Soil Health Tools and Grazing Management in the Upper Midwest

0:57 Well hello everyone. Thanks for joining us this evening. I got a couple of announcements to start off with here that are a little bit unconventional. First of all, Noah is not here. He and his wife had a baby last night, which is very good news because she was a few days over her due date so nobody was very happy with that. So they had a baby yesterday, a little baby girl named Charlotte Rose. So everybody's doing well, and Noah is at home enjoying his new daughter with his family. So I'm kind of taking over the host duties this evening.

1:37 Our guest speaker for tonight is Lance Clessig, and Lance texted me a picture about 45 minutes ago of a tire off of this trailer that was completely shredded. He had a tire blow out as he was coming home from doing some work out in one of his fields or bachelors. So he promises me he's going to be here, he's just going to be a little bit late. I am going to just do a few announcements and do a few introduction type things while we're waiting for Lance to get back from his tire repair.

2:17 You may have seen or heard that we are putting on a soil health conference at our Kansas facility at our Iola Kansas facility. We're going to be doing that December 15th and 16th. If you go to our website greencoverseed.com you can find information on there or go to our Facebook page. There's information on there as well. Jimmy Evans, who we had as our first webinar speaker, is going to be one of our keynote speakers. Dale Strickler is going to be talking. I'm going to be doing my Carbonomics talk there. We've just got a really good lineup of both local talent from the area who are doing regenerative practices as well as having some other folks from across the state of Kansas. Sean Tiffany with Tiffany Cattle Company is going to be there talking about how they integrate livestock, soil health, and cover crops in their system as well. So that promises to be a really good conference. It's going to be a two-day conference. The food is going to be fantastic. It's only a hundred bucks, which is, you know, most of that is going towards just covering the food cost. So if you're interested in that at all, we would love to have you be part of that.

3:29 Next week's webinar is going to be Matt Kincaid, Macaulay Kincaid. He is a very progressive, innovative young farmer from Jasper Missouri, so not all that far from our Iowa Kansas location. He was one of our speakers at our last event that we had in Iola and was really one that got the highest reviews. People really loved his story. He's doing some really innovative things for that part of the world, growing some seed crops, integrating livestock, just doing some really great soil health integration type things. So Matt Kincaid is going to be next week.

4:14 The week after that, the 23rd, so that would be the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, we're going to have Dr. David Johnson. He and his wife are the inventors of the Johnson Sioux Compost Method. And actually, as a bonus, his wife is going to join us as well. So we're actually going to have both the Johnson and the Sioux. We're going to have a discussion about the Johnson Suit composting method. But more than just that, it's not just going to be a lesson on how do you do that because you can look it up and you can watch videos on how you can build that. They're going to be talking more about how do you use the product that you can make from their system. They'll be showing some success stories from other people that have used the extract from that Johnson Suit Compost Method, how they've used that on their farms and how they've seen some really great results. So that's going to be a really exciting one. You won't want to miss that.

5:13 The week after Thanksgiving, December 30th, Dale Strickler, our very own Dale Strickler is going to be on. I'm not a hundred percent sure what his topic is going to be, but I know one of the things that he'll be talking about is his new book. Dale's third book called Restoring Your Soil is going to be released here anytime. This is kind of an advanced copy that we got. He will be talking about, you know, soil topics, but this book is really. The three books that he's written, he said this is his favorite one because it talks more about the soil. And if any of you know Dale, you know that's just a real passion of his. So he'll be talking about how do you restore your soil and probably talking a little bit more about his new book. So we're pretty excited about having all that put together and being able to offer that to you.

6:12 We're really excited to be able to bring all this to you and I'd be really excited to bring plants to you as well. So hopefully as soon as he gets his tire fixed we'll be able to get going. In the meantime, if anybody has any kind of general soil health questions, feel free to type them in the chat window. I can do my best to answer any questions that you have about soil health things. We'd love to be able to just kind of have a dialogue about some of that. I know that with this webinar format, you're not able to talk back to me.

6:47 Hey, here we go, Lance coming. Hey, Lance.

6:52 Howdy guys. I was just telling them your tire was there. Man, that just seems like things go bad at just the worst times, don't they?

7:06 Yeah, it's been a rough day but thankfully we were able to get a tire guy up to us with a trailer tire and then of course he didn't pump it up. So we had a generator in the back of the truck, had the floor jack and had the air compressor. So we got it. We're all good.

7:28 Yeah, now I was just kind of giving people a rundown of the other webinars that we're doing. And I don't know if you've seen this yet, Lance. Dale's new book, this is Dale Strickler's new book, Restoring Your Soil. He'll be talking about this and other things here in a couple weeks. He'll be the webinar speaker. So this is brand new. I don't even know if it's actually released yet. But exciting stuff there as well.

