Wide Row Corn and Relay Cropping: A Farmer's Approach to More Cover Crop Biomass

0:00 Sure I'm recording, perfect. Give it about 30 seconds here. Okay, perfect. Well hello everybody, thank you for joining us. Week four, I believe, of our webinar series, season three. We are kind of switching topics over the last couple weeks. We tried to hit a lot of different things in this season. Last week with the carbon credits with Indigo Ag, and that is available so if you guys want to watch that, that is on our website and on our YouTube page. But we decided to switch it up a little bit. Instead of talking to another company, we wanted to again go back to the farmer and talk to somebody that is actually doing a lot of these principles and practices that we've been talking about.

1:02 So before we get started with that, I'll let you know that for those who are tuning in for the first time, you are muted and we can't see you or anything like that. But if you want to type out your questions, you can do that in the Q&A and the chat feature. We're going to have our presenter speak until about 6:40 or 6:15, about 45 minutes, and then we'll open it up to audience questions.

1:27 So with that, Keith, do you want to go ahead and introduce our speaker?

1:30 Yeah, I sure will. Thanks Noah. Our speaker tonight, as you can see on the screen there, is Lauren Steinlage. We've known, I've known Green Cover Seed has known Lauren for a number of years now. I've had a great relationship sharing information back and forth, being at each other's places. I had the privilege of being able to go to Lauren's farm last year and help out with one of their workshops that they did there. And I'm sure Lauren will talk about this a little bit. Very, very passionate about educating and opening up what he's doing to other people. Just very generous in sharing the information. You know, if I had to have one word to describe Lauren, I was thinking about this. I think the word I would use is fearless. I mean, you know, and you'll see this when he shows you these slides. He's just not afraid to try anything, which is great because many of us are probably a little more cautious than that. And it's great that we can learn from what he and others around him are doing.

2:35 So you can see on the screen there his contact information. Write down his email if you want to pick his brain about some of this. Like I said, he's very generous. The other thing, in addition to being a farmer, he's also part of the engineering team for Dawn Underground, which is great because he really has some good ideas on how to modify some equipment and a lot of the things that Dawn has brought to the market, including the ZRX rollers which we're using here on our farm and some of the other things, have largely been tested and helped to be designed by Lauren and on his farm there. So fearless, I think it's a great word to describe Lauren and what he does there on his farm in northeast Iowa. And so Lauren, I'm going to turn it over to you. I'm going to hide myself and enjoy the presentation here, so take it away.

3:24 Well, thank you very much Keith. Kind of an honor being here when you sit back and look at all the guys that you've had speak over this winter, and it's nice to see companies like Green Cover Seed sticking to the education aspect. It's what helps keep this whole thing rolling. And when Keith says fearless, okay, why aren't we there? We go. I'm going to start off right here with a little history of the background to Flow Farms. On the right-hand side, you see Flow, and on the left-hand side is me, low. So I mean, it's kind of a tribute. When I was 16 years old, me and Dad started a partnership, and it's just blossomed ever since. We've gone through thick and thin. We've done a lot. He's the one that helped me get to where I'm at and inspired me to give me the opportunity to learn and educate.

4:27 In January here, we were honored with the No-Till Innovator Award for No-Till Farmer on the left, and then the right is kind of the future of Flow Farms. This is my wife and three kids: Cassie, Kelly, and Rollin. Most of you have probably heard about Rollin. He's down in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Kelly, the middle one there, is our oldest daughter. She worked for FSA, but she's the mother of my first little grandson. And then on the left side here, we got Cassie. She's the youngest. She's the one that told me many years ago that she's going to kick me out of here, so I'm waiting for that day yet, but we're getting closer all the time.

5:09 Keith brought up about Dawn Equipment. That is kind of why I took the position at Dawn. I'm getting ready to step out of the management of the farm here and hopefully turn it over to the kids as they start taking root here. But I mentioned the innovator award. It meant a lot to me, but this slide right here means a lot more to me, especially when you see down here, I guess I'd call the magenta or the purple fields. That's two of our fields represented.

5:41 When people talk regen ag and stuff like that, we're starting to finally get the proof and the data behind us to help show that we're actually doing what we're saying we're doing.

5:55 I should back up here a little bit. If you guys haven't got a copy of the soil health guide from Green Cover, you should probably focus on that a little bit. We're on page 14 I think of it or 60. That's we're going to let a lot of specifics go towards that if you want to understand and learn more. We're going to have Q&A at the end. I'd rather ask questions, that's why we're just going to give a brief general overview of what we're doing on the farm here for context.

6:34 Where the star is is where I'm at in northeast Iowa. The key point I always like to point out is this 145 to 140 days of growing season. When people stop and ask why stuff works or why it doesn't, you know, why does it work here, it doesn't work there, this is one of the key things backed up by some of the other logistics of where we're at. We're 43 degrees north latitude. A big thing is the 36.6 inches of rain. I was in a meeting in South Dakota there this winter and they kind of looked at me a little funny when I told them our version of a drought is their wet year. And you know, factor in the snowfall, we got average of 38 inches, but I think I heard the other day we're over 45 already or something like that.

