Testing Cover Crop Varieties in Pastures: What Works in Your Region

0:08 Well I want to start out by saying that something I've observed but I've not learned personally is that a good friend will bail you out of jail, but a better friend will be handcuffed to you when you get dragged off to jail. And a good seat company will sell you good seats, but a better seat company will be handcuffed to you as you go through the entire process of transformation from traditional agriculture to a more systems approach of agriculture. Green Covers Seed, I think, exemplifies that Noble Foundation.

0:47 There's a lot of foundations. They have a few board meetings every year and decide what they're going to do with their excess funds or 5% of their foundation funds every year. But a great foundation is one they'll be handcuffed to you as you go through the process. They don't throw money, they invest. And they've invested in that side. I'd like to ask you to help me thank Green Cover and Noble Foundation for letting us have this time together.

1:25 Okay, so I spoke to some of you last year at this conference and told you some of the things that we were doing. A few years ago, in fact it was the summer of 2013, so if you got to hear Bill Buckner, I met Bill Buckner in the summer of 2013. I was working with Jim Johnson and cover crops had emerged in my mind. And I'm a school teacher. I teach at a community college just south of here in the North Central Texas community college. I operate a nature preserve called Thompson Foundation, which is a 600-acre nature preserve. I work with Dickson Water Foundation. And so with all of those things sort of culminating, and also have a farm—I'm a farmer too—and so Jim and I had worked together and cover crops were emerging in that area.

2:23 In North Central Texas we can grow corn, but we're not great at it. And we can grow cotton, but we're not great at it. And what we are in North Central Texas is we're pastures—that's what we did. And so cover crops and pastures seem to be an emerging concept. But when we talk about what seeds to put in pastures, logic tells me that that might be slightly different. And so Jim and I said, well, you know, let me see what each of these varieties of seeds will do in our pastures. I acknowledge and advocate for multi-species, but I don't know which—you know, if it's Vetch, there may be a Veteran Student Rye that will do really well in Bermuda grass pastures, and there may be one that just doesn't do anything. And I need to know if it has potential.

3:25 So I wrote a grant with the support of Jim to Noble Foundation. And Bill Buckner asked me—I got a phone call. He said, 'Can I see you in my office?' 'No, well, okay.' So I went up and Bill said, 'So what are you trying to do?' And I said, 'Well, I need a drill. I need a drill that I can do this with.' And so he looked across the table at Jim or someone. He said, 'Do we have one of those?' And they said, 'Yeah.' So he said, 'Well, why can't she use our drill and do what she's doing and we all work together?' So I didn't get the grant, but I got something a whole lot better. I got somebody that handcuffed Jim Johnson to me. And so not really, but they're consultants, they're research biologists.

4:17 Their team has helped me to get to this point to share what we have found so far and what we're finding. So with that, with the beginning, go always and forever more to be a healthier biologically active soil. We had two parts of our goal. One was to determine what varieties in our region and now I'm going to say in the North Texas region, but that really could be scratched out and just say my region, whatever your region is, because the concepts that we have, I'm going to describe here working in the region, but keep in mind that region is important.

5:00 So we have changed that to say whoever's region we just left that blank, and then to provide an opportunity for producers to be able to see what individual seeds often used and cover crops would do in pastures. So those are our two goals. That's why we have the pots over there you can see those. Michaela Kraus is with me right now and she is an intern this year and I don't know how many of you have ever broke green broke coal, but a green broke colts kind of like an intern.

5:42 Just know, you know, we don't have killers and soap factories anymore, glue factories were horses I guess anymore, but my dad was rodeo stock contractor and I knew what those worked when I was growing up. There were a lot of call horses, and so there are times that you get an intern and you just know that they sort, you really need to orient them to go to the English department or somewhere else. And then sometimes you get an intern just like a green bolt broke coat, and you know that you're going to have a relationship with that green broke coat for ten or twenty years, and it's going to be that coat that, as a mature horse, is going to be the one trains your kids to ride a horse, and Mikayla is one of those kind of interns.

