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I just got sick and tired of spending this money on fertilizer, planting it in the dry powder,

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and watching the soil blow away. We spent zero dollars making those switches.

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We spent zero and we were actually gaining probably tens of thousands of dollars. It's fun farming again.

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Welcome to the 358th installment of Ear to the Ground.

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The Land Stewardship Project's podcast on family farming,

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regenerative agriculture, community food systems, and local democracy.

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I'm Brian DeVore, editor of the Land Stewardship Letter.

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Engaging the cost of doing business on a farm can take many forms. For example,

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buying a bunch of equipment to switch over to a no-till system or to seed cover crops

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can run up the tab pretty quickly. On the other hand, doing nothing can be pricey as well.

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Continuing to do things the same way can come with its own set of expenses.

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Economically and environmentally, as well as from a quality of life perspective.

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But Meadowbrook Dairy in central Minnesota's Stearns County seems to have found a way to

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thread that balance sheet needle when it comes to making dramatic changes to the way it manages the

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soil. In 2016, the farm, after decades of conventional tillage, began using conservation

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tillage and cover crop mixes to reduce erosion and build organic matter. Over the years,

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the farm has also modified its manure handling practices to make better use of this by-product

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as a source of fertility. The latest innovation the farm is experimenting with is adopting a

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composting system that can take their soil even further biologically. The operation consists of

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an 80-cow dairy and 300 beef steers, and also raises corn, soybeans, alfalfa, and small grains

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on 1,000 acres. Today, Meadowbrook is 100% no-till on its crop acres, which lie relatively flat,

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which consist of soils that are pretty sandy. Multi-species mixes of cover crops are a regular

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part of the rotation, and the operation is able to get manure applied across the fields

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at rates that are good agronomically and environmentally. When Alex Uderman and the

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rest of his family hosted a Practical Farmers of Iowa Field Day in August 2024, it was clear

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that these changes on Meadowbrook farm were paying off in more ways than one. A slaking demonstration

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and some impromptu sampling showed that the sandy soil has good aggregate structure and is developing

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a rich, dark color, with lots of signs of activity on the part of earthworms and other beneficial

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critters. A cover crop planting demonstration showed that the soil was soaking up and retaining

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moisture well, at a time when precipitation frequency is a major guessing game. Alex Uderman

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is the fifth generation on this farm, which also consists of his wife, Chrissy, his brother, Jake,

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and the brothers' parents, John and Mary Lou. As he explained during the field day, this transition

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to regenerative practices has helped the farm dramatically reduce its reliance on chemical

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inputs, saving roughly $100 per acre in the cost of putting in a crop. The Uderman Soil Health

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Journey has also paid off environmentally. Their farm is now enrolled in the Minnesota Agricultural

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Water Quality Certification Program, which is an official recognition that they're using

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conservation practices that protect lakes, rivers, streams, and groundwater. In addition,

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at the time this podcast was being recorded, Meadowbrook Dairy was a finalist for the 2024

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Minnesota Leopold Conservation Award. Getting so many payoffs from building soil health doesn't

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come without some investments. But as Alex explained to me during an interview after the

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August field day, during the transition period that covered the years 2016 to 2021, the family's

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expenditures were decidedly not of a financial nature. In what Alex calls a low-input transition,

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rather than sinking big bucks into new equipment, for example, Meadowbrook Dairy invested more in

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taking a different approach to management and the way they viewed their soil. In a sense,

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knowledge was their biggest investment. And once this approach began to show signs of paying off,

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then the family put money into tools that would help continue their soil health journey.

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At that point, Alex explains, such purchases are no longer seen as a one-way expense.

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The expenditures graduated to the level of being long-term investments in fortifying a more

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resilient way of farming. Alex started our conversation by describing how the desire to

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save time and labor initially prompted this farm's different approach to profiting from the soil.

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Well, just with running the dairy and the steers and just those thousand acres of row crops,

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it's a lot of irons in the fire at one time to get stuff done. I mean, you're milking cows from

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5.30 in the morning and finishing up with chores, hopefully by 8.30, 9 o'clock. Then we got to

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get all the field work done and get crops planted. And it kind of started with a labor issue. There

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isn't one single thing that defined it. It's just one thing started the snowball effect. But when

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people ask me why we changed, like I said, it's all the above. It's not just one thing. It's a

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labor issue, the timing, the money on the equipment, the return investment on fertilizer,

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the topsoil only we have no soil structure. Just backing up from like 2016, we went from

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full conventional prior to as long as I can remember. Dad did it. Grandpa did it.

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Great grandpa did it. I think I was the first generation said this is there's got to be a

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better way. So what really struck my nerve was, like I said, in the springtime, like so just

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managing the dairy and the steers, we ran full tillage. So in the springtime, for example, we

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were, you know, we're disking chiseled ruts down from last fall, or we'd haul them in our first and

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disc and then we'd pick rocks. And then we'd come back and spread commercial fertilizer on

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those same acres to put some more nitrogen down or on the bean acres, we'd run P and K.