7:31 My farm is right here if you can see on the pointer. We're right on the edge of the glacial tail line. The biggest thing that affords us is we've got some very diverse soils. We go anywhere from pure gravel to pure peat in the same pass on all our fields. And I always like to throw this one in too just to remind people we didn't start what you're going to see all today. This is not where we started. We started out pretty simple back in about 2006 was kind of when I started learning about interseed cover crops. I started out with these tools, and we didn't put a lot of miles on them things. I actually wore one of them out and it gave us a lot of opportunity to learn small. So by the time we started going field scale, we had a pretty good idea of what to do, when to do it.

8:34 In 2006 we were a corn on corn operation, so cereal rye was not an option for me at that time. Interseeding is what I tell people was my gateway drug. That was where I really focused on learning how to adapt cover crops to work in our situation. But the biggest thing we learned very quick was the value of understanding the herbicides and the chemicals. And we had Callisto was my favorite at that point, but we learned very quick that when a product says two to three weeks of residual, you might see things up to two to three months later.

9:21 This clover in the middle here is one of the aha moments that I had. As bad as that clover looked, this was seeded late August, herbicide was applied in April or May. It frosted every time we had the clover come up, it was just frosted white, but that clover did survive over winter.

9:46 Another thing I really like to focus on is I'm kind of an iron and steel guy. Once we started seeing a little success, I had this tool bar that we put 10 different styles of row units on there just to figure out exactly what we wanted. As we went field scale with some of the interseeding, the biggest thing we learned very quick was a drill opener was going to be critical. So when you hear guys like Steve Groff and that say treat your cover crops like a cash crop, we're playing with drones and stuff that you'll see later, but soil to seed contact is still hard to beat and that's what helps us get the seeding rates and success that we see on our operation.

10:36 Everything I build, we focus on serviceability. When we overhauled that 10 acre drill that time, you could tear the whole drill apart with a 15, 16, and a 9/16 wrench basically. So in field if I got to work on it, it's pretty simple. I always have fun with this picture. The day that shot that drill rolled out of the shop happened to be a photo shoot here that day, but we never get too attached to something because six weeks later this is what the drill looked like. We tore the drill all the way down again and rebuilt it because I started understanding what twin row and stuff like that could do as we're starting to look at the relay cropping in that and as I call it, we look at precision.

11:24 Covers now is kind of everything we do in the fall. All our fields are set up for relay cup or the intercede cover crop.

11:36 That drill got sold shortly after we overhauled it and gave us the opportunity. In 2016 I kind of debuted this slide that I had in my mind. I was the first time I was going to be able to afford to build all new from ground up. So we wanted to start with a liquid side dress frame, had a Montauk seed box for our fertilizer box for seed, and then we based everything on the Dawn Duo seed row units.

12:06 Here's what that rig looks like today. This is kind of what we've done a lot of the testing with and that for the intro roller. It was one of those tools once we finally built it, we realized we had kind of the ideal tool for almost everything we wanted to do on our farm outside of the norm. It sets us up for the cover crops, the relay crops. We apply fertilizer with it if needed. We side dress with it if needed. At this time I'm probably down to 750, 800 acres but that drill some years goes over 3,000 acres just because it's so versatile.

12:50 When we're talking interseeding, this is what I call success. As you listen to guys, the first question I'd advise most of the time is ask them to show pictures of success. Over the years, this is what some of our seedings have looked like and we're getting pretty good at making it consistent.

13:14 May 2015 is kind of when we started playing, focusing back on more non-GMO stuff and the first thing we realized was the value of a herbicide band for residual. We apply about a 10 inch band of residual right on the row and then we treat in between the rows separate. But I always like to keep this one in there to show guys just how simple stuff can be. We banded chemicals up until 1988 was when we first started. We were banning everything at that point, never really used broadcast spray at that point even because we'd cultivate everything. So when I figured out we needed to go back to banding, it was just a natural transition for me, but the biggest thing is we didn't have the box planters anymore, stuff like that, so we just made our own little bracket and that's still in use today.

14:15 Another thing we learned over the years is delayed termination. That goes back to that 43 degree north latitude. We won't get the tall cereal rye unless I'm going to wait till June 15th to plant corn. Northeast Iowa, our optimum dates about April 20 to May 1st, so we're going to go ahead and plant the crop and then take it out later.

14:44 Some of that goes back to when I started seeing this. I'm always out in the field scouting and this is kind of the field where the intro roller was conceptualized because what you'll see here is the tram lines. We're all controlled traffic but I always started noticing where our tram lines were, the weeds or the rye and that was easier to control.

15:13 Back to their seating a little bit here. Everybody wants to talk timing and for me we're going to be in that V3 V5 range but we're going to factor it with the forecast. If we're looking at going hot and dry, I'll take my time. If we're going to be cool and wet, we might push a little bit. It all depends on the stage of corn and how the corn is growing at that point. I always like to throw this one in there just to show you. Everybody asks, I can show you better than tell you what I'm doing, so we always have fun with this one. John Deere build the high speed planter, we built the high-speed drill that goes in between it. You can see that's what I would call V4 corn and we're in that kind of when that corn is going to jump, that's when we're going to get it out there.

16:15 The key to making interseed work in my mind is getting it out there early enough so it's established solid before you go into that dormancy stage.