6:29 She planted those pots. Maybe this just talks about her social life, I don't know, but on New Year's Eve, I guess it says a lot about nineteen. I was in the lab on New Year's Eve at midnight, and Michaela came in at midnight on New Year's Eve after working a waitress job and planted those, and I went home and went to batch live across the street from the cause. So I went home and what's bed, and the next morning I got up and at ten thirty she was still over there working. So I think she's going to be one of those that stay around for a long time, and the reason I really want to build Michaela up in your mind is Michaela is a four point oh and she can do anything in the world she wants to do, and she has chosen agriculture rangeland ecology is what she's going to assume be it.

7:24 So anyway, you were inspiring, and yesterday someone said look at the young people that are in this room, and so that's important to me. So michaelis with them, they'll invite her up and just a little bit to talk about what she's done on this project. So here's kind of a historical update. I think my fingers are cold. There we go. Okay, so here's sort of a historical update to this project. It's sort of what I'm going to talk about today and then fill in some gaps. So I'll talk about the region that we're working in, our project design. I'll let Mikaela come up talk about that a little bit, our biology and environmental systems, and I promise you that Keith Berns and I did not talk when we developed our powerpoints, but just so you know, there's going to be.

8:15 Some observations and then we'll conclude with that. So the region that we're working in is North Central Texas and on I-35, all of our plots are close to roads so a producer could drive up, even if a gate's locked, hop across a fence and right there they are, real close to the road. One's right on I-35, our PACE project one is on the Dixon Water Foundation's place, one's on my personal farm and one is at Thompson Foundation.

9:04 It was important that we looked at different types of pasture management. One type of pasture management, we sort of looked at what we had access to first, and secondly what were common pastures in our area. So the Dixon Water Foundation, they are organic, holistic, rotational, planned grazing and we chose in the area that's Bermuda grass. So it's grazed with planned grazing. Our family farm is Bermuda grass that's been in hay and had chemicals on it. We're transitioning away from that and it will incorporate, we have already incorporated grazing on it. And then the other is the PACE project which is native, it's grazed once a year planned paddock grazing. And then Thompson Foundation has not been grazed since 1930, not 1982. So we have native grass, different pasture managements.

10:01 Project design. Now, as a teacher I also am a lifelong learner. So this summer in August I went up to Green Cover. Green Cover has furnished us every seed to put in the ground and all of our seeds. And so one of the things that I learned this summer, I wasn't planning on learning, I went up to Green Cover and a friend that I teach with, I said hey, I'm gonna run up to Nebraska. He'll ago and she said yes. So we head off on Sunday morning and we get almost to Nebraska and she says, you know what, I think in the rush of packing I forgot to pack some personal items. And I'm kind of a wilderness person, I can do without a lot of things, but she's not one of those people. So when we got to the room she said, you know, I'm just gonna wash out my personal garment and hang it in the bathroom and in the morning it'll be dry.

11:03 So the next morning we got up and she announced from inside the bathroom that her plan had failed and that indeed her underwear were still wet. So I said from inside the room, I said we'll hand them to me and I'll dry them because there was a microwave and I am resourceful if nothing else. So I put them in there and I didn't have my glasses on and I just pushed the button and there was a green button I pushed it and it started. And so I thought well about 15 seconds. So I opened the door, they were still moist, so I shut the door and I pushed a different button and pushed the green button. I happen to hit popcorn. And in about five seconds flame starts coming out of the microwave. So I opened that door and put the fire out and I announced to her on the other side of the door that she need to open the door and accept her darling, it was full of holes and smelled like fried. And I got it out as quick as I could and opened the windows and the doors and I was trying to air everything out. Keep reading pay, you know, smoking fee for a non-smoking room or something. And so anyway, I did learn this summer they don't dry women's underwear in the microwave.