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As we pick rocks and we come back and field cultivate, and then we come back and plant and

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possibly roll. So we had any time in the springtime, we were relying on hired labor

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that weren't full time employees, we're relying on people just showing up to help us hopefully.

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And you know, two four wheel drives usually running in the spring, plus the planner is usually moving.

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And then we had, you know, with morning chores and trying to get two or three guys picking rocks

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with two skid loaders and a tractor and a wagon. Just got to be so many tires moving in the spring.

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It's like there's, there's gonna be a labor issue here sooner or later one day. It's like,

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if we could reduce some of this stuff, that would help out tremendously. And then so it was kind of

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started and the next thing was, I just got sick and tired of spending this money on fertilizer,

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planting the dry powder and watching the soil blow away. And I wasn't having good success with

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that anymore. What just seemed like the weather was changing. We weren't getting the moisture like we

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were and planting the dry fluffy soils seemed silly to me. Even when we were, when I was planting

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tires on the tractor, it sank down five, six inches. And then you'd be making ridges with the

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corn planter and it's like, why, why am I even doing this? Cause it's not a level seed bed. And

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it's just, it didn't seem right to me. So we kind of said, well, maybe we should just reduce our

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tillage on some acres and just work at one time instead of doing chisel, disc and field cove it.

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Let's just maybe don't do no fall tillage. Let's just hit in the spring one time and work our

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fertilizer and do our spring warmup pass on one pass. So from like 2016 to 2021, we had five years,

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we implemented no till soybeans and then we implemented a one spring light disc pass on our

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corn acres where we had the ability to work in that fertilizer we were commercially buying or

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our manure. So we had five years of that and that kind of got the jumpstart on our transition.

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When we made those initial five years of that transition, we spent $0. That's a key point that

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I want to stress here. We had the same equipment, same tractors, same tillage stuff, same planter,

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same manure. It's just, we managed our farm totally different without any investment.

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And we became just more profitable doing that way because we weren't running them four wheel drives

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in the fall no more or in the spring hardly much because we're just working up maybe a third to

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half of our acres to plant our corn. The other half went to beans or whatever, you know. So we

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initially were saving money on fuel and filters and man hours and everything else that gets

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implied with owning tractors and equipment. And so that's kind of, I like to preach that the most.

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We don't have to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to try something. We can just quit

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tilling the dirt and save money from the start. And then once we start doing that, we started

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seeing the soil health benefits with the darkening of the soils and our worm count went up and

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started seeing some aggregates and the soil health was improving, but it wasn't at the rate I wanted

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to see it at. And so we knew this process worked. We just had to figure out a better way to kind of

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meet some more of our bigger goals we had in our back of our minds. So when we made the switch to

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no-till soybeans, like I, I'm a big believer, I like getting out of the tractor at least two or

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three times, checks to see depth and make sure the planter's working. So prior when we're doing

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conventional, I still did that too. I just, I never saw any, I always just thought soil was soil. Like

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you grab it, it's just supposed to be the slight fluffy stuff and it's just dirt. But then like

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as I said, I never found any worms when I was digging the soil and I was like, I didn't know any

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better, but I didn't know what I was supposed to be looking for. And that's kind of what I stress

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at these field days too. Like, like we needed, you know, train farmers eyes, like we need to be

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looking at what's the color of our soil. So the first things I picked up on was our soils, like

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our sand soils went from like that light brown beachy sandy looked, it's getting to be that,

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not like a maroonish brown color. It's like, it's not black, but it's not brown. It's like an in-between

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color. So we're obviously getting more carbon stored in the soil and we're starting to see a

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lot more earthworms probably within the first couple of years. We just saw that immediately,

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but now after I've kind of educated ourselves up in the last two or three years, I can understand

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what soil structure means and what it actually looks like. So to untrained eye, I thought, like

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I said, I thought soil is just, will be this nice fluffy loose dirt when it's totally false. Correct

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soils is supposed to be a little firmer have aggregates. They almost look like little dirt

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pebbles. And then you want to have, if you take a shovel spade full, you want to tear it up, kind

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of have a good chunk on your soil and you lift it up on the soil. You should see a bunch of little

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holes almost looks a little cheese grater. Those would be your earthworm channels going in there.

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So that's the kind of stuff you can see in the soil. And then on top, you'd want to see if you

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got really good soils, I've even seen myself too now, like you can almost put a pencil in some of

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these earthworm hole channels. And then these, they almost like little, little teepees where these

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worms will come up and they'll start pulling residue in and leaving their aggregate or the

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worm castings. They just look a little, little poo mountains kind of, but I mean, that's, those are

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your telltale signs that you're really improving your soil health structure and your soil functioning.