7:53 Yeah, thank you for joining us, especially in light of all the craziness of this. I told people that Noah and Sierra had their baby, which is great praise. And so we're glad for that and so I'm happy to step in and help out for that.

8:12 Let me just give you kind of a brief introduction. The good news is we didn't have to do a little trial session and your audio sounds great. That seems to be working fine. So we've known Lance for gosh, I don't know, five or six years probably. Lance, we've been doing a lot of stuff back and forth. I think when we first met him, you were working for a conservation district up in Minnesota, Wisconsin kind of right on the border there between Wisconsin and Minnesota. But ever since then, we've known Lance and I don't know of hardly anybody that I know of that has as much passion and excitement around the topic of soil health as what Lance has had. He's just always sharing pictures of success stories that either he's had or people that he's helping and working with. I think you can get more excited about when you see it working on other people's operations as well. He's just always been a great proponent of soil health.

9:09 And now he's got his own farm, which explains the flat tire because with your own farm comes your own flat tires, your own problems and your own issues. So he's gone from helping others to now just fully implementing these practices on his own farm there in Minnesota. So we wanted Lance just to share kind of his regenerative ag journey and I think you've got a few slides there that you can kind of walk us through.

9:38 And as he's talking, folks, if you have questions for them, again feel free to put those in the chat box or in the question and answer section of the webinar here and we'll have a discussion at the end of our time here and we'll try to get everybody's questions answered.

9:54 Lance, take it away. I am going to hide myself and I'll try to get this. We're recording this so we'll have it on YouTube later. I'll try to get it going on Facebook here. I don't know if I'm smart enough to do that or not but I'll try.

10:10 Can you see my screen? Not yet.

10:19 And if there's something I need to do, let me know, I guess.

10:28 Let's see, maybe I have to request it. Share screen, here we go. Sorry. Host is a disabled participant sharing screen. So I think you need to somehow allow me to share my screen.

10:52 You know, it's kind of funny, Keith. Maybe this will, but I don't know if this is bad luck or good luck. But you see this right here? This is a sweatshirt that I've been wearing all day. So I just tore it off when I turned the computer on.

11:08 Good luck that you made it back, not the bad luck that you had the plan. I made you the host. Go ahead and try sharing now.

11:16 Okay, let's see. It looks like it's going to work now. There we go. Okay, let me just put it on slideshow.

11:29 Yeah, so take it away.

11:32 Sounds great. Well I really appreciate Keith the invitation and the opportunity to share the journey that I've been on, not only personally but also professionally over the last 15 or so years. I have worked for a conservation district here the last almost six years in southeast Minnesota, but prior to that I actually worked for a couple other conservation organizations.

12:01 So yeah, I wanted to title my presentation 'The Successes and Challenges in the Upper Midwest,' and I think anywhere I go and people I talk to, we always have challenges, and we generally have some success stories too. So I just want to kind of share some things that I'm doing on my own farm, but really the people that I get to work alongside, which I'm really blessed to work with, some really awesome farmers across Wisconsin and Minnesota, Iowa, predominantly, but also the Dakotas and Missouri, Illinois as well. A couple pictures here—those are my kids last year after a cover crop that we grew here and took off for forage. The lower left, we'll get into that, but this is an intern that I had, Michael, and we're out looking at a field that was seeded cereal rye with the combine blowing seed right underneath the combine snoots.

13:07 So yeah, that's we're going to go on a little bit of a journey here today. If Keith, you have questions or things pop up, feel free to interrupt. So yeah, I wanted to talk a little bit about some of the challenges that I see regularly, like I said, some success stories, but also some tools that I think we have at our disposal, and just want to kind of share some observations there. And then lastly, just some opportunities that I really see in front of us if we're willing to think outside the box.

13:50 So yeah, a couple quick pictures here. A good friend of mine, Everett Rolfing, has gone from a chisel plow system to more of a no-till system, planting everything green—all of his corn and soybeans green—and just really embraced it. The profitability has been fantastic for him. I'll show some more pictures, and again this is southeast Minnesota. Then on the right here we have some relay cropping. This is John Cootes. I went over—he lives in the area between Madison and Milwaukee and has been doing this for I think six or eight years, where he's taking off two crops—first, obviously, the red wheat and then soybeans later on.

14:51 So that's where we're headed. I thought I'd share a little bit about who I am and my family. So again, this is Ada and Grayson here on the right with some pretty awesome radishes and purple top turnips in November of last year. On the left, we had a neighbor come in with his Great Plains drill, and they are cleaning off some of the soil that's a little bit sticky. I almost said dirt, and that would have been a problem, but it is soil.