12:24 Microwave in a hotel room but I also learn that you have to be adaptable. You know, your choices have to sometimes change and sometimes you're gonna make mistakes and we made some big mistakes the first year when we put out our plots. We didn't get everything lined up just exactly right, so our labels weren't 100%. What that says, this that's really not bad, it's something else. So we learned a lot with that, getting that under our belt our first year.

13:02 But also having Mikayla helped a lot. So got back from Green Cover, put Michaela to work. Michaela, do you want to come up and describe what you did to get 93 varieties of seeds ready to go in four different locations?

13:26 My name is Michaela Krauss and I kind of got with this project when I went to Dr. Bellows like 'Hey, I need an honors project' and so she was like 'Awesome, you're gonna do this.' So after they got back from Green Cover, you can see in the picture on the left side, I walk into this room and there's all these bags of plants. Those were the 93 different varieties of plants that they were using for the project. You can see some of those over here that are planted in seed form. So what we had to do with any experiment was we had to make sure that each of the four plots was getting the same amount of seeds that the other one was getting.

14:05 And so we had the seeds and we had a sheet of paper that told us how many grams of seeds we needed per one-hundredth of an acre, which was what we were planning at the four different plots. And so basically what we had to do from there is we went through and it wasn't hard, it was just very time-consuming. We had to measure out the exact amount of grams of each of those and we carefully put them in little envelopes and labeled them. So you can see on the right side, we kind of took the class to organize and put them all in bags. But after everything was done, the seeds were measured out and put in the envelopes, we sorted them out and put them in boxes and those were what went out to all of the different plots to be planted so that it would be the same for all locations.

14:57 And so once that was done we were able to get them out, get them planted so we could begin the process of letting them grow and get labeled out there. So that's kind of what happened. And in the beginning, once all of this was done and they were planted, we went out. Well, just before we could plant it, we had to put some flags out on the plots. You can kinda see in these pictures, we went out with a bunch of students and we were able to measure off the plots so that they were the same size. Each seed got one-hundredth of an acre, which is about 5 feet by 87 feet, I believe. And what we did to make sure that the tractor would stay straight and we weren't messing up anything like that, we went out with just some pink and yellow flags. I don't know if we have any with us today, but we went out with these flags and we labeled each of the spots. They were numbered with the plants. You'll see, they all have their number and that was to help make sure that we stayed straight with the tractor and that the seed stayed in their location.

16:04 After that was done, we went back through and just to make life a whole lot easier, we stuck some new

16:08 Labels had all the plant names, information, their numbers. And so once that was done, it was just kind of waiting for the seeds to be in the ground. And that's kind of some of the stuff that I worked with. You can see Dr. Bellows just carried over some seeds we have with us to help identify the different plants because if you were to just get them in a bag, they'd all be mixed up, which would be really hard to identify. And so we went through the 93 different varieties. We have them individually in these test tubes with labels so you can see when you get the varieties what you're actually dealing with. And so these are all of the seeds that we worked with and will be planted at these locations.

16:59 After this was done, we went through and put all of the seeds in these test tubes. Then we also decided to plant them in individual pots so we can see what they look like. So we have them out on the locations, but just for better pictures and resources to know what we're actually dealing with, we have the individual plants over here in these pots. And we have pictures. That's just to help for records and to provide better information for other people. We have those as well to help be able to identify what we're working with. So that's kind of some of the stuff that I was blessed with the opportunity to help with. This has definitely been a learning opportunity, and I'm so thankful to be a part of it. So thank you all so much.

17:52 So this whole project has given a lot of students an opportunity. Michaela's worked very closely, but all my classes—I teach environmental, botany, zoology. I'm teaching a lot of classes, even an honors class for students that are going into pre-professional, pre-med, pre-dental. And so all of those students get to go out on these projects and get to be a part of them. So that's an important thing for me.

