Soil Health, Nutrient Density, and Building Community with Dr. Jill Clapperton

0:00 Hey everybody, welcome to the Green Cover podcast where we have really interesting conversations with some of the top experts and farmers in the regenerative movement. Join us as we learn together how we can regenerate, steward, and share God's creation for future generations. Very excited about today's guest. It's our friend Dr. Jill Clapperton. And we have known Jill way longer than we've had Green Cover. As we started our journey, as Brian and I started our journey from Noel to soil health, eventually to cover crops and wherever we ended up here, Jill, we knew you way before Green Cover through Noel on the Plains and all of the great Noel work that you were doing and that we were working in. So we've considered you a friend for a very, very long time. And in fact, I remember way back in the very early days of Green Cover, you not only helped us with some of the kind of soil health and scientific things, you really helped us in the business development as well. We invited us to Washington and we met with you and Fred and just that was really important for us as we were starting a new company to have people that we could reach out to and lean on. So, thank you for all that you've done for us, for all that you've done for the regenerative movement, and welcome to the Green Cover podcast.

1:20 Thanks. Hey, Keith. It was fun, but it was, you know, encouraging people to do good things, there's nothing ever wrong with that.

1:30 It's always and when they succeed wildly like you and Brian have in your families, it's just it makes my heart sing. Yeah, it's fun to be part of something that's just way bigger than yourself and to know that yeah, I had maybe a little piece, you know, when customers send us pictures of, hey, look how this cover crop grew or look how well my cattle are doing on this. You know, it's like, yeah, we had a little part in that, but you know, good for you. You're really making it work. So, yeah.

2:02 Yeah. That's how I feel. Are you just like, you know, sitting around the table, that time at the table with everybody, all your kids and all Brian's kids and everybody having a big conversation. Do we go and do we make a cover crop seed company? It's like, yeah, let's do it.

2:24 Here we are like 16 years later and it's working.

2:28 Yeah. So exciting. Yeah. So, I'm really excited to be here, Keith. Just great. So, for those who are listening, Jill, or watching and don't really know maybe who you are or your background, share just a little bit of your background would fill volumes of information, but just give people kind of the condensed version of kind of where you have come from, your journey to get to where you are now.

2:56 Oh boy. Okay. I started with I well obviously I went to university, University of Calgary. I have a degree in plant ecophysiology, so not the typical ag background obviously. I have a PhD in plant ecophysiology and a master's degree in fungal ecology. I then went immediately to work for Agriculture and Agra Food Canada in Lethbridge as the rhizosphere ecologist which at the time was a term that was absolutely coveted by a number of my colleagues and which I also just really revere. Albert Rivera was the inspiration for all of this from Australia. He really did a lot of the early work in the 50s on the rhizosphere and I wrote this paper in my mycology class about the rhizosphere and I just became obsessed with it to be honest. And then in Agriculture and Agra Food Canada I worked on I set up the first organic field trials in Agriculture and Agra Food Canada. I really believe in field work. I think it's really important. And I think that it's important to do field work at field scale because although as researchers we can learn a lot from plot studies, I still think we learn a lot from larger scale studies. I scared all my colleagues when I had integrated livestock grazing in my research plots because all their plots were of course around us. So, they made me put up this big fence.

4:58 To make sure the cattle didn't get out into their plots, which, you know, they'd been working on for a really long time. So I got it, but we learned a lot from that. Then I went and started my own consulting company. Had a brief stint in Montana and then moved to Washington State, and my head office is still in Spokane, Washington for the company, Rise of Terra. Loved working in the Palouse. Had some other opportunities to do some other things, which did a lot of really great fieldwork there. It was wonderful. And then I left and did a stint in Provo, Utah with Newkin International where I was working on supplements and growing plants for supplements.

6:00 I really enjoyed that and built an analytical lab, and I learned a lot about plant secondary metabolites, which has always been something I've loved. I've loved understanding and learning more about plant secondary metabolites and how they affect our health, but also how the plants manufacture them and what they do for the plants themselves. And from there I went to the west coast to work for another company on supplements. And then I'm a co-founder of Adacious in the Boston area, and that company was something I really enjoyed. I built the lab. I started right from scratch, the building, the lab, all of it. I got to work with Dr. Ian Hunter from MIT, which he's just amazing, on the development of technology and just to be in that environment with people that are that smart.