16:26 This is a Jill Clapperton slide for some of you that know her. The big thing we're trying to show here is when we talk about moisture sharing or nitrogen sharing between some of the legumes in the corn. What you'll notice here on the right is how the roots are coming straight across into the interseeding area. Where over here where no interseeding is, the roots are basically going straight down.

16:54 Interseeding on the most I've ever spent for interseeding is fifteen dollars an acre in seed and history would show back when we were testing we could gain about 15 bushels an acre, but the biggest thing I'm focusing on anymore is the seed cost.

17:11 Irrelevant if we're starting to get multiple years out of the cover crop. To me in the fall, this is the day we combine. This is a successful stand.

17:30 And then for the livestock guys in the audience, this is, you know, some of my neighbors thought I was bailing all the residue off, but it was kind of a test. I had a dairy that wanted to buy corn stalks for bedding, and the way it turned out, the quality on the corn stocks with all the cover crop in there was so good that all these bales went into the feed line versus the bedding line.

17:56 With the cover crop in there, I'm not as afraid to bail the residue off because we've got the erosion control and all that right there. The biggest thing is we just got to treat it like another cash crop in my mind.

18:10 When we got a good stand like that, you know, a lot of guys worried about the residue overwintering and stuff like that. The only way I can describe this is the greenhouse effect. You know, if we got enough heat in the fall after harvest that'll canopy over and the residue underneath that canopy just like it breaks down. And you know it's a combination of the canopy and the nitrogen from the lagoons in our cover crop.

18:39 With that, we're going to jump right into the relay cropping in that because, you know, once we started figuring some of that out about 2014, I met a guy named John Cootes and he was planting soybeans in between his wheat. You know, as I was starting to figure out how we're going to get small grains into our operation, that was just a natural fit for me because we already had the drills. We had, you know, it just fit and worked.

19:08 Here's John. That was back in about 2014. This picture was taken, I believe. He's using a John Deere row crop head, but you know you'll see that, but we're going to show you a simple cheaper ways to kind of try to get into this stuff. You know, you don't have to spend the money right away. Focus on the principles. Make it work before you spend the money on the iron if you can afford, you know, as you build.

19:36 Here, 2016, we had we were working with Iowa Soybean Association and they had a program with Ag Solver that they were helping us manage our data just to try to see what was working and what's not working.

19:53 I always like this slide because you'll notice right here on this little chunk: 25 percent better return on investment than a field of 234 bushels an acre corn. I don't know about you guys, but that gets my attention. You know, how, you know, we should be able to make pretty good money at 234 bushels of corn, but if I can do 25 percent better return on investment, I'm going to start pursuing that. And that's why we've really started focusing on the relay and companion crops.

20:26 This is kind of what we start off in the spring. On the left, we've got Sarah rye in the soybean stubble. On the right, we've got spring malt barley with food grade soybeans.

20:40 This is generally what it'll look like as we're putting the beans in. This is an old IH Cyclo, simple planter on a shifting hitch.

20:53 This is the second relay rig. You know, originally we were using the duo seed drill for installing the beans on the relay crop, but the biggest problem we were having with the twin rows soybeans was clearance on the combine tires. And then when we went food grade soybeans, we were down to 1,800 to 1,900 seeds per pound on the beans, and the Montauk meter would have made bean meal out of it. So the old Cyclo is just a simple fit.

21:29 The sad part is I like it so much that we plant all our beans with it now.

21:35 For 2021, we're kind of shifting gears again. I'm not going to rely on the shifting hitch. I bought another tractor here, and we set this one up on 90-inch center so we will be able to, I won't even have to shift eight-by lines now. Biggest reason I want that is I got enough other stuff going on. I want it simple. You know, this old girl, I can stick my wife in and let her plant if needed.

22:03 Come harvest time, this is what it looks like. This is where we kind of started. You know, I originally was using John Cootes as blocker guards, then we, this is just a simple ideal to fix the problem because John's guards were steel. I really didn't like the steel out in front with our undulating terrain. We tend to bend stuff, and metal out in front of a Sequel is not a great idea.

22:50 Now we're looking like an amateur here. Sorry for pushing here a little bit, but here, these are just pieces of drain tile that we slit and slam over the cutter bar to just block that where the soybean is, push the bean down so we're just cutting the cereal. The air reel is pretty critical on stuff.

23:12 Like this kind of keeps the sickle running clean when you're running the blocker guards. Fast forward, this is July 2020. We finally got all the pieces of the puzzle in place. That's this year we're kind of geared up. You know, my original plan for 2021 was I wasn't gonna plant an acre of corn, but I kind of want to wait to the end here so you can see what we did. This is a 1253 Deer head. The biggest thing we did here is we shifted the window on the feeder house. You can see the little about 15-inch shift on there so the whole head is shifted to the left.

24:02 Interceding soybeans seems to be a hot topic. Everybody's trying to figure out, we're still trying to figure it out. I thought this year we were set up for about the best success. I was going to try to relay buckwheat in, but you know we went two weeks earlier than I ever have. The cover crop, the beans just hit that grow stage and they smothered the buckwheat out, so we kind of had a failure this year on that. It's going to come back to timing, especially with the buckwheat. Ideally, July 20th is the cut-off date. I would say this year I went July 7th without the relay, thought we were hitting the window but just didn't work out.