18:18 This is a plot planner. This is what we use from the Noble Foundation. So we go up and by altering our color of flags, we go eighty-seven by five, which gives us a hundredths acre. And so we go yellow, yellow, then come back, dump a new set of seeds in, come back pink to pink, and then yellow blue. And that's helped line us up real well. If you want an inexpensive way to mark something in the field, we discovered these at Home Depot. These are where they sell garage sale signs, and so these are 99 cents. The ones from the biological supply company are $2.49. These are 99 cents. Don't be surprised when we went into Home Depot and said we need 800 of them—they were a little shocked. But that's okay.

19:09 And then the lab supply tag—it comes up. The interns that I had last year, they just wrote it on here, then they discovered it washed off. I said, this flips up and you can write it with a Sharpie here, and then this peels off and seals it so that all of our plots are labeled. So that's sort of our design and what we did. But the reason that I was really interested in doing this—besides giving students an opportunity to get their hands dirty and their minds around what was underneath their feet—was that the biology of what we're doing in the soil is really a sunshine business.

19:56 Relocates chemical elements such as hydrogen, carbon, oxygen, nitrogen. And by the way, those four elements make up 96% of all life on Earth. And so they relocate things, and there are two of those four elements that become real important to what you and I do, and one is carbon and one is nitrogen.

20:19 Well, the carbon really comes to us through life systems, really through sunshine, because what's happening is we split that out that H2O or water. That's where we get our oxygen. We don't take carbon dioxide and get oxygen. It doesn't work that way. We split water. So we take that carbon dioxide and combine it with hydrogen, and we create a sugar, our glucose, through a process of photosynthesis. So the sun's energy gives us all of our carbohydrates and so on and so forth. And then we use that through aerobic respiration to give living organisms energy.

21:03 Now there's really just five players. There's really not any organism that you can identify, can put before me that I can't say, well, it falls into one of those five buckets. So there's not anything else. You just got five different types of living organisms from a cellular perspective. The cells of each one of those is different and unique to those groups, but those are, that's all you have. So when we begin to understand the biology of plants or protozoa or whatever, when we start to understand that, then that reduces what we have to know to work with by a tremendous amount.

21:41 So this is where our nitrogen comes in. So our carbons are all important there, and we use solar energy, or we call them solar dollars if you would like, and that's where we're, that's something that we're going to focus on. But then something else comes into play. We take those sugars, their sugar, and we take nitrogen, and like he said, while he goes, 75% of our atmosphere is nitrogen. So we take those and we're building amino acids. So what do we do with an amino acid?

22:15 An amino acid is actually built by taking our DNA. Now, you are told that DNA is important to make you different from you, from you, etc., etc., and it is this genetic material, and that's great. But why would we be different? Why would, how would life on Earth mean that each organism was different from another? All human DNA is similar, very similar, but yours is unique to all other humans that have ever existed. Okay, so that's given to you by your parents, and you give that to your offspring.

23:03 So DNA is a repeating unit. There's only four chemicals that make up DNA, or molecules that make up DNA. And so I brought to you something I think you're all familiar with, a grazing stick, right? This is a grazing stick. So if we think of our DNA as numbers, and it's in a linear fashion, in order to make an amino acid, every three units of DNA trigger for a specific amino acid. Okay, there's only 20 amino acids. There's not any more, but those amino acids combine to make proteins. And we utilize proteins and break them back down into amino acids.

23:51 So if we're looking at a linear, pre-programmed set of instructions for us, for an amoeba, for a plant, is DNA, then let me ask you, what would happen if I took one of those out? Here's my stick, and I took a saw, and I cut out from nine and a half to ten and a half. So what happens if I take that out?

24:28 going to synthesize the same amino acids that I was going to because we're running it along in a linear fashion using units of three so I go one two three three to six three to nine oops I got a problem so when I take parts of DNA out when I take parts of a system away my functionality my ability to function as a living organism within a system changes what would happen if I put another one in this is a different this is another one so okay well I want one in there what if I put another one in there what if I put this is nine and a half to ten and a half but this is obviously not from a grazing stick it's not the same it's not the same ever again so that it would be a genetic mutation an environmental impact that could be any number of things and I'm not here to advocate or bash genetic modification I'm just saying that when we're looking at systems approach to agriculture it becomes imperative that we keep systems functioning all the way down to the cellular level of organisms.

