going to pick up grazing days on those acres as well. So we'll increase our stock. I have no doubt that we're going to increase our animal days we've harvest for the year. Like I said, we've been about 48 to 50, you know, the last few years. And I'd look for that to go up. So and it's got to to pay for them, you know. It's like that's one thing with technology. They get you hooked on it, you know. And then, you know, $100 a cow, that's a lot of money if you're going to spend that per year. Like yeah, that's significant. You know, it doesn't look so bad now when cattle prices are high, but when they go down, it's sometimes it's hard to find a $100, you know, profit on a cow.

45:11 Right. Right. And and some of that, you know, is going to come back to you from better grazing utilization and some of it just in labor savings as well, you know, especially as you know, you're pretty lean on labor. You almost got to look at it like this is hiring another guy to help out. It is. Yep. Yep. It's which is is kind of a double-edged sword too because the you know folks that are wanting to get started in this like and you have kids growing up on the farm like moving the poliwire that is an awesome job for like all of our kids have done that that's something that you can show them turn them loose to do that they can learn to observe the land and they tell you if you're taking too much you know and they can observe the animal health easier so that my kids are all gone now So other than Macy maybe in the summers but so so if it's if it's a good time to get lazy I guess now it is but but that is that is a good job for for young kids where on a farm and ranch today.

46:13 Yeah no great points. Let's you know we talked a little bit well we we've talked about economics kind of throughout this whole thing. Let's talk a little bit about, you know, there there there's two ways to be more profitable and I'm sure, you know, ranching for profit and, you know, I mean, this is just common sense. Number one, you generate more income, but number two, you just simply spend less to generate whatever income you're getting. Let's talk a little bit about the spending less part, you know, with your system. How how have you seen your inputs, input cost, you know, fertilizer, herbicides, seed, all these things. How have you seen that change as you've shifted from a largely cropping system to largely forage system?

46:58 Okay, the it's certainly gone down for sure a lot. And that's one nice thing people I don't know they they're kind of hesitant when I talk about converting land to perennials. I know which it is a big commitment but but we take this land and we have this and it depends on what perennial system we're doing too. If it's more of a native type mix, it's going to be more of a permanent deal where but those seed costs can run $180 an acre, you know, right now for that mix. So, you're going to have to amortize that out over 10 years or whatever. So, it's for the perennials. Yeah. And and then you got the intermediate like perennial system like where it's just maybe a sequence of introduced species, you know, that you can do that for a lot less. It depends a lot on your context where you're at if you can get those type of plants to grow. Okay. So, so once you plant those obviously then our seed and input costs like we do nothing else. We just manage our grazing. So, no fertilizer, you know, anything like that. Now, on our annual cropping, obviously we've, yeah, we reduced our fertilizer expenses to to basically zero on a lot of those acres now. So, initially starting out and I would encourage people starting out if you know you're going in a system that's short of nitrogen or short of fertility to even if you're planting a cover crop, you know, you got to have something to graze. Okay? So, don't go out there and assume that maybe you don't need a little bit of nitrogen to to get it going to get you enough forage. So so we'll we might use 20 pounds of nitrogen on a full season cover crop mix.

48:51 To get some growth on it initially or maybe when we started maybe we used 40 lbs. But our nitrogen rates on those acres are or three, cut down three-fourths of what they were from what we were doing on annual cropping and no phosphorus.

49:09 We're managing our grazing on them though, so that all helps. Seed costs obviously, I don't know how much it costs to plant corn today, but it's a lot versus a cover crop mix of some sort.

49:25 So yeah, our inputs a herbicide, it's significantly less because we're not basically if we're done grazing a crop and we have to make a one herbicide pass, I want to plant something else so I don't have to make any more herbicide passes. So that's kind of my mentality is if you I don't want to have to spray that four or five times to try to keep something clean. Like I just want to get something growing again.

49:56 Yeah, and that's what makes a chemo-wheat type system so expensive. You know, you're either doing a lot of tillage passes or a lot of chemical passes and that's just huge disruptions. Both of them are huge disruptions to that system. And so, yeah, I really hope that people can understand that you don't have to make nearly as much revenue off of a piece of ground if your expenses are extremely low.

50:26 Yeah. And that's right. Say our gross profit per animal day is $2.50. And say we only take off 50 animal days, that gross number doesn't look very big. But if our expenses are only, you know, $50 including your land cost and labor or whatever, like in a perennial system, then our profit per acre is more than trying to raise, you know, 80 bushels of wheat, which you're not going to raise. So when I look at these practices, I think when you look at a 10-year period, how many years can we do this practice and it be successful?