15:26 So yeah, Heart and Soil Ridge—that's the farm that my wife and I and our five kids are blessed to operate. We've been here for about two years, and really the thrust behind this is a few years back I was able to go out to see Gabe Brown's ranch, spend the day with him, and then since then went on a couple different soil health academies in Kansas and Missouri, and that's really pushed us in a direction to not just talk the talk but also walk the walk. So we were able to buy this farm here the week before COVID hit, so about not quite two years ago. This is a picture from this summer in one of our fields that I call our 'crazy mix'—a lot of oats, a lot of sunflower, but also underneath it sorghum, sedan, a bunch of millets, clovers. There's like almost 30 different species that I'm actually grazing right now.

16:32 Let's see, Heart and Soil Ridge. So people ask me about the name. The heart of hospitality and also giving people the opportunity to really experience regeneration. So we have three on-farm cottages actually where people actually stay with us on our farm and we—

16:51 Give farm tours almost daily, and you'll see a little bit about that. And then my passion for soil and helping people understand soil. So now I have a farm that is in my demonstration. Yeah, so 'experience regeneration'—that's one of our tag lines for our farm. We have Grayson has 23 goats, so we call them Grayson's goats here on the right.

17:24 I'm going to be doing some custom grazing with them next year. We're going to bring in a billy here in about a month to breed them all. We have five of these hen wagons that we move around about every other day. And then we also do custom grazing here, which I don't think this is the video, but of heifers. And that's been a really good experience. This piece of ground here actually is where we ran pigs and then brought in no-till drilled again that crazy mix, and here they are. This is about two weeks ago.

18:03 Yeah, millets—a lot of different brassicas and sun have been there as well. This is just actually the view of the sun coming up out of my bedroom window, and so off the left there you can actually see a couple of farm rentals. And then we market eggs and we do a monthly egg subscription and we have 120 happy hens that call our farm home.

18:33 Keith had mentioned that I have worked for a Salon Water Conservation District here in southeast Minnesota, way down right next to La Crosse. And that's been really an awesome experience to learn to help people adopt covers and the different soil principles, get more into no-till grazing and the like. And actually just two months ago, I actually quit my full-time job there and went back to the farm, and so I'm really excited about that. That's probably maybe Keith, you didn't even know that, but really excited about that.

19:13 The picture here is just a good friend that converted a rotary hole and he's blowing on seed in V2 to V5 corn. And then on the left there, that's a friend Sheldon Lumen who's just been farming for I think two, three years now and really jumping in whole hog. Entire farm is now being cover cropped.

19:38 That's a little bit of history on myself. Soil Keepers is an educational and on-farm consulting company that I started a couple years ago after the coaching and encouragement of Ray Archuleta. So again, I guess I wanted to pause and just provide a big shout out to all the farmers that I've been able to work alongside over the years, not just the last five or six here in southeast Minnesota, but the last 15, 20 years, because they've been very instrumental in helping me learn, but then also the ability to share what I've learned from them and then incorporate that onto my own farm.

20:29 Yeah, and I guess without going any further, this is the back of my business card. I do believe very strongly in the soil health principles. I think many of us probably watching are quite familiar with them, but they are very foundational. And Keith was kind enough last year, I think it was, for the Soil Health Resource Guide to let me actually write an article about that. But I think number six, the context one, is really stands out to me—knowing your context. And without getting into a lot of details, I best keep moving, but I think I see that as a wagon wheel as the hub of the other five principles.

21:16 So you know, again, I talked about the biggest challenges. So I want to pose a question: what do you think are the biggest challenges? You know, maybe you're watching from Wisconsin or maybe you're from the Dakotas or I don't know where you're tuning in from, but again, we all have challenges to adopting and making soil health work. And I want to try to unpack some of those, share some of those. Maybe it's taking soil in the upper part of my hand here—this is actually down in Missouri at the North Nemo Conference—but taking it from that state to a much better state.

22:00 A challenge because we have the soil resource that we've been given or that we've been farming for a while. Here these pictures are actually from Gabe Brown's when we were out there a couple years ago, you know taking the soil from the left high synthetic tillage to the soil on the right, which is one from one of Gabe's fields of course one of his most profitable crops, hairy vetch and rye wheat and that he combines.

22:37 So you know that those are challenges but definitely as we use the soil health principles we can be heading down the journey of improving our soils and improving our bottom lines, regenerating our communities.