7:12 For those who don't know, Adacious is a nutrient density testing company. We test for nutrient density. I was working with Eric Smith, who's the CEO, and had a great lab team, super lab team. I just really missed that connection because my whole goal in the company is not so much about human nutrition or anything. It's more, for me, it's more about if I grow things this way, are they more nutrient dense? Does that make my food better for you? Does this give me a lift in the market? I don't think we're there or we're going to get a lift in the market yet, but is my food better for you? Is this a reason for you to buy from me? And I think the answer is yes.

8:11 I certainly think so. I certainly see the difference, and you taste the difference. And I think that's the thing that I'm coming across more and more. I've been working with Chef Dan Barber at Blue Hill Restaurants and Stone Barnes in New York. And Dan has always encouraged me about flavor and taste, saying you can taste the quality, Jill. I think you can taste nutrient density. And I said, well, I don't actually, I've never doubted that. But more and more as I do more tasting and I'm with more farmers that are doing these really incredible practices, you can taste the difference. I believe you can taste the difference. And I think that quality, the nutrient density, the quality of the food is what we are tasting.

9:04 And I don't doubt for a minute that our bodies are benefiting from it. Yeah, and one of the cool things about Dan Barber and what he's doing, they order some cover crop seed for us. They plant it in some of their production fields, but then they will send their chefs out and they will pick different things off the cover crops to infuse into their meals, whether it's pea leaves or pea pods or collared greens, different things like that. And so I just love how they're utilizing all the diversity around them and then incorporating it into their meals. So going to his location having a meal there at Stone Barns is on my bucket list.

9:46 It should be. Trust me. The other thing is they do make a cover crop salad and served in the restaurant with these beautiful hand-illustrated placemats that actually have illustrations of every one of the plants that are in that cover crop salad. It's pretty amazing. Yeah, that's really cool. So my bucket list keeps growing. Isn't it supposed to get less as you get older, Jill? I think.

10:13 No, it doesn't. Mine gets bigger. You're like me. You're a lifelong learner. So you're just going to.

10:19 That would be really interesting. Add that on. Yeah, that's really cool. Add that on. And I think it should just be that your bucket list should be just really long. Yeah, yeah. I think it should be. I'm going to need a bigger bucket, I think.

10:39 So from Adacious and all the nutrient density things to where you're in addition to all the other world traveling and consulting you're doing, you actually are living and working on a working operation now too in Kansas. I am in South Central Kansas out of Etna, Kansas. All five of us are Etna. So it makes Bladen look big.

11:07 Yeah, well, I think that's really cool because, you know, that way you can put into practice the things that you're teaching people. And I suspect and again, we can get into this later. I suspect that you're finding many of the same challenges that all of the producers that you work with are finding as well. Oh yeah. I mean, I've had some successes. Right now we don't have any equipment so it's you know that creates some issues for us with the custom seating and things like that. So I'm working on getting equipment and getting to the point where we can do some of our own seating so I'm not relying on others and then playing with the mixes, the forages on the cattle. So I have a small herd where I'm actually fence them off and then make and then eat and weigh and eat and weigh.

12:03 Yeah. Poor little, my poor girls. They get, you know, it's like, 'Hey, try this.' And they're looking at it like, 'Yeah.' No. And you know, I taste it. I taste the stuff so that I know it's like, well, this actually one thing I learned a long time ago is that sometimes you need to taste the same forage that they're eating just to understand if it's any good because sometimes it's really not. Like sometimes the way you've grown it or whatever, it's terrible. It's bitter. It's awful. Bitter, yeah. No wonder you'd want to eat that. I don't want that.

12:37 And the mixes. So it's about well how do they do in this one? How do they do in this one? So I do some experimenting that way for weight gain and things like that. It's good and the plants actually grow. And the other thing is that we also I also consider myself a wildlife manager. So we have a real strong program for quail and lesser prairie chickens. Lesser prairie chickens are endangered here. And so I've been also doing a lot of habitat seeding around the edges of the fields for the feeds that we actually seed. And then the grazing is primarily on tall grass prairie. So we bring the cattle out in the spring and the fall when the tall grass prairie isn't nearly as nutritious as the cover crops are. And the deer are benefiting from it as well. And the turkeys and all the other things that live here and that's good. I mean, that's always fun.