24:50 This is a couple years ago the day we harvested the relay rye. We chased the combine with the drill installing buckwheat here in the soybeans. It's just a close-up view of what that's what the beans look like with their eye in there.

25:14 This is I'm just going to show you a little progress, kind of neat. I used to have the dates on here, but here we're six weeks in already and you can start to see a few flowers on the buckwheat. The biggest thing we learned that year is we were drawing in the beneficials. We never had to spray insecticide on the beans or anything like that. There they're starting to come, more flowers, there's full flower.

25:43 Everybody talks about the timing aspect of it. Here, where down here on the bottom half where we drove the soybeans down, the beans were a little stunted. You can tell they're greener up on the hill. They matured normal, the buckwheat matured right with the soybeans that year. There's what it looked like the day we combine, just take them both in and separate them out. As we bring bringing back the food-grade soybeans and stuff like that, 2018 we had buckwheat show up on every acre from the interseed mix the year before. Called the processor and he said no worries. So to me, if we can get buckwheat in our all our soybeans, we're pretty happy anymore.

26:33 Usually I don't like to share too many dollars and cents because once upon a time a guy tried to tell me I was lying, so I'm a little careful on some of this. I try to, you know, how many you guys can grow 30-bushel rye? Can you grow 30-bushel soybeans? Mix them together. Here we had 400 pounds an acre buckwheat that 30 cents was wholesaled at that time. You know, 820 bucks basically was our break even, but history would show we can pretty much double the numbers on the soybeans for sure, if not the rye too.

27:13 Earlier I mentioned perennial cover crops. This is last year, two years ago I think it was. You know, this is two years ago. We've been managing this clover since 2016 in the field through some of the, you know, we even get wild, we use Gramoxone in there and all that. But when I showed that slide earlier, here's some of the field data. Field one is actually the when I talk about the perennial cover crop, that's field one. The field two is the Buck Soy field that's had basically a living room at that one since 2014.

28:00 I'm gonna go back and point about a few little things here is our water-stable soil aggregates. You can tell the light green is our two fields now. The perennial forest is the blue, so that's kind of what we've been gauging against. Here we've got the organic matter shows we're right on par with native soils organic matter. And then our bulk density we're coming down. I'm pretty confident we will actually be down in that one more often than not.

28:36 This is the perennial field that's the day he was collecting the samples. This was also a test strip for the intro roller. The biggest thing we noticed between the early termination with the Gramoxone and the inner roller was about 40 pounds of nitrogen difference. On the left we generated 40 pounds of nitrogen, on the right we generated 80. And that here we have eight-dollar herbicide program on that field between the herbicide ban and a third.

29:08 Rate of gramoxone in between the rows. When everything doesn't go perfect, this is 2016 we had the ideal for the inner roller. I had thought it was going to be a total failure that spring. You know Joe was out here that day, and well we hurry up and hit everything with gramoxone after I seen the roller wasn't going to work the way I thought it was, and with non-GMO corn in here.

29:38 We had one field that didn't want to die, so Mother Nature decided I needed to figure out the inner roller. And about two to three weeks later the cereal rye just kind of kept coming back, so we hit it. You know, cereal rye here was about four or five feet tall, the corn was about six inches tall in this picture. You know, 200 acres kind of, you lose a little sleep one night.

30:06 And we finally figured it out about two o'clock in the morning. I went out the shop, started tearing the drill apart. Six hours later we were in the field saving a corn crop. Well, we know the cereal rye was starting to go down over top of the corn, and anybody that's had dry and corn knows they're not very good for good friends. So we knew we had to pull that corn off, and I finally figured out I had the right pieces all along. I just bolted on wrong on our first run.

30:42 Here was a couple years later as we started getting it tuned in a little better. In this video the soybeans are about six inches tall in there, and as we pan around back you'll see we're just laying it right down in between the bean rows so we don't, you know.

31:03 Knowing what I know now I would have probably harvested that field as rye, but you know that spring the rye just looked like heck so we didn't even worry about setting up for the relay. And that's one thing I always try to emphasize to people: what we're all doing looks crazy, but it gives us options. You know, as we see Mother Nature on folder hand, it gives us options.

31:27 And there's kind of how the simple setup was. That's what we started with, you know, just a simple. We turn the closing wheels into basically a wide roller. Now this year, this was fresh hot off the presses last week, this is the new in-roll roller I just ordered mine last week. I'm actually going to have a field scale one here hopefully in a couple weeks. But there's when we debuted that one for production.

31:59 Oh the 60 inch corn time. Many years ago I ran into this guy named Bob Wrecker. I think he's probably on the call, hopefully he's smiling about now, he's probably drinking a second glass of wine. But I always go back to this was what he called his bar club plot. And one thing when you work with Bob on stuff, he backs everything up with data. So when you start looking at some of this stuff, this is you know, hopefully sometime you guys have keep Bob on the call here and let him go at it for an hour. But you really see that edge effect emphasized on these. This is data from his barcode plot.

32:49 But from my experience what I started noticing on some of our hill farms and all our waterways and that, I started with our electric drive planner I could bump the outside rows. You know, his data would show we never got more than three, the effect more than three rows in. So we'd set the outside row at 45,000, next row at 40,000, the third row 35,000, and then variable rate the rest of the planner usually in that 32 to 34 range.