25:59 We have individual plots we have four locations that we have one we have ninety-four plots and 93 of them are monocultures so we are not advocating that you plant monocultures symbiosis life working in cycles is critical it's very critical to us and life and cycles is very well orchestrated we can disrupt it we can have hurricanes and floods and all sorts of things but life and cycles of life seem to be able to overcome a lot of things that we think we don't we think we need to intervene and like he said today you know we've got a lot of the parts there that we're trying to change why not capture the parts that are there so diversity is very important now this is a bucket of pond scum and there's a lot of words over there I don't expect you to look at but a lot of the stuff we're is already available we can go down into the bottom of a pond and pick up a bucket of scum and it's anaerobic there's no oxygen in it they're living organisms they're just not they're just not oxygen using organisms and if we expose that to sunlight we put that in the windowsill and put some saran wrap over it for a few days it doesn't take very long until we start to see algae emerge and we start to see green life photosynthetic life utilize sunshine and start to undergo a process of rejuvenation so a lot of what we want in our soil and in our land and in and beneath our feet it's already there but we've not created our we have disrupted the program for them to do what they what they're resilient they can come back.

28:00 okay so say well don't ring an egg-laying hens neck you're looking for protein in your diet and you want a steak can you go out to your cow and cut a steak off this afternoon probably not gonna work out very well for you or the cow either one but you can manage to get a steak but if you've got a source of protein in a hand that's laying you an egg every day it might not be your desired source of protein but it's a source of protein for right now it's what you've got to work with and it will sustain you until you can get to the point that you are shooting for.

28:38 so when we set up our test plots the first thing that we did was we did all kinds we did several soil test we did

32:50 A big root structure to break hard pans and so on and so forth. I will tell you that in our pasture settings in North Central Texas our area, we have not seen grand results from our brassicas. We have not thus far. We've seen some good results from other things and I have a multi-species cover crop planted on my farm right now, and there are some brassicas, there are a lot of brassicas, but in our plots we've not seen the results of brassicas that we would like to. It's really a physical change, chemical changes of course we have legumes and so on and so forth, and then biomass production—all the mass that's produced because plants take in sunlight and build sugars and starches through photosynthesis. That's really when you restart to look at your selection of seeds—that's what you're really looking for is what are they going to do.

33:47 Now here are some of the observations that we have seen in two years. We started in fall of 2014 and we plant—where we plant, we will plant, we plant fall and then we plant spring. We plant the same plants in the spring and in the fall. So yes, we planted okra on October the 19th. Not that we expected grandiose results from okra on October the 19th, but we also were establishing this is where okra will be, and we're going to follow suit with both fall and spring the same seeds. Last year we planted on September the 15th and we saw sorghum get about two foot tall before it froze in a pasture. Saying that's a lot of grazing potential by planting a fall sorghum and in the fall. So we'll rule out anything at this point.

34:55 So to schedule for your desired results, someone I'll walk up to the wall now when do I need to do what? We're not needing to plan. Well, the only plan we really understood, or I did, was when farmers in the area plant cool season grains or cereals, so when they plant wheat in the fall, that's when we did it. So we did September the 15th. We got, you know, in a pasture you're going to have more insects, you're going to have all kinds of, so we got eaten up by insects. We had grasshoppers and we had a lot of competition from plants that were already there. So scheduling—we've changed our planting time. When we were planting in October, I could go out in the field in like at Thompson, there were all the wildflowers of the spring being planted as well by nature. So we've started to look more at when does nature plant instead of when does the neighbor plant. So we're doing, we're altering in our schedule a little bit.