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But like I said, it takes a lot to train the eye to see that stuff. And then we need, you kind of

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need a few years for some of this stuff to get into place. And we're getting our biology cooking

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again. We're having the worm activity. We're getting the biology back and things are cycling,

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getting the cover crops out there with the roots and the glucose is getting pumped in the soil with

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photosynthesis. It's just, it takes time. And like I said, it takes a trained eye to start picking up

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on this stuff because we were so used to just running conventional. We weren't really looking

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for that stuff. So after that first five years of low input transition into soil health practices,

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where you weren't investing any money per se, making big investments in equipment, you kind of

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took the next step. You really thought this is the way to go. And we would kind of want to step up

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our game a little bit. So it sounds like you invested in some, did some investments in equipment

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and some other systems there. What we did was probably not the most traditional thing to do.

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Like I said, we had goals and visions for our farm, especially me. I like dreaming big and

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shooting for the stars, I guess. So I just had an idea. I want to do no till corn. And I knew

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from just from talking to everybody else, they said it was impossible, which nothing's impossible

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if you have the heart and desire to do it. So just spent countless hours researching and going to

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field days and Googling stuff and meeting people and networking with people and talking to a co-op.

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What's the issue going to be doing no till corn? And they told me it's gonna be too cold, not enough

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fertility and the whole gamut. And it's like, I just took all that information and laid out the

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cons of why no till won't work for corn. And then I found a solution to every single con that got

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addressed. So I knew, I knew if I could address all the cons that told no till corn ain't gonna

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work, I know I won't fail then. If the soil is too cold, well then everyone's soil is gonna be too

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cold. And if we're not getting the right nutrients down, it's like, well then let's ban some nutrients.

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And if we're not getting proper seed desks, well then let's put the downforce on the corn

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planter. And if there's too much residue, well then let's put the row cleaners on there. It's like

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there's a solution to every problem. You just have to figure out what the problem is first and then

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find a solution. You can't just run into this thing thinking it's gonna work fine because it

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takes time to do it. We did something very untraditional, probably the worst time farming.

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And my dad's been farming for his whole life too and he's 60 and he said this is the worst time

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he's been, he's been through the 80s. I heard that was not fun. But he said this is probably worse

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than the 80s, the last three or four or five years ago. We went through a pretty down downhill

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slump in farming and that's the same time we made a significant investment in equipment on our farm.

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We pretty much flipped our business inside and out. We sold our two four-wheel drives,

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our Chesaplow field coal elevator went down the road. We traded off two other front wheel

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assist tractors. We sold all our forage equipment, like our silage boxes and our pull type chopper.

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Bail wrapper went down the road, our hay binds are down the road. We just sold a lot of stuff

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that we weren't really using. We hire all our chopping now. In return we bought some higher

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horsepower front wheel assist tractors, a new corn planter, the no-till and a new no-till air drill

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that do cover crops in small grain. And we bought bigger vertical beater spreaders and we bought

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our own liquid manure equipment. We kind of made the investment on our farm to look towards the

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future of how we're going to meet our regenerative goals. And we needed to have control in the way we

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handle our manure because we had smaller box spreaders and we were keeping manure close to

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the farm just because it was not financially profitable to haul manure down the road with

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smaller equipment. And we were relying on a custom liquid applier to haul manure too. And the farther

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you go down the road the more it costs and it just it doesn't pencil out financially to haul

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manure three four five miles down the road custom wise. So we made the financial decision to buy

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manure equipment too. And then like I said we bought that new corn planter and the new air drill to fully

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adapt 100% no-till on corn and soybeans and small grains and be able to cover crops. The way we took

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the approach we had like I said we had those five years of our our low input trial error which I

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don't regret doing that was probably the best thing we did. And after we knew the system was

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going to work we just had to figure out a way to get the proper equipment bought and purchased and

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cash flowed on our farm. So just started talking with Soil and Water and NRCS. This would be our

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I believe our second or third time we're in CSP that's Conservation Stewardship Program. So we

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pretty much went down there. This same year we got re-enrolled in CSP and that's the same year we got

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water quality certified too. I wanted to be water quality certified in the worst way because I wanted

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that signed approved to show our community because we farm in Sartell where all our rented acres is

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pretty much residential. So I just wanted that proof that we're you know we're good farmers in

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the area and we're not the bad people that the media puts us to be. So in 2021 we got become water

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quality certified with a new CSP contract renewed for five years and we also got secured funding

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through two egg BMP loans that we worked with at Soil and Water or at SWC4. One egg BMP loan was

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for the planting equipment, the planter and the drill and the other one was to purchase

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some manure equipment. All at 10 years at 3% payments were manageable with the CSP payment.

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So I kind of had all these things brewing up in the back the scheme of things. It was a big year.

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Yeah it was there's a lot of stuff to kind of get into place that kind of pulled the trigger on

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going to Arnold's and buying all this equipment and at these other manure dealerships but we needed

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to have the plan in place to offset that financial risk that you know pulled the plug on this stuff

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to commit 100% to no till. So that's kind of how we jumped into where we are right now.

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To be able to do 100% no till with that equipment purchases we bought the right equipment.