33:21 The next year we entered into a tramline study plot. This was kind of the first field that I know of that was prescription tram lines. As you'll see, things weren't quite lined up right, but we learned a lot from this plot and the biggest thing we took, one row out and then we moved that to the outside, the next two rows, so we ended up with 54,000 on either side of the 60-inch gap. The rest of the field was a variable rate, but the biggest thing we noticed that year was the value of the cover crop in between the road in the 60-inch gap.

34:02 And the following year I had the crazy idea that I'd go 30 60, and you know Bob always points out that the biggest error to my thinking was we were wasting a third of the soil surface with the 30 inch gap there. And this is just an aerial view of it. You know, the biggest thing I learned out of this aerial shot and why I always like to keep it in there is you can tell we were stressing nitrogen here because you know when we did this plot we didn't change the nitrogen and stuff like that yet.

34:38 This is just an overhead view. If you look real close you can see bare dirt here versus the cover crop in the 60 inch rows. And then this is Bob's money shot, I think he always calls it. This is where you really started seeing the value of the cover crop and the biomass that we could generate side by side, a 60 inch row versus a 30 inch row, same seating rate, same date seated everything.

35:05 Back to Bob's data, a lot of guys asking, can we match yields with the 60-inch corn? You know, here we're showing 200, this is on one of Bob's plots, 230 bushels per acre corn. All right, here's the first check of the 60-inch. This is a two-row skip one, 230 bushel per acre corn. This outlined one is 60-inch corn. 238, 223, so we're kind of right in that average.

35:39 One of the things we looked at why we're into that is I had the bright idea that we should probably be grazing that, but I've got a little caveat that I can't be around livestock. So twice I fenced off the plot and the guy backed out on me the last minute, so I'm not really too enthused about fencing fields off again. But what that has kind of led to is where we're at today.

36:04 This was this summer with Bob, we've built a little drill that he can now go down through the six-inch rows and seed. What I foresee doing that's going to open some doors for us. You know, we had already put the interseed cover crop in there, but now we can set up for this is Bob's little. I think they scared Bob that day. He only made two rounds on there and decided to quit because the open-pollinated corn with all the wind we had this year did kind of take a beating.

36:41 But to me this shot right here made it worth all the downed corn, because one of the biggest problems we have where I'm at is we're pretty limited. This cereal rye, we can do winter weed if we hit the right year, but getting winter wheat to overwinter some years is a challenge just for the simple fact we can't get it in soon enough. So now if I can put the use the 60-inch corn to get my cereals in all the way, I think we ran this year September 1st. We might even push ahead into August.

37:14 That's going to open the doors for winter malt barley and stuff like that, you know, more high value crops. This is an after harvest shot, and this is where I want to get to now. You know, if we can start getting them cereals soon enough, we can get some substantial growth in the fall and get a decent stand come spring.

37:43 On the dawn side, one of the fun projects we've been working on quite a bit is the enroll or the romos. And this just shows the three different versions that we played with. It's going to be a very good option someday, but right now it's a very high dollar option. You know, the biggest thing we're learning is the horsepower demands is critical, and we got to figure some of that out.

38:10 You know, in the middle here we have the first one that was more of an impeller version with three rows on it. We could drain the sump on a Deere 20 series tractor, so then we went the other direction on the left here to minimize the power requirements, went to kind of a sickle. And as pretty as this one is, it never did make off the test stand.

38:39 But another option we learned through some of the testing is we're going to, we can mow in between the rows, but eventually we're going to need to mow over top of the rows just to try to figure out the horsepower requirements. On the right here, we actually had Honda gas motors. And that's one of those deals I tell people that we've done a lot of crazy things, but I've never been truly afraid of a piece of equipment to that one. You got 70 horse of Honda power back there. It gets entertaining.

39:11 2020, as most of you know, was kind of an interesting year. For me, it kind of stepped backwards into working with Dawn. This was ended up being my babysitting project this past spring. The first black Dawn, one 24-row, ended up about 25 miles from my place. And it got me to start thinking about how much transition we've learned over the years. You know, up until 2015, we were strip-till and stuff like that.

39:43 It was kind of interesting going back to talk to these guys, you know, their first year diving right in, and just kind of comparing notes where I was at then versus where I'm at now.

39:56 Another opportunity we had this summer, we started working with 1-3 Design a little bit. They asked for some advice, so I got to go out and see the day this thing rolled out of the shop. One of the fun backstories behind this one, they actually had to wait for a Tesla to get wrecked so they could buy the batteries off of it. This is all battery-powered.

40:23 This one is another little fun project. We've been the last two years we've been a judge for Ag Launch, an innovation contest with Farm Journal magazine, which is kind of fun to see some of these upstart companies and upcoming just growing and blossom over the years. And you know, they're starting a mentoring network now that it's just going to open some really fun doors to see some of these companies thrive.

40:51 Most of you guys have heard of Rantizo. This is one of their successful companies.

46:48 Like oh crap, we're in for a battle so don't be afraid to swallow your pride some days to save a crop. You know we did pull cultivator out, we did what I would consider the old ultimates in—we did have to cultivate to save the crop. But this is what the corn looked like come harvest.