36:03 The next one is to select for your desired results. Now ROI per sale is—as a farmer in our area and a good one, and so I went out to Roy who was planting some cover crop out on the Dixon Water Foundation and then I went out to it, climbed up on the drill and I said, well Roy, what are you planting? He said I don't know. I said, well, what's that seed right there? I don't know. What's it going to do? I don't know. So to select your cover crop seeds with the desires that you have in mind is imperative. So just because you're going to get a check from the government because you put in a cover crop, my neighbor out at Thompson, he doesn't have a no-till drill, and he got on the program and he came over and he said, hey, I'm going to, I've got some.

36:59 Money, I'm going to plant cover crops. That's the warrior plan. I don't know, but they're going to send it to me and that's okay. He said, but I don't have a drill. We'll loan you our drill, sure. So we've helped him. That was two years ago. This year the guy comes over to borrow the drill and he said, well, let you know we've had this little conversation. It kind of tailed off into, well, you know, at least you're getting some money out of it. And he goes, you know, that really doesn't matter because my place is looking better, you know. So he's been coming on board. We've helped him, and so that's been important to us.

37:40 But to select what you want in our region, we have discovered that woolly patch has matured before other varieties. That's great if you're in a Bermuda grass type field or if you're going to graze at a specific time. Choosing that variety of legume or abrasca is important in our region. Jim Johnson is just amazed that faba beans didn't get bitten by the first frost for the first fruits. So 505 oat beans are the one variety of bean that we're aware of that will endure a frost or freeze. So if you're looking for a bean in your crop, that's a good choice.

38:23 I have a problem in finding out information about these plants. Green cover has the best website on finding information about them that's consistent. But I wanted to know the other day, you know, if you go down to the feed store or the garden center and you're going to buy tomatoes or beans, you know, my green packages of green beans and plant them in your garden and you look on the back and they'll say, you know, in 77 days you have beans. And you know, ninety days this tomato variety will produce tomatoes. So I was looking up to see if a lot of these seeds—I was looking up to see if I could find that information. It's not there. I went to education sites, research sites, I went to a lot of sites, and a lot of that information is not there. It's building. And of course, one of my things, whenever we started this, I said, well, I've never even heard of these things that they sell in cover crops. Ethiopian cabbage, I mean, how successful has that been in Maine? We're just really not sure about that. So in looking at this, there's more information that needs to be obtained.

39:43 So that's one of our things. But being specific as to what you want is pretty important, and Jim has ranked each of our seed varieties in each of the plots, and it's available. I'll get them to pull that up whenever I'm through here.

39:59 Compete for your desired results, okay. You are an organism out there on that land just like an earthworm or a grasshopper, just like a dandelion. You're another organism out there. So you have to compete. So if you're going to compete, know what your competition is. Where's your pasture dormant? Okay, the picture on the far right was taken on October the 27th. That's our farm. That's my son and I, I guess that's my cow. So there, he's in, you know, he's in an area that we mow, but that cow's in utter deep Bermuda grass that's probably not going to be real conducive to germination in soil-to-seed contact because we've got a lot of residue out there that's not going to be real.

40:51 Conducive to tiny little seed out there at that particular time but wait another few days and get that seed out there and when that Bermuda grass becomes normal then maybe that's a really good time. So know what your competition is. Okay, look at Thompson foundation on the far left. That's a structure that we have out there and there's wildflowers up, you know, sort of around that and some of those makes me and sunflowers over my head and then there's a little mowed area. So you know, mowing may be an option but to go out in a wild flower or a native grass pasture that the grass is over your head or the weeds are over your head might not work, especially not with the equipment that we have available that I have been opposed me.

41:40 Okay, the next one is Thompson Foundation. The one on the far left was taken on October the second and then October the 4th and October the 27th so within three weeks but it three hundred yards away from that building there's a pack. There's an area at Thompson foundation that's mainly three on it's a disturbed area. It's got a lot of light Atris in it and it's perfect for planting a cover crop. So looking at what your competition is, be it planning in September when you're going to have a lot of grasshoppers and so on and so forth if it's impatiens that may or may not be your best choice of a time to plant.