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We're in control of when we're in the field hauling manure and putting it where it needs to get put

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whether it's three miles away or seven miles away. We're putting the manure where it needs to go at

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lower rates just to cover more acres as well and we have the proper planter now and the proper drill

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to implement all the practice we're doing. What I'm struck by is some of the things you talk about

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in your approach to this is you really took kind of a holistic approach in that you weren't just

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looking at one practice but kind of looking at the bigger picture of how you can build biology

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and one really important element was it sounds like you took a different approach to your manure

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that maybe I'm not saying you were treating it like a waste product you were probably getting

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fertility out of it but you kind of looked at it as oh is this a way that we can maybe replace

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a big part of our fertility program by looking at the biological activity that it can generate

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and kind of treating that manure a little differently. The first step to come successful

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at this is we have to understand what all five soil health principles were. We have to minimize

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our soil disturbance. Are we doing reduced till, strip till, no till, vertical tillage, like

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maximizing our living roots. Are we planting a cover crop after our small grain harvest or our

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silage and our soybeans. Maximize plant diversity. Let's get out of our corn-soy rotation. Let's add

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a small grain or alfalfa or cover crops. Integrate livestock. That can even go from anything that's

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that's the one that really gets picked on the most is I can't get livestock on my soil. Well

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we can add a cover crop possibly or we can get manure if we have a neighbor that has manure or

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poultry litter or we can get into composting. I mean there's lots of things that we can

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integrate livestock into just in a different shape or form. It doesn't have to be a hoof on the ground

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but ideally hoof on the ground is the best thing but I don't have hoofs on the ground but

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we're taking the approach of doing compost to get that one in. Last one is maximize soil cover so

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that could be your cover crops or last year's residue manure or compost anything protecting

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that soil. And then like my approach too is like there's so much stuff that I'm trying to do but

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I try to focus all of my energy like 100 some odd maybe 120 percent of my energy on try to pick one

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thing pop maybe two that might be stretching it for me but I just like picking one or two things

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and dedicating a lot of my time and energy and focusing on that so I can pretty much hone in and

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specialize my time and talents and mastering that craft whether it's doing no till or cover crops or

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composting now like I don't like doing too many things at one time because then I lose focus on

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the task I'm trying to limit or that the thing I'm trying to you know produce on that farm like if I

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want to maximize and how do I get to no till work well that's when I spent the whole winter

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researching and getting the planter built the way it was and stuff like that so I try to focus on

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one thing to do a really good job at it and I know I won't fail then because if we if we take the

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time and dedication it's going to work so that's another thing I think is very positive to do and

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so and back to the manure thing yeah I'm I'm sure we were abusing the system I think I don't want to

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speak for everybody else but I know we were trying to keep manure close to the farm just because the

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financial costs of moving it and I think once we made the conscience decision going from manure as

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being a waste and a byproduct of our cattle and we started treating it as a commodity on our farm

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it opened our eyes to the the value of manure that we never even saw as a possibility in my opinion

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we went probably from hauling 10 to 15 000 gallons of liquid manure per acre on

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the liquid manure per acre on our corn acres we're going to plant corn too and the bed pack you know

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where it could be 20 ton or it could have been 50 ton we had no idea because we didn't weigh nothing

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and kind of just haul it looked good to me and as long as it worked in the soil just that's the way

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we were taught and like I said once we started treating it as a commodity and then once you

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understand how the soil works and what the soil needs to grow a crop and going on a few of them

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fertilizer recommendations based off soil analysis like I said we're just working with soil and water

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on that part and we took a whole different approach to how we manage our manure and

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now like I said with the proper equipment we're in control of when we haul and how we haul and

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where it goes so we've lowered our rates tremendously and we got our we can calibrate our

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manure tanks to figure out how many gallons an acre we're starting out on we don't have to haul

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extra amount of loads to figure out hey we hauled 10 loads on this 10 acre field oh now geez now

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we're at you know 7300 gallons an acre on this manure when we should have been whole crap we

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should have been like 10 or 12 or whatever we just you kind of just guess and but now like we know

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what the formula is you got to there's a formula to take your gallons per minute times 485 divided by

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your target rate times your width and that gives you your ground speed you should be running

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and then like for the solid manure too like we've never weighed a spreader in our life until a few

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years ago when we got started this program like so we know exactly how many tons we're hauling per

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acre or if you don't like I said if you want to calibrate your manure tank or your box for it

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it costs zero dollars to do or hardly any is it the the manure the liquid stuff there's a formula

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you don't have to own nothing you just do some math the solid manure you might have to spend

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maybe 50 bucks to buy a fish scale just a little hand fish scale you can make a a one by one

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square pad that you would I'd recommend maybe doing two or three of them and you just put those

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out kind of in your field where you're going to haul manure on haul your manure like you normally

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would and that manure would fall on top of that one by one square and then you could weigh that

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so that's going to weigh x amount of grams or pounds or whatever it is and you take that times

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43,560 because there's that many square feet in an acre and that will give you your total pounds

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per acre you're applying that manure to so then we can really dial in our bed pack and our liquid at

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the right rates we want and we soil sample every fall we're starting to do some hainy testing the

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spring on our corn acres just even pull back our end rates and if there's any natural organic

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uh nitrogen available for manure or just in the soil that our current tests weren't picking up