47:08 I'm gonna jump ahead here. There's the biology jumping, but here's where I see the biggest opportunity coming. You know three years ago I kind of had the crazy idea I'll start playing with open pollinated corns. And this fall we—I knew to get to where I wanted to be, we're going to have to focus more on the quality aspect so we. I wanted to hand pick it because number one it gave us the ultimate quality, number two it gives you so many more options. Now with the husk on we can eventually make tamales or decorations or all this stuff but the funnest part is, through Facebook ad one day I kind of got connected to this young gentleman John Carrera that now with the open pollinated corns we actually have tortillas coming and chips. So if you ever come up here to have a beer, we can even have tacos now.

48:12 Kind of gonna come to the end here. How something appears is always a matter of perspective. And I'm going to jump to the end here. But this is where we're at right now. You know through the years, this is the perennial cover when we talk carbon sequestration and stuff like that. This is where we're at. You know we're starting to figure out how to bridge all them gaps. If you look at this the sun represents our peak carbon sequestration. We're kind of overlapping all them time frames. But with that I'm gonna sign off here. This is a flyer for this if you want to come to our place this summer. The first event in June will be soil health academy and then the week of July 19th to 23rd we're kind of doing our annual field day week we call it. Plus tomorrow we're meeting with no-till farmer on an event in September. So with that a lot of long snow, but sorry it's kind of hard to cut her down.

49:17 Not a problem at all, thank you so much. That was excellent I really appreciate that. Guys if you do have questions we've got about 10 minutes here, or know well if you've got time to go five minutes extra, so I'm sure we got plenty I'm here.

49:36 Don asks what are you doing to increase the photosynthetic efficiency in crop fields and I think you pretty much answered that question kind of came at the beginning, but is there anything more that you would like to add on that? Well the biggest thing we've learned over the years is focus on that living room. And you know if we can keep a plant out there green 20, you know 365 even though we get, you know depending on the year we might have five to six months of snow, that plant's still doing something under there.

50:09 Andrew says hi Lauren hope you are in shorts today like when we met in Regina. What kind of clovers are you using in your perennial cover field? We've we've tried pretty much all of them. For me the old standby is the red clover. You know crimson clover we've struggled with a little bit on the inner seating. It comes on strong but if you see it flower in the fall, it's done so you know it's not going to overwinter. We've tried balsana clover. You know that whole organic plot where I showed where we frost seeded, we tried ten different clovers that year. And for us in our climate it comes down to red clover but the key is red clover grows here naturally. So you know when I used to farm state ground down there, we could have a pure alfalfa stand and within four years it was solid clover.

51:09 When is your field day in July and where can people sign up? Be watching multi-cropping Iowa and it's coming together yet. I said we're gonna have Rick Clark, hopefully Adam Daughtry shows up. I got a young gentleman from Delaware that spoke at the no-till conference. He's gonna be here. Biggest deal is Thursday. Bring your kids if you're coming. We're going to be at the county fair which is only a mile east of my place here but the 4-H kids are going to have an event hopefully down at the fairgrounds live.

51:50 Doug asks what header setup worked best for your bean and wheat relay? The 1253A is by far superior. I mean that's the holy grail right there I guess. I mean it just worked. And you know but don't start there. You know don't go out tomorrow and buy a 1253A. You know start the pushers, they do good enough to get you from point A to point B.

52:24 You had to skip through there I'm sure for time on some of the biological stuff but Steph asks have you ever tried using any biological amendments or vermicompost.

52:35 I'm watching all the vermicompost bugs and a jug anytime we've tried them. I see a loss and I would just say that's probably because our soil is kind of kicking pretty good already. You know, the vermicompost and the compost teas and that, I'm seeing I love what I see out of them. But some of that goes back to we're in a more wet climate. I think we can keep stuff alive. Now in the dry land stuff, that's where they seem to really be thriving.

53:14 Keith said that he has a question. Yeah Lauren, I just, again I think people when they look at all that stuff they're probably going where's this dude's sleep. But I just had one question I wanted you to comment on because I think it's quite interesting and a lot of your pictures where you were showing your planters, you know the row cleaners that you had on there, you had them covered in poly. Why did you have that? What's the purpose of doing that?

53:51 That's kind of my version of a low disturbance row cleaner and it all goes back to a finger wheel rake. If you watch how a finger wheel right, you know it kind of flexes back and it pushes the residue but it doesn't disturb the soil. And you know I took one of the slides out of there. It really, you know, last spring I was having fun. We were in a residue mat about three, four inches thick from it was a relay rice soybean field. And you know we were just pushing it apart, but you could pick it all up and there was absolutely no soil in the path of the road cleaner. It just, you know, I call them self-adjusting row cleaners. That's just been kind of my bit. You know, I think 2015 that's the first time I made a set. And you know we've got them on the drill, we've got them on the planner, the relay planner has them on now.

54:47 Yeah, so it's really more just kind of parting the residue than it is moving any ground. Does it keep those fingers from wrapping things up, like if you're going through some, well, there's no fingers on there anymore. Oh, there's no thing, it's just the poly, yeah. It's solid poly, you know. Well, if you've seen the one video there, the drill that was curved time closing wheels that I salvaged to test with. And you know, if you got fingers behind there it'll eventually push holes right through. But now with you know, now we make a backer plate and it just works.