13:54 Yeah, it's all part of the ecosystem. It is, yeah. And I like seeing that we're building an ecosystem and that the ecosystem is really thriving. We're seeing actually this year we've actually got pheasants, a lot of pheasants hanging around which all our coyotes, I'm surprised, but yeah we must be doing something right.

14:17 Well that's great. It's great to build something, you know, it's very rewarding for me anyway to be able to see that, you know, I did this and this and here's the results that I'm getting. And I know that you've seen that for years with the people that you've taught and consulted with, but now you're getting the opportunity to see that on your own operation as well, which I think is really cool. It's cool. I'm enjoying it, Keith. But I also mean not that I because I've always done real field level trials. I think I've always understood the and ridden with farmers and worked with them in the fields. I think I understand some of the challenges but when it gets to your own fields and you know the weather starts more rain than you had you can't get in the field you can't do things it's just

15:07 Like you're sitting there just watching everything do things that you didn't really want to do. Yes. And then on the other hand, it's about learning. So what does my ground really grow well? I've been really watching the weeds and I've been doing a lot of plant diversity studies and like what do I grow well? What does this soil really like to grow?

15:37 You can learn a lot. What is your soil telling you? So Jill, one of the reasons that we wanted to have you on the podcast in addition to just catching up and learning what you've been up to is we're very excited to be able to tell all of our people that you are going to be the featured speaker at our Southeast Kansas soil health conference, which we'll be doing at our Green Cover location in Iola, Kansas, December 10th and 11th. We're super excited that it worked out into your schedule to be able to come and to take a little deeper dive into some of the things that we're just going to touch on here today, but you'll be able to go into depth on them a lot more at that Southeast Kansas soil health conference.

16:23 Give us just a little bit of a sneak preview of what you're thinking about talking about so we can kind of get people encouraged to come meet you in person, be able to ask questions, converse with you one-on-one. Because that's how we met you, at all these soil events way back, before we even thought about soil health. We've really appreciated that relationship and you just can't duplicate meeting people face to face and having those personal conversations. Webinars are great, but you got to be in person some of the time. So give us a little sneak preview of what we can expect.

17:06 We're definitely going to talk about soil health because everything that I do, the underlying premise is about building, rebuilding, enhancing soil health. I really want to enforce that for everybody is that no matter what you do, your overarching goal needs to be soil health. I'm improving soil health. Especially with the talk about regen ag. Regen ag is about soil health. If you don't have soil health, you can't have regen ag. So let's talk about soil health and getting your soil a whole lot better and maintaining that soil health, sustaining long-term soil health.

17:47 I'm also going to spend a lot of time talking about plants because plants are part of this. The most important thing about soil health is structure and we can't have structure without good roots and lots of roots. We're going to talk a lot more about roots and different lengths of roots and creating root canopies. We're also going to talk about seed. You're a seed company, but how important is good seed? What should good seed look like? What should good seed do? Why is that important? And how do seeds germinate?

18:22 We're going to actually talk about and do a little bit of a dive into how seeds germinate, talk about the spermosphere, what's in the spermosphere, how important is that for disease suppression and things like that. And then we're going to talk about the rhizosphere, which is that root zone. The soil attached to the root, the soil influenced by the root, because the influence of the root can be monstrous. Every different seed you put in the ground has a different rhizosphere and has different rhizosphere exudates and all those good things. We're creating plant communities when we create cover crops. It's about talking about how do these plant communities work a little bit from a rhizosphere perspective.

19:09 We're going to go above ground and we're going to talk about how, now that we've sucked everything up, how do we get nutrient density in our plants? How do we actually build secondary plant metabolites, the ones we want? What happens to them? How do they build secondary metabolites? How do the plants regenerate, actually absorb them and then recreate them when they need them? We're going to talk a little bit about plants talking to each other and how they talk to each other. Why that's also important from our health perspective because a lot of those secondary metabolites that they use to protect and defend themselves are things that we really need to eat and absorb in our

19:49 bodies. And the cattle and the sheep and everything else that grazes on these cover crops, they need it, too.