42:24 So knowing what are you planning it for? If it's for a check, get the check and just throw them out there. Don't go to a lot of trouble, just get your money and go to the copy shop but if it's for the physical change of your soil, choose plants that will physically change your soil. If it's for chemistry, so being specific with what your target is is pretty critical in this game in my opinion.

42:55 Okay, so we are looking now at some other options and so Jim and I have agreed that we're going to put in Britt's humble Technical Research Institute of Texas on board with us on this as well. So they are researching for plants for us just paper research of four varieties of plants that are native. It is this plant style region. They're perennials. They're not this project didn't scare me at all because I wasn't going to put anything at Thompson, which is a nature preserve for native habitat mainly wildflower forbs and grasses. And so well first kind of, sorry about, I'm not going to do something up there, you know, so because we're it's sort of you know this delicate place would take care of in a different way than most many most pastors but an annual didn't bother me. We didn't have any invasive annuals in our in our choice here but as we start looking at perennials perhaps having cover crops that we established that we don't have to replant is a goal for us in the future.

44:09 So this is one. This is Texas parsley. It's one of my top top candidates. Rattlesnake master, some of the compass plants tastes parsley. Looking at some plants that we no longer see in pastures. I see them on the sides of the road and I see them at Thompson Foundation but where I've seen livestock I don't see those plants. And so the reason I don't see those plants is not because they don't like pastures but it's because they're ice-cream plants Academy. So looking at some of those and how we could establish those amazements really our next step we will continue.

44:51 The project for probably several years. Our knowledge gained may be fairly slow. We accept that, and so we're going to continue. Green Cover gives us our seed. Did Some Water Foundation is a big part of this. Thompson NCTC, Noble Foundation. We've not written a grant. It's not going to expire. The only thing's going to expire is me, so you know, as long as that doesn't happen real soon, this is probably going to go on for a while. We want to see what we can learn.

45:30 We're going to have some field days. We will have a field day in April in which you can come and see our plots and visit with us. We've not announced that, but I'll ask Jim if he will find a way to communicate with you. Maybe we'll put it out through a web server through Green Cover. We're going to have some more programs on the NCTC campus and bring you on board. So don't expect earth-shattering discoveries. That's not what our goal is. Our goal is to work with nature and work with people and help us to better understand.

46:09 That's sort of where we are and what we've done so far. These are our collaborators: NCTC, we have a decent Water Foundation. Actually pays for part of my salary so that I can have time to go out and do some of these types of projects. NCTC, what's called the Josie Institute of Agroecology, and then Noble Foundation, Dixon Water Foundation, Green Cover Seeds. That's how you can contact me: a text or phone call or an email works really well. Sometimes our email system is not the greatest, so if you send me a text message, we can have a conversation if you'd like.

47:05 Would you please pull up that slide of the list of plants? So that's a little tight, but you certainly can look at that. I bet Keith and the folks at Green Cover or Jim or I either want any of us would send you a copy of that if you want it. As we go along, it's just really sort of a super performer, an OK performer, not-so-great performer, a poor performer. We just have sort of one through three or four, and then we average them out. You're welcome to take a look at that. That's the list of plants. There's 93 varieties, and number 94 is a mix.

47:47 That little pot over there, obviously what she did was she took a lid off of something, drilled ten holes in it, and we put ten seeds in each of the pots. Well, obviously there's ninety-three seeds, so all of them didn't get in pot in pot number 94. But out in the plot, they are out there. So anyway, can I answer any questions? It's been a pleasure.

48:09 One comment that I would make is when we were out there at the bosses gym, and even with his ratings, those mixes got almost twice as good of rating as the individual species did. You might just comment on that. In our mixes, in plot number 94, we're seeing a greater abundance of green this time of year. We're seeing more proliferation, more cover. So we expect that the multi-species mix will outperform any one of the single individual species. We expect that, and consequently it's doing it. Shelby Flax also was one that's performed well in all four of our pastures, but it looked really good. There are several native flax varieties, and it does real well here.