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soil sample our manure every spring and fall as well to see where we're at see if that changes

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but it pretty much stays consistent but I like knowing what we're hauling it's just simple things

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like that that really don't cost a whole lot of money to really improve your bottom end line like

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I would never tell our co-op to go skull spread 500 pounds of urea on a cornfield just because I

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thought it needed it like manure is money it's a commodity and if you utilize it the way it's

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supposed to be it actually is a rather huge benefit and because the more I know about the soil health

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and how the biology works if we haul too much manure at one time it actually is a detriment and

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it's harmful to our soils and obviously the more manure we haul the more likely we are to be prone

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to leaching and run off so we try to keep our rates relatively low and cover over more acres and

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we're kind of just trying to replace our p and k values as comparable as with our manure do you

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have a rough idea of how much of your commercial fertilizer you've been able to replace the

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percentage with by kind of focusing more on the manure I don't exactly have a percentages but I

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can just tell you what we've done like in the past we bought a lot of p and k and nitrogen just

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because we were keeping manure close to the farm and our rung of acres off the farm really relied

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heavily on commercial but since we got our our own manure equipment we're hauling manure where it

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needs to go we've eliminated all of our p and k commercial fertilizers dry on our corn and soy

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acres and the only thing we really buy now is a liquid starter for our corn it's a 6246 with a

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pint of zinc I just added a pint of sugar in it this spring but then the for the beans it's just

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it's relying on any manure we hauled or the fertilizers in the soil we don't either haul

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no manure or no fertilizer the fertilizers in the soil we just plant beans right into that with no

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additional p and k so yeah the biggest thing we eliminated all commercial p and k dry yeah so that

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must be a huge savings well it's tremendous doesn't matter if you farm five acres or 50,000

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acres if you can pull that out if you're operating that's a lot of dollars and you had a really

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interesting chart that you showed where you've kind of compared a difference that you've seen

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between the kind of what you call the conventional system and kind of the regenerative system that

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you're using now I just went off of kind of Iowa custom farm rates and I put in what we were doing

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from I just started at harvest the combine was the same for both sides and after combining we

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maybe haul some manure or we'd stock chops and we chisel come spring if we didn't haul manure in the

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fall we'd haul it in the spring then we got to diff set in and shut the chisel ruts or then we

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got to pick rocks and then after pick rocks we spread some fertilizer field cultivate that then

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plant and then possibly roll and then that's that was our program and I took all the dollar amounts

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I just put kind of a custom rate I didn't factor any you know debt load or principal and interest

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payments on equipment or I didn't factor any size operation it just kind of this is if you want to

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get this hired out this is kind of what it would cost and I think that came up to $332 an acre

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just on getting the tillage done and getting that seed in the ground I didn't factor in like spraying

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or harvesting because I was just looking hot what does it cost me to do that tillage and get that

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seed in the ground growing and then I went to our current system we're doing now or say after

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harvest I plant a cover crop in the spring either day and gets better in the fall we'll get better

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in the spring kind of same scenario so we went from cover planting cover crop to manure and just

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to planting now three steps instead of whatever the eight or ten whatever it was on the other

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side I think that one came to like 230 or so it was it was almost a hundred dollars difference

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and that's that's including a cover crop at like 55 bucks an acre in that equation you said did

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you do in a five-way mix of cover crops now or what all are you doing well after small grains

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trying to shoot for like a five or ten way mix just to get that diversity out there so we're going to

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plant a bunch of legumes like peas clover some vetch I really don't have the exact formula kind

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of just playing around with that idea right now but after small grains I would highly suggest

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getting that legumex out there that multi-species because we have we have growing days yet to get

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that stuff growing for us and growing that nitrogen for next year's corn crop that's the

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whole purpose of that cover crop is grow that nitrogen and obviously all the other benefits

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from the soil health standpoint but once silage comes off and soybeans come off it's you're kind

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of limited let's just stick to the basics and do rye and oats because we don't have a whole lot of

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growing days left and let's get some out there to get some green so the oats will come up real quick

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and get their benefits and the rye will overwinter and come back next spring for us and it's kind of

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the same thing after we get field corn off or high moisture it's you're kind of almost just limited

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to rye because oats ain't gonna really grow much in middle october so we just stick to rye goal is

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to get in the ground and get it germinated and it can just hang out all winter long and time spring

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comes it just takes off we're not probably won't get a whole lot of growth in the fall but it'll

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come back next spring so the the last thing that we kind of looked at and it sounds like it's the

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latest piece that you're trying to add to this soil health picture that you've got going here on

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the farm is composting you kind of just been experimenting with that a little bit but it

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sounds like it's another way for you to really build that biology overall and maybe also make

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use of homegrown ingredients a little bit have a little bit more control over kind of what's going

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into your your production system a little bit well i wouldn't say that's the last thing to our piece

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of the puzzle here because there's there's other ideas i want to try but like it's prior to like i

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like picking one thing and dedicating a lot of my time and energy to it but the whole goal of the