22:56 So one challenge I often hear is I'm too far north or east or west or I don't get enough moisture, I'm farming in the plains or out west farther yet. I would say those are definitely things that we really want to consider, we have to consider. But you know I'm able to work with farmers from northern Minnesota right up to the Canadian border, all the way down into the great plains area and by and large we're able to be successful. So I think we want to be careful with saying that I'm too far north or east or south or have 20 inches of rain versus somebody with 30 inches of rain.

23:41 A couple pictures here, these are from southeast Minnesota. A friend of mine here, he's out frost seeding with his fertilizer buggy, I believe that's in February, this is a couple years back because it was a late fall prior to and wasn't able to get all the covers in with a no-till drill on the corn ground. Ground froze. Here's a friend of mine, John Meyer, he's actually using his old I believe they're 8600 drills to just distribute the seed right, just as a means to get uniform coverage and he's out frost seeding. Frost is still in the ground, it's just starting to come out.

24:28 So again we're going to use the tools that we have and I don't think we're too far in any direction to really make things like this work. And I want to also point out that these are pieces of equipment that both these farmers had. They're not new pieces of equipment that they went out and bought.

24:50 Let's see, one of the challenges that I often hear is that it won't work here. I've been told that hundreds of times. And you know we do have learning experiences, we have failures, but I like to look at them as lessons learned. Here's a farmer actually was a neighbor when I lived in Wisconsin, you know Sierra rye with some hairy vetch and clover actually in it. Corn was planted green and came back with a roller crimper and you can see down here in the lower part, I mean it was full headed rye, mature rye. Here's some more. Now because they had the legume in there they used chemicals to terminate it, but again this is on irrigated ground and worked quite well for them.

25:47 So again when we have these ideas that we think are not going to work or they can't work here, I think we better be careful and maybe hit the pause button.

26:02 So let's see, so here I have a video, let's cross my fingers it'll play, and I want you to take special note of what's up on the head here.

26:24 So again we're looking at looking for innovative ways to establish cover crops to incorporate the soil health principles onto our farms and our ranches. This father-son team, duo Mike and Mark Stokes, I don't even know how many years ago, four or five years ago, they didn't have a no-till drill and they decided to get a Gandy air box on their head and it blows the seed down right underneath the snoots. There's a deflector and it's worked out quite well. And these guys have been no-tilling for about 20 years and covers for about 10 I believe, have some fantastic soils. But again people say well I can't spend the time to you know fill up a little hopper full of rye seed, well maybe you do have time, especially when you don't have any hired labor and it's just you and your dad or you and your son or daughter.

27:31 Actually Liam, you're gonna be quiet. I got my second oldest in here with me. So here actually is Mike filling the Gandy. And they can do, I think, around 12 acres. They're seating about 40 pounds. And again, it's saving a pass. And then when we look here, this is that same picture. I think I said I showed you earlier. This is the following spring. That's pretty darn good coverage, in my opinion. Lots of live roots there. We're out digging, doing some water infiltration tests. And with the faithful shovel, my best friend, one of my best friends.

28:15 One of the challenges I hear often is that we don't have, you know, when we use cover crops or no-till, some of the different soil principles, we don't have yield. And I would really buck that hard. I actually meant to put some numbers here. But a good friend of mine, down right on the Iowa border, that has had just fantastic yields. But also, probably more important than that, is his ROI is just off the charts. And one other thing I like to point out is most farms that I work with, at least up here, if they're doing any sort of amount of tillage, they can only infiltrate a half an inch to an inch of rain per hour. I've done hundreds of these, you know, with the little rings.

29:00 But on his farm, on his management, I think 1,200 acres or so, six to eight inches is the norm. And it's increasing still. And so I just, when we think about that, that has huge implications, especially when we have droughtier conditions. But getting the water in the soil profile is huge.

29:27 So I wanted to kind of segue from challenges into looking at tools. Because I think we have lots of tools at our disposal, right? We have no-till corn planters. We have no-till drills. We have Gandy air boxes on top of corn heads. And those are all great tools. But I think we also want to look at tools. I guess I want to look at a couple pictures here. So this is down, actually, at a soil health academy that I was at with Rare Chileta when he hosted, and a nearby farm. But the tools that stand out to me right here are the cows. That is stocked at about 500 and some thousand pounds of beef to the acre. So they're a tool that can be very helpful in our management, just like goats or sheep. The reels and this electricity here, those are tools. We'll come back to my friend Tom here in a second. But again, tools are super important as long as we know how to use them and we are strategic.

30:35 I put this picture in because I was a grazing specialist for a handful of years right out of college. Actually milked cows on the weekends. Here we're using these girls. And we actually have a 12-hour break here. And then we have another group of bred heifers and bred cows. You can't see it, but then there's another 12-hour break, and then another group of young stocks. So this farmer is using those girls as tools.