19:58 Yeah. No, that's great. And it sounds like it's something that people really need to get there so we can take this deep dive. It's interesting, you know, one of the things that you said there, you know, about how these plants are pulling all this out of the soil and packing it in and these are things that we really need. I recently just expanded. I've always had a talk on cover crop species, but I've really expanded that and we actually turned it into a course. So we've got an online course now. It's a five-part course just on cover crop species, a pretty deep dive, but one of the things that I kept saying over and over in that because I realized that many of the cover crops that we're using, they're the things that you buy at the health food store. They're the things that are called superfoods. You know, flax and chia and fava beans and chickpeas and all these things. It's like, hey, we're using those as cover crops. And it, you know, I sometimes am not real quick, but it finally dawned on me that the reason that they're superfoods is because they are super at pulling the nutrients out of the soil. And the reason they can do that is because they're really, really good at recruiting the right biology to make that all possible. So, kind of sounds like you're going to help tie all that together and help us make sense of that.

21:15 Yeah, I hope so.

21:17 Yeah. So, you know, superfoods and sometimes that makes some of these cover crop seeds a little more expensive because we're competing against the human food market, which is okay because, you know, it's a very valuable product for both human consumption, livestock consumption, but also, you know, the reason that they're nutrient dense is because of how they're doing things in the soil.

21:44 Yeah. And you know, and if you're going to spend that money on good seed, then make sure you have good soil health to support that good seed because that's where you're going to see the most benefit from it.

21:57 Yeah, for sure. That doesn't mean that good seed can't help you get there, but it certainly is going to shine in healthy soil.

22:05 Yeah. You know, we always tell people that, you know, we think our seed is different because of how it's grown, how it's raised. You know, probably somewhere between 60 and 70% of the seed that we sell is grown within our network. Some of it's grown right here on our own farm, but then we've got a huge network of producers, you know, who started out as our customers and, you know, we've identified them as really good seed growers. And so we're contracting with them to grow a lot of this seed for us. And because they're doing it with regenerative practices, you know, we just think that makes better seed. And I think that's really starting to show up because I've had just within the last couple months, I know I've had five or six people say, 'Yeah, I got your seed. I ran a little bit short, so I ran down to the co-op and just got a bag of whatever they had.' and huge difference, you know, on how fast it came up and how vigorous it was and just, you know, so it's encouraging to start hearing this and getting feedback from customers that are validating what we believe and what we've said that regeneratively grown seed is better seed.

23:18 Yeah, I think I mean I know there's a difference in seed. I mean, when I was when you're growing seed indoors too, like I've been recently working with a company in Calgary, New Leaf Farms, where we're growing everything indoors. And seed quality is so important. It just means we don't get the same level disease. That means that the plants just come out of the ground. I mean, we're getting things germinating in 3 4 days. It's, you know, this is important. Faster they get out of the ground, the more they get roots, the better off it is. So,

23:56 yeah, I've always seen that with seed. And then when we were doing green drinks, that news new skin, same thing. If I got bad seed, I was spending so much time trying to get rid of things on it, you know, and just okay, this is fodder now. It's not we can't do this for human consumption. And I'm not sure the cow should eat it either. Just needs to be composted.

24:23 Yeah. I think it's like this is this is

24:25 No good. But I think, you know, I really see the difference in seeing and I will talk to people about how they can just evaluate some of that themselves.

24:36 Yeah. Well, that'll be really interesting. I personally look forward to learning more about that. And we're going to have other really good speakers, too. We'll have three different farmer panels. One will be talking about how to integrate all these principles in crop production. One panel will talk about how they're integrating these principles within livestock production. And then we'll have one panel talking about how they're utilizing biological products and biological concepts to greatly reduce their inputs in their farming system. So that'll probably kind of span both crops and livestock because a lot of these guys are doing both. And so we'll have a lot of local regional farmer involvement as well as Jill you as our keynote. So really hope a lot of people can come December 10th and 11th in Iola, Kansas. You can just go to our website greencover.com and find the information about how to get signed up.

25:33 So I want to move into a little bit different topic. Jill, I know that you know we've been trying to get scheduled you know I think I'm busy. Your schedule is even crazier. And I know that you recently just spent time overseas. You in fact you were in Australia, Tom and Cassie Robinson, friends of ours, they've been here to the farm, been to some of our events. I think they're coming back for Noel on the Plains even as well, right? So it'll be really exciting. So give us just a little bit of an update or report on what you're seeing globally, what you're seeing around the world as far as challenges people are facing and solutions that they're coming up with to make their operations more resilient.