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composting is we're hauling manure seven miles away it's a long time that's about an hour

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or it's a good hour per load that's a lot of hours and fuel and tires on our tractors but

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because if i can make compost i can get half the tons in the same quality so instead of hauling

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one load of just straight bed pack we can get two loads crammed in one spreader after it's compost

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and get the same value and have less hauling the soil science behind it would be if i get compost

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made i'm going to create a highly fungal dominant compost and i'm going to introduce that fungi

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out in the field that it's the field are bacteria dominant out in our row crop fields just because

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we have no like wood source or carbon source typically like the woods and forests do so we

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want to we want to reintroduce that fungal activity back into our soil so that's kind of the whole

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goal i guess behind making compost we want to get fungal activity back on it whether we're going to

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do a windrowing composting or a johnson sue like i don't really know i'm just i'm playing around

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with the idea i'm trying to figure out how the system works how composting works learn what all

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the different fungi and the bacterias and the protozoa and the the good bugs versus the bad bugs

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they're like the prey versus predator just working with nrcs trying to figure out a game plan that's

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cost effective this is my low input approach we're not spending any money doing composting just been

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using the skid steer turning piles we didn't make the investment in a turner or any other fancy

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stuff you need but i'm just really trying to learn the system behind making compost kind of the same

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approach we took to adapting no-till and cover crops with the intentions of taking this large

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scale either when growing with the compost turner or making the johnson tune making extracts and

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then possibly getting to seed treatments and running in furrow or foliar spraying it and

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all sorts of stuff this compost that we looked at now you had gotten that started last october

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and it's got like what wood chips bed pack manure what all you got in that oh yeah i made five piles

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last year i just started working with julie from nrcs and she has a microscope and she's

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pretty knowledgeable about composting so i'm not going to pretend i know what i'm talking about so

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like i try to surround myself with knowledgeable people that know what they're talking about they

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want to help so it's a huge help working with nrcs and swollen waters because they give you the

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information expertise that i necessarily don't have right now at the time and they try to educate

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you and they have the proper tools like the microscopes and know what they're looking at

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and stuff when we want to run some of this stuff composting the biggest thing she said you can use

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anything you want for materials but we have to make sure we have the correct carbon to nitrogen

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ratio so we want to be in the like the 25 to 30 to 1 ratio so we get the proper heating to get that

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compost broken down then we want to the biggest thing we want to have a good high carbon source

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and we want to have some wood chips in there from what my research is that we can put corn

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socks or rye straw that they're very high in carbon but the wood chips there's something about

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the wood chips that bring that fungal activity alive in a compost pile but they're they're

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bare to compost because they're just they're like 600 to 1 for a seed nrc they're just it's insane

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especially corn socks and rye are like 60 or 60 to 80 or whatever seed a one the wood chips are

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i think a necessity or a necessary thing to have in that compost but i said it just takes time to

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figure out the correct formula but because i got five piles of first one was just grass and leaves

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and then maybe a little bit of it was like probably 50 or yeah probably 40 40 percent grass 40 percent

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leaves and then 10 some bed pack that was one and then the second one was i forget the exact

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numbers but it was like 60 percent grass and so many percent of leaves and so many percent of wood

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chips and some finished compost and some bed pack like there's a whole formula that i i kind of just

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said if there's so many parts i just picked it's gonna get one bucket of wood chips versus and then

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like 10 buckets of grass that's kind of how i made the formula and my other pile i kind of created my

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own creation what i thought in my head let me make a good compost so i just kind of had fun with it

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i just did my own ratios but pretty much the same material just different rays just to see what would

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happen and then i also had another pile of just pretty much straight wood chips and i also added

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some cattle lot scraping so like the just the loose minn are that collecting the cattle yards just to

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get that some more moisture in that pile and get some some nitrogen to help break them wood chips

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down and then i added a lot of water just to get them wood chips saturated and then i also had the

379
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last pile was just straight bed packed but i found that one the straight bed pack i don't think is

380
00:32:33,920 --> 00:32:39,600
going to be a very feasible thing for us to do because it's bed pack is like 15 or 20 to one

381
00:32:39,600 --> 00:32:45,120
cinder it just gets it's too hot all the time and you'd be constantly turning it i don't think you'd

382
00:32:45,120 --> 00:32:50,000
ever not stop turning it just gets so hot and it'd get away on a guy you don't want to have to add

383
00:32:50,000 --> 00:32:54,560
that with the higher carbon source and i still think it would probably get away on a guy but like

384
00:32:54,560 --> 00:32:59,680
i said i'm still in the learning phases of composting but trying to experiment and learn as much as i can

385
00:32:59,680 --> 00:33:05,120
right now before we make a bigger investment in a turner or stuff like that or an extractor

386
00:33:05,120 --> 00:33:09,680
one thing that really struck me is the because this is another very important element to making

387
00:33:09,680 --> 00:33:14,880
a farm quote unquote sustainable is quality of life and you were talking about how some of the

388
00:33:14,880 --> 00:33:20,240
when you were in the midst of some of these pretty major changes financially in in farming things