31:08 And the farmer I used to milk cows for, used to tell me his name was Jim. He used to tell me, Lance, I'm really a harvester of solar energy. I'm a person that grows grass. The byproduct is really the milk that comes through the cow. And you know, he talked to me a lot and often about his job was to grow grass and as much as he could. And that's really stuck with me.

31:32 Let's see some of the other tools here. You look, that's a fancy-dancy eight-dollar electric cord reel from Menards or your local hardware store. I have a pile of those. I have a pile of Gallagher reels and and Terror gates. But again, those are all tools. Here you can see those reels again, but also how we place our bales, strategic outwinnering so we don't have to haul, or those are all tools. Why not plant cover crops? Or why not strategically out-winter our cattle to make more money? To make profit? To save work?

32:19 Some of our tools, again, the water infiltration ring, that can be a very helpful tool to look at. Are we actually capturing the rainfall that we've been blessed with? It might be hard to fathom, but many times I tell farmers that, yeah, you told me you got a three-inch rain.

32:41 And it came in a half an hour but I don't think you captured more than half of that. And it's not to try to be insulting, but these rings are telling, right? They're a tool. Our earthworm friends, those are definitely tools. And not only for their increased air but also increased water infiltration and the like.

33:05 This is a picture from Tom Cotter's fields. He's actually coming up. I have another picture of him, but all those earthworms are very valuable tools. Nature's rototillers are our Creator's design at work.

33:21 And so often I go on farms where it's hard to find an earthworm or in one shovelful, and then I get to the next farm that's been doing soil health and they have 15 or 20 per shovelful. And then when you think about that across an acre, that is a whole lot of goodness, I guess is what I would say.

33:48 So another tool is—so this is a friend, Tom Cottery, farms over by Austin, Minnesota. The reason I put this picture in is because Tom is innovative. He's also super passionate. He's willing to try just about anything on his farm, on his rented ground as well. And he also has contagious enthusiasm, right? I've been able to co-present with him a number of times. And he has a willingness to learn. I would consider him a lifelong learner.

34:21 A tool is who do we associate with? Who do we network with? Maybe it's somebody close to us, 20 miles, 5 miles down the road. Maybe it's somebody that's 50 or 100 or more. But being with like-minded people.

34:36 I didn't know it at the time, but this is a picture when we went out and paid Gabe Brown to spend a day on his ranch. And these three guys now are actually all my neighbors. They are all within five miles of my farm that I was able to buy.

34:54 And a little story here with Gabe—he wore a Packer sweatshirt because he right away wanted to challenge the status quo. We were coming from southeast Minnesota. Little did he know that I'm a Packer fan, but again he wore the Packer sweatshirt to kind of jab at us right out of the gate to get us thinking.

35:15 And then down the road we actually did a video here in this field—this is one which then turned into a YouTube channel for me—but again, who we network with? Are we willing to invest? You know, driving nine hours for us to go to Gabe's farm and pay him a good amount of money to be on his ranch?

35:36 So again, I want to ask the question: what's our biggest challenge? And the reason I ask that is because I think so often these challenges are maybe it's just the way we look at them. And I would offer that sometimes our biggest challenge is probably what's in between our own ears, what we tell ourselves or what we allow ourselves to listen to from neighboring farmers and bankers and different types of folks like that.

36:02 And I guess I'd like to encourage us to think about a lot of these challenges as opportunities, right? Because I really think they are. And I think you'll see why here in a second.

36:15 And optimize the opportunities. So 2021, the word I chose for the year was optimize. And so here are some opportunities, right? This is 60-inch corn here on the lower left using a spinner spreader. And then coming back, this is no-till corn. Then coming back with a rotary hoe that we, you know, this isn't mine, but we're able to lift those tines up and get a little bit of incorporation. We did catch a rain. And then I don't know, a couple weeks later I was actually supporting wearing Mitchell Hora's Continuum Ag hat. And here's the picture. And that corn, I didn't get a final number on what it ran, but some significant cow chow to the tune of probably six or eight weeks, I think, is what Sheldon will have to graze now that the corn was just picked a couple weeks ago. So again, that's an opportunity. Most would say that doesn't work here or you know, won't work in my environment. It's working. It's working very well.

37:26 So here's an opportunity. Was able to work with—here's Mike Unruh and his dad Dave. And we were able to get our hands on a Mandeco. Mike ran a couple fields and another friend ran a couple fields this spring. They planted the rye heavy last fall, 120, 130 pounds. Beans are planted at boot stage. And so then we made a day.