26:21 Oh boy. Yeah, I was in Australia for a little over a month recently. I'm just back a week actually. And I it's been really it's been fascinating. I spent a week with Diane and Ian Hagerty on the West Coast at Mullerin and with natural intelligence farming and learning more about that and the integration of the sheep and also how they're marketing their grain to bakery. The scale they're doing at is incredible. Yes, it is. And using like, you know, worm casting juice and Johnson Sue and also just really using integrating the sheep really well into their operation and the sheep become really really important and then to see the change in the sheep. I mean, you know, I see it in the cows, too. Like some of them when I get the mixes right, the cattle are just really content. Like you know, like right now, I've got weaners on one field and that, you know, they're all just like laying around like eating and then laying around and you're like, 'Well, that's the way they should look.' Quiet, contented, like, you know, not bawling all the time. Yeah, it's great.

27:48 And I think the same thing and then you know I was just there after shearing and the fleeces were amazing and the quality of the fleeces off those sheep was really quite spectacular and they're seeing the benefit of them grazing in that way. But the other thing that I'm hearing more and hear it from Grant Sims, I hear it from actually a lot of people that I talk to is having that bit of wild like native bush or native ground in between like their fields or around their fields and the advantage that they get from that as an inoculant but some of the wild species that are in there as well. And just the benefit it gets to the health of their animals too from being able to move into wild lands. And I think that was really interesting for me to hear, you know, how important a number of people I was talking to felt about getting into, you know, just seeing the benefit of keeping that bit of native bush around their place just to really sort of help even the ground. And so and then you know we talked about refugia too like people because in Australia they have to keep the trees in the field and how that can be more of a refuge for birds and things like that and how we can make that a little better and how we can farm around this. Like we're used to these big long fields with nothing in them and in Australia they have trees and whatnot and it's like this is not a bad thing. This is a refuge and think about it as a refuge. Yeah. And think about yourself as a wildlife manager as well. And think about how important it is for movement of animals. And it's not necessarily

29:37 That they're eating all the crops. It's more about the fact that this is a refuge for them. And they do eat more wild things. And yeah, sometimes they, but sometimes we have to share. And maybe that sounds a bit altruistic, but I don't think I have any choice but to share because there's nothing I can do and nothing I would do about all the wild animals that are around me and using the same land that I am.

30:02 And I think the other thing was just the diversity. Like it was freezing cold in southern Western Australia. That's freezing cold. But it was winter coming out of winter so it was really cold. But just to see what people were doing like orchards and vineyards and the cover crops and how they're talking about mixes and like what they can do and integrating livestock into their vineyards and into their different orchards. And there were a lot of different styles of orchards which was also really interesting including things for eucalyptus oil and how that was changing the quality of their eucalyptus oil which was fascinating as well.

30:51 Some interesting discussion with indigenous people, people of the First Nations and how important that bush is to them from a foraging perspective and a medicinal perspective and how farmers keeping that and allowing them to forage on some of that land is so important for them. So it became like another enterprise and another level of the good things that we're doing in regenerative agriculture.

31:18 And then just people talking about flavor and quality of their food, talking about the quality of the meat, quality of the cheese and the milk and the fleeces and just the grains and the fruit. A lot of, I was up in Queensland and we were talking about fruits and pineapples and things like that. And the thing about it is, okay, I don't grow pineapples. Obviously, that would be a real feat if I could do one.

31:54 But it was so fun to understand more about how they do that and then also see that their droughts the same as ours. I mean, they're dealing with water issues in a slightly different way than we do. And I thought, wow, some of this, these are things that I could really learn. And there were a lot of things I learned that I can bring back. And that's the other thing I learned, they learn. You always learn like new little things. And they're not big things, but they're just little things.

32:29 And I like that. I like to just, and some of it's really practical for me, like, you know, Tom telling me I need these slippers on my fork so that I can extend my fork so that it's easier to lift up pallets and stuff like just stuff like that. Not really, a lot of people wouldn't think that was really great learning, but for me that was. It was like, yeah, that's a really good thing. You should have these.

32:53 And just meeting people that are really doing a lot of great things and people are really trying hard to get there and how putting, you know, I'm a Montessori educator and proponent and this is really about bringing people of all levels together in one place and everybody learning from each other. And I think that is really important. I think we all learn better when we all learn from each other.

33:27 And so if we can put people like all these farmers in the same room like you're doing with your conference and we can all start learning from each other, we learn so much better. I learn better. I learn all the tricks and then you get to know somebody and go, 'Well, you know, I'm struggling with this. What do you think? Like what would you do?'