389
00:33:20,240 --> 00:33:27,200
were not good but ironically or i guess fittingly you actually felt like people like your family was

390
00:33:27,200 --> 00:33:32,240
getting along better and and that things were actually going better on the farm in a way

391
00:33:33,200 --> 00:33:37,760
because of some of these changes you were making i was really struck by that because i forget the

392
00:33:37,760 --> 00:33:42,640
times was like i said dad been farmers whole life and he's 16 he went through the 80s which are rough

393
00:33:42,640 --> 00:33:46,800
and he told me i forget what years it was but it was three or four years ago we had those like three

394
00:33:46,800 --> 00:33:52,240
or four stretches of farming everything just sucked there's no other way to put it i mean crops

395
00:33:52,240 --> 00:33:58,080
were down beef were down everything was down in the crapper and equipment was too expensive to buy

396
00:33:58,080 --> 00:34:02,240
and it just everything sucked about farming and you know that's that's kind of the same time we

397
00:34:02,240 --> 00:34:06,640
made this fish like we have to do something different because what we're doing is not working

398
00:34:06,640 --> 00:34:13,200
financially or on like a sustainable land approach like we're depleting our soils nothing's working

399
00:34:13,200 --> 00:34:18,880
on the ground no more because they're we have zero soil health so i mean it just running a business

400
00:34:18,880 --> 00:34:23,280
with family is great but at the same time too it's your family you're going to have disagreements but

401
00:34:23,280 --> 00:34:27,920
we all got to sit down at the table at night time or get together for family functions once you mix

402
00:34:27,920 --> 00:34:33,600
money in business sometimes it money and family together sometimes it's conflict of interest one

403
00:34:33,600 --> 00:34:37,840
guy has this idea and the next one has the other idea and there's no money to invest or play around

404
00:34:37,840 --> 00:34:42,640
with things and it just becomes a conflict of interest sometimes but things were very well or

405
00:34:42,640 --> 00:34:46,880
happy family but just tensions get a little high when there's bills be paid and milk checks don't

406
00:34:46,880 --> 00:34:52,000
cover stuff like they used to and beef don't and crops don't grow like they should but so once we

407
00:34:52,000 --> 00:34:57,040
made those five years of that reduced till like and the no-till soybeans like so we spent zero

408
00:34:57,040 --> 00:35:02,960
dollars i like what you said the low input switch or how would you for low input transition yeah i

409
00:35:02,960 --> 00:35:07,040
really like that i was looking for a word that i'm going to steal that from you but that's fine but

410
00:35:07,040 --> 00:35:11,120
that's a really good way to look at like i said we we spent zero dollars making those switches

411
00:35:11,120 --> 00:35:16,320
we spent zero and we were actually gaining probably tens of thousands of dollars saving fuel

412
00:35:16,320 --> 00:35:22,560
filters parts labor the whole gamut it went with it and it's like it took the stress a little off of

413
00:35:22,560 --> 00:35:27,440
trying to you know how the hell are we going to be farming next year if we can't meet ends meet you

414
00:35:27,440 --> 00:35:32,080
know kind of and it just gave us a reinsurance that it's going to be all right and we were seeing that

415
00:35:32,080 --> 00:35:38,000
we were seeing the economic side first on our regen journey before we saw the like the actual

416
00:35:38,720 --> 00:35:43,520
soil benefits that we're seeing currently now but like i said once once you see the economics

417
00:35:44,400 --> 00:35:50,960
it's a lot easier to keep reinvesting in like say equipment or different strategies like

418
00:35:51,520 --> 00:35:56,400
the composting or cover crops now like yeah they're a new expense for our farm but we can see the

419
00:35:56,400 --> 00:36:01,120
the benefits they're creating or so it doesn't bother us no more to keep reinvesting into the

420
00:36:01,120 --> 00:36:05,120
soil health side of stuff because we're going to get the economic return on it for sure and like

421
00:36:05,120 --> 00:36:09,200
i said we were just working like dogs like every other farmer does like we're running all

422
00:36:09,200 --> 00:36:14,160
autilogy equipment we're working nine ten eleven midnight one in the morning just because he had

423
00:36:14,160 --> 00:36:20,480
to and like we don't we're picking rocks for a week and a half and just doing a lot of hard labor

424
00:36:20,480 --> 00:36:25,600
unnecessary labor now what we're doing now but like we're not doing that no more take care of

425
00:36:25,600 --> 00:36:30,000
our cattle so we're no tilling cover crops we're not out in the field as much as we used to and

426
00:36:30,000 --> 00:36:33,680
you're at home every night for the most part and we don't have to work till midnight every night

427
00:36:33,680 --> 00:36:39,040
just to get things done we can quit at dark and be home and have supper with the family and enjoy

428
00:36:39,040 --> 00:36:42,480
life a little bit more and we're not you know fighting about how we're going to pay our bills

429
00:36:42,480 --> 00:36:48,000
and expenses we're going to cut here to save a dollar and every time you cut a expense you lose