43:35 The underground herd, our soil biology. We might think of having challenges as these are actually my uncles that have 450 cows on grass and they had an interstate that went through their farm and they found a way to keep renting land, buying some land so they have 450 cows on grass. They market on their own cheese. They hired in an artisan cheese maker, but again when most people would look at that as a huge challenge, this big interstate, they have about 900 acres of grass that they're managing all their cows and all their steers and heifers as well on.

44:21 Quick picture here of using what we have. John Deere 1750 planner, put some different components on it as far as closing wheels, some heavier down pressure springs. Now we're planting. This is Sheldon Lumen, this is actually one of the other farmers that was planting into boot stage rye and came back and roller crimped. And this field did not turn out well. Actually came back after roller crimped it, it was about two weeks later or so, had good rye, a good standard rye but it just we learned some things. Probably plant the beans a little bit later, a little bit deeper so that would slow them down. They got leggy. So again I share those things because I really like doing videos and interviewing farmers about what's working but also what's not working or what they're going to change. And so this is an example from this spring.

45:26 And then I guess want to end with: we do raise pastured pork and we sell it as a premium. We use them as tools again to landscape, but then you know it's not just one pass. We can then bring back cattle as you saw in the video. We have goats. So again, and we don't have to own the cattle, we can do, we can be creative, but this is just a picture I snapped this spring or this summer I should say of one of our couple of our pigs.

45:57 So again, I guess my hope, my thought was to try to share not only some success stories but also how do we overcome some of those challenges? How do we form peer groups and how do we really work together to make cover crops, soil health successful on our farms and our ranches? So I think that's pretty much what I have, Keith. There's just my contact information. And the reason I put 'long live the land' is Jimmy Evans has one that says 'long live the soil' and the reason I end with this is because life means of the land. And so I'm really thankful for the opportunity to take care of the land, not just my own farm but help others take care of the land and produce nutrient-dense foods for my own family but then for others.

47:01 Yeah, Keith, I think that's kind of what I have. Yeah, no, that's great Lance, I appreciate that. So folks, feel free to type your questions in either the chat box or the Q&A box and we'll get going on those here. Lance, I got just a couple of questions for you. I was very interested in your agritourism, you know, how people can come and actually stay right there on the farm. So do you actually let them know the chores and you know, are you actually getting paid for people to come, paid to do your chores or tell me a little bit more about how that works because I think it's really interesting and it's actually something we've talked about doing. And do you have a lot of people that want to do that?

47:48 Yeah, so I haven't charged anybody yet to do the chores, but people, most of our guests are urban-based, suburban or urban. We are about two hours from the Twin Cities and so people, especially with Covid, wanted to come and get away from things and have. So yes, on our farm we have three rental cottages and we also are very close to the interstate, only about a mile and a half off, so that's helpful. But people, most of our guests have never held a chicken, never collected their own eggs. You know, they can go out and chat with one of our tame goats. Will come up and it's like a pet, he's, she's like a pet dog. And you know, so again, why we talk about experiencing regeneration is because we offer.

48:39 Nice hospitality as far as you know the beds and the decor and my wife is really good at the farmhouse theme. And then we're able to take people out on tours like I said not every day but four or five days a week. And so it is a big opportunity. I'm not going to lie that's the main reason I was able to wait, main way I was able to step away from my full-time job is because of this success we've had here on the farm.

49:08 So that's great and I think that you will continue to see that to grow. As people, people want to make that connection back to the land. Just so many of them don't have the opportunity and so what a great way for them to do it there.

49:23 So somebody asked a question here. This is a great question. Do you have suggestions for nutrient cycling in perennial forage fields? Is no telling annuals after a first cut of a perennial a good option and if so what species would you recommend?

49:42 Yeah, I mean I think it's an opportunity there. I guess kind of depends on again where you're located and what type of perennials. You know if we're talking like a perennial pasture, you know we do it quite often where we no-till in early in the spring frost, you know frost seed as far as like clovers and whatnot. But I think you know if you do want to take like a first crop of hay off or whatnot and come back in with some sort of warm season mix I definitely see that as an opportunity but I think you also have to make sure you have a good way to eliminate some of that competition. So yeah without knowing more of the specifics I guess that's a little bit hard for me to yeah but I think it is an option yes.

50:26 Yeah and I think I think you hit it right on the head with the competition thing. You know what we've seen work for people is when you go the completely opposite season so if you've got a really good cool season pasture, you got to let the heat of the summer send it into kind of a dormant state and then plant your warm season the annuals or or further south you know like in Oklahoma and Texas they have a lot of Bermuda grass warm season annuals that they can plant cool season things like rye grass and veg and clovers. They're planting that now and letting it grow over the winter. So you'll never out-compete a perennial with an annual so you gotta be a little careful.