51:11 I've tried like say pasture cropping for instance, tried it multiple times, it's never worked because it just don't get the rain. So, does that mean it won't work? No. If we get a wet year, it would work. But does it justify putting those expenses out every year for 10 years to try to make it worth those two years? So that's kind of how my brain works on it, and it's even like that with cropping like can we grow 80 bushels of wheat every year for 10 years in Rush County, Kansas? No. You know, can we grow 140 bushel milo every year? No. It just doesn't happen. But can we grow forages like with our perennial systems? Can we be profitable 10 years out of 10? I don't know, but I bet you nine years out of 10 we can do it. So that's kind of how my brain works.

52:07 Yeah. No, I think that's really smart and it certainly doesn't hurt to be married to a really great accountant.

52:14 Yeah, that helps do all those numbers. So that is a benefit.

52:19 Hey, as we kind of draw this to a close here, Kevin, I do want to just talk briefly here about the Leopold Award. We're one of the sponsors of the Leopold Award both in Nebraska and Kansas, and you and your family were the 2025 recipients of that in Kansas. Talk a little bit about what that award is and what that means to you guys.

52:44 Well, it's quite an honor, I'll tell you that. So the award is like our local conservation districts. They're the ones, the Pontane and Rush County conservation districts. They're the ones that spearheaded the effort to nominate me for the award and I specifically told them I don't need this type of deal, but they went ahead and did it. So the conservation districts and the NRCS and those two counties, they're the ones that spearheaded this. And then they go out and this application is a huge deal and it's extensive.

53:23 It's extensive and then they go out and get letters of recommendation from people. For me that's like the biggest honor is that other people think that we deserve this award. Like you know Jay Furr wrote a letter of recommendation and Joanie Mitchell with CCTA and Jennifer Simlink and I mean you read these things and it brings tears to your eyes. I mean honestly.

53:50 And then there's been so many people along the way like you and Brian, you

53:55 I've met and so I accept that award on behalf of you and all these people that have helped me get to where I am today. Yeah, it's like I say, it's just quite an honor. So it's very blessed.

54:15 Well, we are amongst those who think you're richly deserving of it and I appreciate your humility as it comes to that. And I know that this gives you more exposure to be able to help others as well. And I know that's important to you. So you know, in light of helping others, I know that you'd have had a lot of people come and look at what you're doing. You're willing to jump on podcast. You've done webinars with us before. We appreciate that. Always.

54:49 What's a piece of advice you would give someone who is just trying to get started down this path? Maybe it's a young guy, but maybe it's an older guy who just is getting to that point where you've had enough, you're tired of chasing the high yield, high input, no profit game. What advice would you give to somebody who is looking to make a change?

55:13 Everything we talked about, you know, just like going and seeing other people's operation and trying to just learn as much as you can and go to ranching for profit and holistic management training and talk to people. But I just truly believe that it just has to come from within. You have to, and for some people there's different reasons—health benefits or financial reasons or whatever it is. But you just really have to be at that point in your life that it's like, you know, we just have to trust in this, have faith that God is going to provide for us and just start making the leap. And you don't have to do it all at one time. Like I said, we still do some conventional stuff on other land, but that was kind of my goal—can we build this business model and can we make it more profitable enough that we can let go of all this other stuff? And I think that's the direction we're heading. So once you find out if this works, then you can expand that across more of your acres, more of the landscape too.

56:31 And I guess for me, like I'm at the point in my life now where I've learned so much through the years making mistakes and going places and learning stuff. Now I'm at the point in my life where I got to make sure this knowledge gets passed to other people. So like you said, I am willing to share. I'm willing to help people to speed this process up if this is something that people want, a journey that they're willing to embark on. And I'm not saying at all what I'm doing is right and we continue to make a lot of mistakes, but we've gone down this path and if you're interested in going down that path, you know we can help you get there. I'm not saying it's right or it's going to get you where you want to be, but sure, we've learned a lot and I'm always willing to share that. I think that's important.

57:30 Yeah. Well, we certainly appreciate your willingness to do that, your willingness to share your story with other folks. And just like you went and saw Dwayne Beck and Dan Forgi and all those guys, you're not doing the same thing that they're doing, but you were inspired by them. We were inspired by Adomir and by Gabe and so many others. So hopefully people watching this will get inspired to at least consider the economics, consider how they can diversify their operation to be more resilient as well. So Kevin, thank you so much for coming on and being part of the Green Cover podcast and we continue to pray for rain for your area, our area, and all across this great country. So thanks everybody for joining us for this episode of the Green Cover podcast.

58:16 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.