55:30 Very cool. On the buckwheat and we have people ask us this all the time too. You know, what can they intercede with soybeans? And you know, I caution them how very hard that is because you know when you harvest soybeans you're taking all of that other stuff in, so whatever you plant you're going to get in the tank. Yep, most of the soybean intercropping with buckwheat that you're doing, is that on the relay cropping or have you tried that on full season soybeans as well? And do you think it would work on full season soybeans, you know, where they're gonna grow longer than the relays maybe would?

56:06 Well, this year was the first time we tried it in conventional soils because we did, you know, mother nature threw us a curveball, we just didn't have any relay crop this year on my own. So what you see what you seen harvest in there was actually we were getting the head dialed in. And you know, this year I had time and opportunity, so I went two weeks earlier than we've done in the relay. You know, the relay we can, it's pretty predictable. But you know, I thought heck, you know, I was actually going for green on that field. You know, I was going to try to get enough buckwheat to actually use for interseed. And the only place we had decent buckwheat this year was on the end rows and stuff like that. It just, you know, once them beans canopied she choked everything off.

56:57 Yeah, and that's the problem. Although that's a problem if you're wanting to really harvest that buckwheat. But if you don't care, you're just wanting something to add diversity to your bean crop, did the buckwheat get to a point where it flowered before it kind of got swallowed up? Yeah, right, right as it started flowering. And I mean, all my bean fields I went, I made the outside 30 feet. So all my bean fields had a ring around them. But it was there, but you know, I think it was there just enough to draw in the beneficials because we had no bugs in the beans or anything again. So, really, if you didn't want to mess with trying to clean your buckwheat out of your soybeans, that was an ideal situation.

57:41 Yeah, and then you know, like I said, you know, we switched herbicide programs and that. So I don't know if that, you know, I don't know if that affected. You know, I've had a few guys try to tell me now liberty actually has some residual effect.

57:57 Yeah, I never thought of it but yeah. And kind of along that same lines, Mark asked, are you worried about weed bounce back over time? Weed seed counts increasing the farther you get from residual pesticide use?

58:12 Actually, we're not reducing, you know, on that road and we're not using a reduced rate. We're probably actually higher than label, but with the ability to manage in between the rows there, we don't have a weed issue. You know, the biggest thing is you can't disturb the soil, and the more you disturb the soil, the more weeds you're going to fight.

58:37 And that, that's a couple more of them slides that I had to take out just to try to squeeze down to half hour, 45 minutes is, you know, that's where the DuoSeed really comes in. You know, it's your traditional Deere oak double disc opener is a seven degree opener, I think the new ones are seven and a half, but DuoSeed down to six degree or the, you know, Deere 750 drill is I think seven in or seven degree opener. So but the key to the double disc is you're only moving three degrees either way, so you're not moving a lot of soil.

59:13 Okay, Kenneth says, I may have missed it, but could you mention again your planting and termination date for winter rye, cereal rye?

59:26 On a perfect year, we're not going to terminate it. I mean, it's going to go to all the way to the relay, but you know, June 1st is probably the earliest I'll terminate it. Just we tend to get a wet spell from last two weeks of May till the first week of June we're usually getting drowned out, so I want to keep that rye alive as long as I can. You know, and then if we got a good enough stand, I'm going to take it all the way to green, but if it looks like we're going to miss the rains, that's when we'll terminate.

59:59 Hey, Lauren, have you tried, and I know a number of people have, have you tried planting your beans into that rye at the boot stage and then rolling the rye, you know, at anthesis, you know, when those beans are, you know, what, four, six, eight inches tall? Have you done that?

1:00:15 Yeah, that's the one video, that's what it was. Okay, I mean, that, the beans were in there about six inches tall, and with that integral roller, we're not even touching the beans. We're, you know, most guys running a solid roller, you know, they're rolling the beans and everything.

1:00:32 But have you done it where it's all planted together and you are rolling over the beans?

1:00:37 Yeah, well, no, I, we did that way back and I won't do it again, I guess I'll put it that way. Okay, you felt like you damaged the beans a little bit? Yeah, well, I know Rick Clark when I was at his this summer he had kind of a goose neck thing going on, and you know, that's why that's why I kind of had the mindset with the internal roller. Yeah, do it in between the rows of beans.

1:01:01 Yeah, have you had any issues? You mentioned the open pollinated corn. One of the biggest reasons people say that they're not able to grow anything else is because of the markets. So as you continue to grow that product, are you concerned about marketing that and the capabilities of actually handling the huge quantities of that? Or are you not really concerned? It's something we got to grow into.

1:01:31 You know, that's that's what a lot of this stuff you got to grow into it and build, you know, we've kind of got to the point where we built our reputation up. People know about it now, you know, we're working with breweries and distilleries and stuff like that now. It's going to take a while for them to develop even more, you know, because the one brewery, you know, if they take a pro box of corn that's a big deal to them, but it's going to take time to build into it. I mean, that's kind of my play hobby.