51:07 Right, yeah and I I would agree with that. Even on some of my crazy mix I actually grazed it really hard to try to set back because there was some perennials in there. You know that way that the even the cereal rye and the hairy veg has a just trying to optimize that you know opportunity for them to come on strong.

51:28 So Matt has a challenge here because I asked a question in the chat. You know what is one of your biggest challenges because I really like thinking that way the way you were thinking there. He says our never ending challenge is harvesting beans and corn in time to plant a good mix of cover crop seed. I still have half of my 300 acres yet to pick. I've had the drill loaded for two weeks waiting to combine the beans. My variety of cover crop mixes is down to cereal rye triticale eps veg and clover that high boy planter seems more and more like the way to go. Every year for one reason or eight others we can't seem to get covers planted before mid to late November. Do you have any other suggestions you know on that or you know how would you advise Matt you know to overcome turn that challenge into an opportunity?

52:19 Yeah so I mean there are some good options I think you know whether you have a high clearance rig in the area I mean I know they're becoming more and more prevalent at least here in the Minnesota Iowa Wisconsin area that I work primarily in. But I mean aerial application whether it's with a helicopter or chopper we regularly have lots of that flown on. With that I would encourage you know trying to really time it before a rain you know. Because I've had I've worked with some growers that we did several thousand acres one fall and it didn't rain for 22 days after that. That was a learning experience and many of those guys went and bought no-till drills that winter. So yeah I mean I think there are opportunities the other thing I would offer is what's the reason why, you know is it, why, you know could we select a little bit earlier maturing bean or corn and that helps us get that at least maybe even just half the acres out maybe we just take a relative maturity bean of X number and you know back it off a little bit. That would be one idea or look for somebody that does custom work on the side.

53:35 That does like the no-till planting and they can maybe it's not you doing it with your no-till drill, maybe you don't have time for that, maybe you hire somebody or that can run it for you. So that would be my knee-jerk thought.

53:50 You probably recognized this picture here on our soil health resource guide. Tell people, I'll talk a little bit about our photo contest because we're starting that up again, but tell people a little bit about what this picture represents and how that might be one potential solution for some of what Matt's dealing with.

54:10 So the picture that Keith is showing there is a friend of mine, Luke Burglary, actually he's a neighbor, and he's been really innovating and trying different things. So he, that's 60-inch corn there that he grew, would have been last year, and actually cut his nitrogen rates I think down to about 100 pounds, but planted in row a little higher population, doubled the population essentially, and then came through with a rotary hoe with a Gandy box mounted on top of that. And I don't recall the exact yield that he got, but again we have to be careful how we look at yield. Because in Luke's case, I believe he got four or five weeks of grazing off of those stocks and that cover.

54:54 And if you dug down, or you know, I think you can go online and get a free one or contact you to get one. But the amount of forage that was there and the diversity and the quality, I know you even had samples taken and it was like there's no reason to even have tubs out here, and as long as we don't get two feet of snow or better, there was some excellent forage out there, not just for the cowherd, but then again think about what happened for the underground herd of the soil, the soil cows.

55:28 So I don't know if that's what you're getting at, but that is a picture from just up the road. And you know, a lot of people aren't probably ready to make that maybe a radical step to 60-inch corn. Certainly the guys with livestock, it's certainly I think a very viable option, because a lot of the research is showing that you don't give up a tremendous amount of yield, maybe five percent. A lot of the practical farmers of Iowa stuff that's kind of what they've been seeing, but the amount of forage you get is really good.

56:00 But you can do the same thing in a 30-inch row now. The solar energy coming in to help those cover crops grow, so you're not going to get these nice big plants growing like this, but I've seen some pretty decent stuff. And the thing is, with that system with interseeding cover crops into corn at V3 or V4, the further north you are, the better that system works. The further south you are, the worse it works, because when you're north, your summers are shorter and your days are longer, so you have more days of sunlight for a shorter period of time. But that's really what you need, because when you can't get your cover crops to grow underneath a corn canopy, it's typically because of lack of sunlight.

56:47 And so right, and you showed some pictures, you have quite a few guys using those rotary hoes, like that just kind of blowing the seed out and stirring it up. Yeah, I don't know, I think there's at least a half dozen just in the county that I used to work here, it went on to swell in water, and more and more guys getting them or finding them at auctions. And I think even one thing to think about too, Keith, you know, like right here on the I-90 corridor that I'm located, it's an annual rye grass-based mix, but you get on the I-94 corridor, and guess what they're using, cereal rye, because of the shorter window of growing season. They're actually able to get that to establish and then it comes through real nice in the fall, versus down here we've tried it and it doesn't fit our context, our social environmental spiritual contacts. So that's just kind of an extension of what you're talking about.