33:47 And I think that sounds maybe a bit silly, but it really helps both of us learning because then I learn the perspective that that person's coming from and they learn where I'm coming from. And then in the end, we're weaving our information together and our experience together to make it all to take it to another level. And I think always pulling the level up is what's really important. Elevating our understanding, elevating our knowledge, always a good thing.

34:25 Yeah. Back in February of this year, 25, we helped Joel Williams put on an event in Omaha where he was talking, but he had Grant Sims and Tom Robinson.

39:35 Thousands of acres, but they didn't start that way. They started and they figured it out and then they've really scaled it up.

39:43 Yeah. They figured out a recipe that worked over and over again and then said, 'Okay, now let's ramp this up because now this is something that we can do.' And as they take over more farms and they change them and turn them around and the land becomes better. And I mean that was interesting too because watching their farming, so for a lot of us that are used to conventional agriculture it was very uneven. So there's some that's really growing well and then some that's not growing as well. And then what's really cool is at the end it all evens out and the little tillers have grown strong and the big ones have finished and they all finish together because of the biology and the talk between everything. It's some plants are in a better resource patch than others but the other ones catch up because they're feeding those and it just in the end it all looks very even just as it would in a conventional field. And that's the thing that's another lesson from what I would say from all the travels I do is that you have to watch the whole movie.

41:00 You can't just get halfway through and go that's bad. I'm done, because you don't know until you actually see the end. You don't know what the result's going to be. I mean, I'll give you an example of my own. I seeded the cover crop last year and conditions were brilliant. You know, it's like, oh yeah, finally, here we go, and germinated and then two weeks of hot 100 degree wind. Dead. Dry, dry, thinking okay well that was awesomeness. I guess I'm going to reseed. I reseeded and some other things because now I'm later in the year and go out this spring and there's all this sampo and the lentils had all grown and it's like that was seed from that I thought was gone. Those were plants I didn't think had done anything and then there they were just flourishing. I mean I had all these sampo flowers all over the field and I was like wow look at that.

42:19 And you know, I really needed to watch the whole movie before I got and if I'd sprayed all that, I would have missed out and it would have lost all the benefit of having a bloat free legume forage in my fields and a perennial at that.

42:35 Yeah, I love that analogy. You got to watch the end of the movie, but I also think you have to be careful that you don't jump in and start watching in the middle of the movie because that's where a lot of people want to do it. They don't want to start from the beginning and have to learn and you know because it is kind of a step-by-step approach and you can't just jump into the middle and expect to have a good ending. You have to start at the beginning and because the middle of the movie sometimes is the struggle.

43:03 Yeah sometimes the middle of the movie is like oh this is bad. How am I going to salvage this? How am I going to save this? And that's the thing is sometimes the save comes you just have to watch and I mean I admit that having animals like grazing animals has been a saving grace in some of this because we had a failed wheat crop this year winter wheat crop and we got hailed and now I have all this volunteer winter wheat which is going to get fed and I just interceded a bunch of broad leaves into it. And you know, I mean, it's going to be those are the things you can take advantage of.

43:50 I could. And because I have animals, I can take advantage of that.

43:54 People with livestock rarely have a crop failure. They may have to move on to plan B, C, D, and E, but you can always salvage something with livestock. But the people without livestock, there's still opportunities. You probably have neighbors that have livestock, but it takes more effort. It takes more work. And even if you're not making a ton of money by letting other people graze that land, they're bringing in biology. They're bringing in diversity into your system that probably has a lot more value.

44:26 than most people think. Then you get the organic matter and you get the weed control, too. So, let's think about that from a cropping perspective of the people that don't have livestock. And I'm not saying, oh, you have, the only way to do this is with livestock. I am going to talk about companion planting because I think that for a lot of people, companions and intercropping are a really good solution to some of the diversity issues and to getting rid of some of the disease and then building up some of the insects that we need in order to stop some of the other insect damage to actually build things. So there are many ways to do that. Like I was just with a seed grower in Queensland and he'd never grown anything between the rows ever and we encouraged him to grow fenugreek and vicilia and there was one other in there too. I think chickpeas might have even been in there and with his wheat and this is seed wheat.