1:02:01 And the tortillas, you know, we hand-picked 300 bushel of corn. I promised all that to him, and you know, once he showed up, but that's a year production for him right now. But he's been doing it all by hand. Now, after we talked to you, you know, we met with him and talked to him, he's going to automate, and went from he was going to buy a 700 tortilla press to a thirteen thousand dollar one, I think. He's going to be fully automated, and you know, I think I heard the number ten thousand a month, I think is what he's shooting for.

1:02:44 Wow, can people buy those online? That's going to be coming, I mean, he's kind of he's kind of building from scratch. Okay, yeah, I think a lot of people would be interested in that, so let us know. Yeah, he gets the offer, knows we can let people know. Yeah, well, if you come to our field days, he's going to be cooking for the field days. So, well, there you go. That's the beauty. He's a trained chef and everything, and I mean, this is nice right there, folks.

1:03:12 Yeah, I mean that's the people we need to be reaching out to, really start making this stuff all work and click. And you know, that's the future if you're really going to focus on some of this. You got to develop the markets, you know.

1:03:25 He caught my attention when he told me the organic hand-picked corn that he's using currently for tortillas is fifty dollars a bushel, hand-picked, hand-shelled. I told him I'd do it for 25.

1:03:44 Oh mercy, that's one of those deals. You know, I made it known about six months ago. I told everybody I wanted to kind of eventually turn this joint into a research education farm. You know, we want to start with that ag launch 365. We want to start doing the mentorship program. Well, we're kind of grabbing him and helping him out.

1:04:08 Now, you know, yesterday I signed the lease on the greenhouse. We got a guy taking over. He's going to resurrect the greenhouse, bring that back. He, these are two guys that never grew up on a farm, but they've got the regenerative mindset. Yeah, you know that. They're kind of like the Russell Hedrick's in their emphasis, you know. They just, they don't have the preconceived notions of that. They're just, it's fun to work with guys like that.

1:04:34 And I said that's what I want to focus on now, you know. On the side, that's the fun part. We've got a, I'll probably just do these last two questions and then we'll wrap up here. Kenneth asks any issues with neighboring fields and your open pollinated corn.

1:04:52 The biggest thing with open pollinated corn is, you know, we've been waiting to plant it till last. But now, you know, I'm going to switch it to the fields with some trees around it, just for the simple fact it helps us with isolation and stuff like that.

1:05:09 Okay, and Duncan asks how do you deal with compaction. With the controlled traffic and the cover crops, it's not an issue. And that goes back to that living root. I mean, it's real. It works, you know. That one slide ahead showed our bulk soil densities, and you know, every time we've taken them, we're down in that one range. 1.6 is restricting. Your average is 1.2 to 1.4.

1:05:42 So okay, I lied. We're going to do this last one. How about any fungal amendments like the Johnson Sioux bioreactor. That kind of goes back to what we talked about. You know, the, I'm watching all that stuff. You know, I'm going to wait for Chris Teach Out, Michael Thompson to get it perfected, and then I'm just going to get it from them, you know. I want to see it working at scale, you know. Derek Axton, you know, they're doing it on broad acres, but that's a dry climate, you know.

1:06:17 We're on that, you know, it seems we have the fungal component and that going already. So, you know, a lot of our fields, you see the mushrooms and stuff like that out there. So I'd say that's pretty good indicator. And you know, when Jill Clapperton was here, we were looking for Michael Rizzo fungi back in 2015 already. So, you know, it's one of those deals. If you can keep it alive, you don't need to keep adding it. That's my mindset.

1:06:43 Sure, Lauren, thank you so much for your time. I appreciate that and answering these questions here at the end. Again, if you guys attempted to go straight to Q&A, so I'm sure we could have picked your brain for an hour at least. But if you do have any other questions that we did not get answered, is it fine if people email you there.

1:07:04 Yeah, sure, I mean you'll get a response about five o'clock in the morning usually. So there you go. That's when I get up and check my emails and stuff like that. And if you want to talk to me direct, text me first. Usually that's what I tell people because, you know, it's like today I had calls from New Jersey and all over.

1:07:26 I don't need warranty. I don't need a hotel. All that wonderful stuff. So now, like, no extended warranty on your car, you're saying. Yeah, no, we don't need any.

1:07:37 All right, well thank you guys so much for tuning in. Lauren, again, thank you for your time. Next week, no, you're fine. I thought it was great. We did record this so for those of you that want to share this with friends or watch it again, I'll have that posted here probably on Thursday.

1:07:55 And then next week, I believe it's Rob Myers. No, sorry, Mike, is going to be on here to talk about, I should have had that prepared, but I thought it was Rob Myers. Mike will be on next week. You had me between smart guys, so no, not at all. Everybody that we've had on so far has been on a very high level. So I'm looking forward to what Mike's going to talk about next week.

1:08:27 And then to tease that, we do have a webinar series with Christine Jones that we're going to have in April. So we don't have all the details figured out on that yet, but be looking for more information as well. Lauren, thanks again. Do you have any final words for us before you head out.

1:08:46 I'm ready to go for more questions. So all right, well thank you so much for your willingness to share your story with people and yeah, for your willingness to answer questions. So we appreciate it. Thank you, Keith. And thank you, Lauren. We'll see you guys all next week.