57:50 So yeah, so you know, there are some options out there, may take a little experimentation, and I always encourage, and I know Lance says the same thing, you don't have to start on the whole farm to learn something. I mean, good grief, you can learn as much on five acres as you can learn on 500, maybe even more, because you would tend to look at it a lot more often because it's all just in one place. So do something, whether it's a V2, you know, V3, V4 like this, or plant a little field of a shorter season corn or bean like what Lance was suggesting so you could get out there a little bit sooner.

58:28 But you know do a few things like that and you'll start learning what some of those tricks are. I want to go back to one other thing that you talked about, Lance. I was kind of interested when you showed the pictures there of the cover crop, the roller crimpers. You talked about you know you were planting a really heavy rye, 120 pounds of rye. Did you plant that and I've heard of other people planting those really high rates like that. Is that intended just to try to maximize the biomass that you were going to grow? Did you think it would roll better at a heavier rate because I've had people tell me that those heavier stands of rye will roll better? So give us a little background of why you did those heavy seating rates and also, you know, what would be considered more of a normal rate here in the area?

59:19 Yeah, so for roller crimping, the general advice at least around here is for sure, rye needs to be at least 100 pounds, somewhere in that 100 to 150, sometimes I hear people using. But yeah, the sooner we can get it in, that's really the optimal because then we have better tillering, we have better establishment, and so that's really where we get our ideal amount of biomass for when we're out there later in spring because frankly, that's when we have to wait for the rye to mature and be at an thesis. So I think 120 is pretty typical. I think with Sheldon, those pictures I show to him and Mike, I think they're going to go a little bit heavier. I think they did go like 130 or 140 this year. One thing we learned is one of the guys that used V and S rye, so we learned some things about maturity and how it's delayed with different varieties, if it's not just one variety. So yeah, I would say that's the general advice at least around here. But as far as like corn, corn and after soybeans and whatnot, 40 to 50 pounds is becoming pretty standard, especially after you get used to it. You know, you start off at maybe 60 or 70 to have your comfortability level. And so that, I see a lot of guys in that 40 to 50 pound mark.

1:00:42 We see that too. Catherine is asking what all is in your crazy mix? It's got three millets, sorghum sudangrass, five or six clovers, oats, sunflowers, buckwheat, phacelia. Let's see, I'd have to look at the slip, lentils, lupin. Yeah, you kind of caught me off guard but it was. Yeah, I just did seven acres of it and I did it initially for like a teaching place where I can take our guests out and dig and use my best friend the shovel. And then after mid-season I thought, well why not flash across it and graze it? And then actually, some of it we double grazed because the sorghum came back. Yeah, peas. I'm trying to think, there was, I want to say 27 or 29 species, but I'd have to look at. But everything. And the neat part is now again I drilled that, grazed it, and then I again I redrilled it here a couple weeks ago with heavy rye with hairy vetch, camelina, and part of that's going to be no-till pumpkins this coming year, and part of it will be mostly straight sunflowers that we're going to use for photography purposes. And then part of it again we'll have to be crazy mix so we can graze and learn how covers interact.

1:02:10 Yeah, yeah, there's great power and diversity, and sometimes it's not quite as important what the things are in there, but you know, do you have a lot of different plant families represented? You can go back into our webinar archive. Christine Jones has some great talks from January and February of this year where she really stresses the importance of diversity of plant families in those mixes.

1:02:36 We're about out of time here so, Lance, thank you very much. I do want to just again point out this is the picture that Lance submitted. We do have our photo contest open again. Lance, I saw some great pictures. You might want to send that again. There's nothing says you can't win two years in a row, all right? So we do have a contest going on. Submit your best soil health picture. We'll select the one that we think represents soil health the best for the cover of our resource guide. We will use other ones inside the guide as well because it's full of lots of different pictures. And so we will use some of those in there as well. If you want to send some of those in, just send it to Noah at greencoverseed.com and he will kind of keep track of those. Next week's webinar, like I said earlier, Matt Kincaid from Jasper, Missouri will be sharing some of his experiences, some of the things that he's doing down in Missouri to promote soil health on his farm. So Lance, thank you again. I appreciate you getting here under tough circumstances with your tire blowing out there, but I know that everybody enjoyed it and we all benefited from it. So thanks everybody, and like Lance says, long live the land.

1:03:51 Yeah, good night. Thanks everyone. You bet.