45:33 And it was amazing the rooting, the change and you could see we had chickpeas in one of them and we had flax in one of them and we had flax and this and the other sort of progression up and when we dug the soil pits behind each of the treatments. It was really interesting to see the change in the rooting and how the roots changed but all the nodules were really active. The chickpeas weren't doing much in the wheat, but the wheat was really benefiting from it. But the other thing that was really cool was to look down the rows and we're starting to get some stripe rust in the wheat. And to look down the rows and see that where we had certain plants, especially the phacelia, we didn't have any stripe rust. Like there was no yellowing here, yellowing there, yellowing here, and then no yellowing.

46:21 You know, and these are things you didn't have to measure. You could just look. You could see it and you could see that the neighbors were right like immediately next door to where we were where we were doing the field day. And you could see in the neighbors that they were really struggling with stripe rust like they were going to start spraying. And over here we had no reason to spray. Wasn't getting anywhere close to being sprayed. We just started having some even though the neighbors were well and truly entrenched with it. And I think that's because of the other plants that were in there. It's the only reason we could explain it because we were getting more stripe rust in the control and that's the other thing we talk about was like okay you want to do these experiments you want to understand how to do this you need to have a control which is or reference which is how you do everything you normally do so you just do what you normally do and then you're comparing it against all the other things that you're doing new.

47:21 It's the only way that you can really understand what you're doing. So many people forget that. But you really need a control and you need it next to it. I don't want your control being like five miles away. No, that's not good enough. It needs to be right next to it. And you know, you just need to do one strip of each of the others. And that's all he did. He just went down and back. And then asked at the end to say, 'Okay, Russell, you know, would you consider?' He said, 'I'm going to do this from now on. I just have to figure out how I collect the phacelia seed.' because he said, 'I want that stuff.'

47:57 Yeah. It's valuable seed for sure. Yeah. Well, he figured that one out, too. And he was like, 'Okay, I'm going to figure out how I get that.' Yeah. And clean that. Had all the seed cleaning there. And he's like, 'I'm going to figure out how I get this out of there.' Because it was flowering and it was above the wheat. I mean, because so, there was no way that we weren't going to be harvesting the wheat without the phacelia. It's just the way it is. So, we're just waiting. He's going to be combining here next week, I think. and we'll see if he gets any greening and how that works.

48:26 Yeah. One of the things we did this spring as a little bit of an experiment in our, you know we've been doing interseeding in the corn experiments, you know for quite a while but we decided to do some in soybeans. So, he planted the soybeans in 30-inch rows and then same day planted a cover crop mix of oats, rye, flax and mustard and buckwheat.

48:54 A fiveway mix out there and the mustard, just, you know, as you can imagine, you know, is one of the fastest growing plants and, you know, it was blooming yellow and it was above the plants and it just really looked nice out there. And we felt like we had fewer weeds and probably, you know, more beneficial insects, you know, in that strip. And again, it was one strip out of a field. It wasn't the whole field, but we saw enough that encouraged us that we're going to try more of that next year to see what that looks like and to see, you know, what can we get away with.

49:26 With soybeans, you got to be a little careful because whatever you grow is going to have to go through the combine. And so that's, you know, unlike corn where you can keep all that companion underneath and it doesn't become a harvest issue. But there's so much cool work going on with companion crops and, you know, we're learning so much about how plants, when you give the right plants together and give them a chance, they are so much more cooperative and not competitive.

49:58 I mean, you know, this is where I say one and one doesn't equal two anymore. It can equal four, six, eight. I mean, because these plants really like each other and they're just really benefiting from each other's company and their secondary metabolites and their signaling and all these other things. So yeah, and some of this is, we need to find. That's why I say, you know, when I'm experimenting with mixes, it's about who likes each other and what's not germinating really well and what is growing really well when I grow with these things because, you know, that is an issue for people for sure.

50:34 Yeah. Just one other cool thing that we've got a couple customers that are working on. They're growing grain sorghum milo as a grain crop but then in between they're planting a pretty diverse cover crop mix: mung beans, sunflowers, all manner of different things. And the plan is not to harvest that with a combine. They're going to strip graze it with cattle after that milo has matured. So give them a little bit at a time. So they're getting the grain out of the milo, but then they're also getting all of this other biomass that they've grown and you know kind of have a balanced ration and then just have to adjust those cattle runs to you know that level of grain and then just work their way through it throughout the winter little bit at a time. Which, how cool is that?