430
00:36:48,000 --> 00:36:52,000
something over here that helps you out too so it's just i mean it's a never-ending battle but

431
00:36:52,560 --> 00:36:58,240
i don't it it just seems to work a lot better when we made the switch financially and as a family

432
00:36:58,240 --> 00:37:03,120
because the pressure isn't there no more to you know we got to get this many bushels per acre this

433
00:37:03,120 --> 00:37:07,520
much milk per cow or get this rate again on our steers just to make ends meet it's it's more kind

434
00:37:07,520 --> 00:37:12,480
of a relaxed approach actually enjoy farming again i guess it's a kind of better way to put it it's

435
00:37:12,480 --> 00:37:18,320
it's fun farming again it takes time it could take three years or it could take 10 years to fix that

436
00:37:18,320 --> 00:37:22,880
soil so if we jump into this thing you know spending hundreds of thousand dollars on

437
00:37:22,880 --> 00:37:28,080
planter technologies or updating this or getting guidance and all this other fancy stuff i don't

438
00:37:28,080 --> 00:37:32,400
think we're going to see that economic return on that right away so that that's why we took that

439
00:37:32,400 --> 00:37:37,920
low input approach like let's get kind of our soils started on the soil health journey before we make

440
00:37:37,920 --> 00:37:41,680
these huge investments on the planner and stuff like we did so if we would have bought that planner

441
00:37:41,680 --> 00:37:46,080
in the drill right away i think it would have been pretty tough making those payments because we

442
00:37:46,080 --> 00:37:51,200
wouldn't have that economic return on it because our soil health was not there be willing to accept

443
00:37:51,200 --> 00:37:56,240
no-till corn and that water infiltration and the earthworm activity and the nutrient cycling i just

444
00:37:56,240 --> 00:38:00,400
i don't think it would have been there i'm we're eight years into this now and we're nowhere near

445
00:38:00,400 --> 00:38:05,280
i want to be and i think i hear a lot of people coming to say these are some of the best soils

446
00:38:05,280 --> 00:38:08,880
we've seen i they are pretty nice but they could be better so i always had the mind force like i

447
00:38:08,880 --> 00:38:13,760
can always be doing better when we bought that new corn planter and the drill i thought i was done

448
00:38:13,760 --> 00:38:21,200
there because i told myself when we had those five years from 2016 to 2021 i told myself if i can

449
00:38:21,200 --> 00:38:26,080
figure out how to no-till corn i'll be okay i'll be done i'll be happy but once i figured that out

450
00:38:26,080 --> 00:38:31,200
i was like this ain't cutting the mustard no more because i we weren't seeing the soil structure that

451
00:38:31,200 --> 00:38:36,080
i wanted but i told myself right i'll be happy once i can no-till corn i'll be just fine it will be

452
00:38:36,080 --> 00:38:41,120
no more but then it's like no there's more to this so that's when we started you know now we

453
00:38:41,120 --> 00:38:44,880
gotta do a cover crop so that was the next thing we invested a lot of time and energy in cover crops

454
00:38:44,880 --> 00:38:49,200
and it's like well now i told i'll be happy when i get that now no now now we're gonna be planting

455
00:38:49,200 --> 00:38:54,160
like 10-way leggy mixes after small grains and looking at getting the inner seeding now and or

456
00:38:54,160 --> 00:39:00,720
aerial droning and stuff like that and now i'm making compost and gonna be washing the compost

457
00:39:00,720 --> 00:39:05,360
getting the extract running that possibly through the corn planter seed treating or spraying as a

458
00:39:05,360 --> 00:39:09,920
fuller spray or whatever or just spreading bulk compost like if you would have told me i'd be

459
00:39:09,920 --> 00:39:16,400
washing compost 10 years ago i would say you're a lunatic there's always more once you get by this

460
00:39:16,400 --> 00:39:20,640
bit by the soil bucket it don't stop it's like this like i said it's a snowball down the mountain

461
00:39:20,640 --> 00:39:24,560
cliff it just rolls out of control and you kind of get addicted to it and like i said it made

462
00:39:24,560 --> 00:39:39,440
farming fun again for more on building soil health profitably see the podcast page for

463
00:39:39,440 --> 00:39:46,320
your to the ground episode 358 at landstuart project.org if you have comments or suggestions

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00:39:46,320 --> 00:39:56,160
about this podcast contact brian devore at bdevor at landstuart project.org or you can call 612-816-9342

465
00:39:56,160 --> 00:40:00,880
it helps us greatly if you can give ear to the ground a rating on whatever podcast platform you

466
00:40:00,880 --> 00:40:06,240
utilize and word of mouth is the best way to spread the news about our podcast if you like

467
00:40:06,240 --> 00:40:12,320
what you hear tell at least one person about lsp's ear to the ground thanks to lor borgendale western

468
00:40:12,320 --> 00:40:16,880
minnesota musician for your to the grounds theme music and a special thank you to all of land

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00:40:16,880 --> 00:40:22,160
stewardship projects members who make initiatives such as this podcast possible if you're not a

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