51:25 It's really cool. I mean cattle do really well on milo stocks. They really do. And then the ground, the farm ground, really benefits from that interaction. I mean, I think that the Lordings and Lance Ferk have sort of found that really nice balance between the cattle lordings having the cattle and Lance being a great farmer, a great no tail farmer. And they've just really found that balance. And I think that's the other thing is having these in-between-the-row things. But even you know what we don't, you know, we curse the crab grass and we curse these other grasses and the other things that grow in there, but they're forage. So after the stocks are there, you know, it's not just what I grow. I mean, there could be a number of other cool season weeds that grow in there and they're all forage and some of them are excellent forage.

52:15 Yeah. Some of them are higher quality than what we're trying to grow.

52:22 Well, Jill, as we kind of wrap this up and bring it to a close, tell us a little bit about some of the resources you have available at Riseotera. You've got your own podcast that you do. You've got all kinds of resources. Tell us just a little bit about what people can find if they go to your website.

52:43 They go to my website, they will find we have a reading list. We actually have something up to talk about how to make field trials, like how to do your own field trials and how to analyze your own field trials. And not to worry about doing super replication but you know you can do it. There are a number of different ways to do this. We talk about product registration and bugs in a jug and how important it is if you're going to do that, like what you look for and how to select, and not just on pictures but actually make sure that the company is providing data. We talk about analysis a lot, like how do I analyze and what are some of the field tools that I can use in the field instead of sending things away. Are there things that I can do in the field?

53:30 To actually understand whether I'm making progress or not? And there are a number of infield tools that we can use and just really simple things. And your eyeballs are the number one thing that you can use. And just observation. Observation is really important and can't stress that enough. And then of course we have the resources for all the Sarah's done this big job right now of moving everything onto our website for with all our videos and everything we've done, everything we've collected. All of those things are now in one place where people can have access to them. And then we'll start to have teaching resources too. Not so much me doing courses, but more resources for teachers. So a in the classroom sort of things where people can learn about soil health and they'll be all curriculum based and that's coming. I'm working on some of those. And then there's just the trivia like you know B12 and soil and things like that like what you know those kinds of things.

54:41 My website and you know jillclapertton.com and riseterror.com are all about community and building community of farmers, building a global community because I really believe in global community. I really do. And because I do travel, I try and bring in some of that flavor into the podcast, like people from some of my travels and people who are talking about interesting things, even if I don't get to do it when they're sitting at the table like with Cassie and Tom. Maybe another time when we're doing it this way, like just over or virtually. But it still, you know, you were there and there's some pictures. We always put some pictures in from my travels so that people can see what those fields look like and I think what I'm going to do is start doing a few more study tours. So actually, you know, offering the opportunity for farmers if they want to come in small groups and share the people that I've worked with in different countries.

55:44 It's curated with an opportunity to actually meet farmers. So it's not we're not you know maybe there'll be some university and there'll be some other you know fun touristy things but there'll be a lot of good food that's for one thing for sure because I don't go anywhere where I don't eat good food. And I eat good food. So it's like no, we're going to eat good food. And it's about bringing farmers together to talk and understand each other and understand that, you know, the fundamental processes are exactly the same, but people do things a little bit differently. But we can learn from that. I mean, you can learn things every time you go away. You learn something. You learn, you know, about new plants or you learn about new techniques or you just learn little things about equipment or whatever because the equipment is quite different sometimes.

56:37 That would be really interesting. When you get those study tours planned, let us know. We can help promote that. And shoot, I may even sign up to go to that. That sounds like a lot of fun. So folks, you can learn a lot by going to Jill's website, risotera.com or jillclapertton.com. But you'll learn even more if you come to the Southeast Kansas soil health conference. December 10th and 11th are in Iola, Kansas. We really hope to see you there because like Jill said, when we get together in a room, we can learn from each other. And that's really what we try to do at our events. A lot of other great events do that, too. So we hope to see you there. And Jill, thank you so much for taking some time between your travels, between all the business that you have. Thank you for taking time to share with our group.

57:26 Oh, it's my pleasure. Always, Keith. Always have a fun time chatting with you and Brian and the whole cover crop crew. And I really look forward to being in Kansas. I think it's going to be a fun day. It was last year. It'll be fun this year, too.

57:39 Absolutely. Thank you so much. Yeah. Thanks. Bye.

57:42 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.