composting, you know, it's an art form. It's a very scientific art form. If we have the healthy
soil, the plant itself will take care of itself. If you give Mother Nature a chance,
she'll fix herself. She will provide for herself.
Welcome to the 359th installment of Ear to the Ground, the land stewardship projects podcast on
family farming, regenerative agriculture, community food systems, and local democracy.
I'm Brian DeVore, editor of the Land Stewardship Letter. In episode 358 of Ear to the Ground,
I talked to Alex Uderman about how Meadowbrook Dairy is taking a holistic approach to building
healthy, resilient soil. One of the methods the crop and livestock farm is experimenting with
is composting. During a field day hosted by Meadowbrook, Alex talked about how his family
is dipping its toes into using materials produced by the farm to generate a compost that can feed
microbes and help kickstart biological activity in the soil. During the event, some farmers asked if
it was possible to forgo composting locally sourced material and simply purchase inputs
specifically designed to boost biology. However, as Julie Reberg explained, building a healthy
soil biome is a delicate balancing act that relies on more than simply pouring on some sort
of ingredient shipped in from an outside source. Reberg is a district conservationist for the USDA's
Natural Resources Conservation Service office in Buffalo, Minnesota, and she's been working with
farmers like the Udermans to help them figure out ways to integrate composting into soil building
regimens. During the field day, Julie, along with Minnesota NRCS State Soil Health Specialist Stephanie
McLean, gave a presentation on ways to monitor soil health. As Julie explained, once a farmer knows
what healthy soil looks like, they can better understand the role composting can play in building
a self-sufficient, resilient system. She also explained to the farmers gathered that when one
sets up a composting system that breaks down, for example, manure, straw, corn stalks, and wood chips,
those materials are no longer waste products to be gotten rid of. Composting can transform trash
into treasure by setting in motion the kind of microbial activity that does the work of building
a self-reliant soil. And a self-reliant soil is a profitable soil since it's less dependent on
purchase fertilizer and other inputs to stay productive and resilient. After the field day,
Julie talked to me about how advances in composting techniques are coming at a time when we're
learning more and more about what makes the soil biome tick. That makes it a perfect moment for
farms of all types to begin converting trash to biological treasure. She also shared how important
it is to have the right mindset when launching a composting system. This isn't just about replacing
a source of fertility with another input. It's about feeding the microbes so they can start doing
the work they're capable of. So Julie, we just had a great field day here at the Meadowbrook Dairy,
and we saw some of the things that the family here is doing to build soil health. And one of the
things that was really key, I think, was kind of toward the end of the field day. We kind of went
through the steps he talked about doing no-till, cover cropping, how he's integrating manure into,
you know, kind of focusing more on how using that manure as a source of fertility and all of that.
And then what was great was, I think it was kind of a really good holistic approach. One of the last
things we talked about was composting. I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about
the role that maybe just in general composting could play, especially in a dairy here where he
has a source of manure and that type of thing, just in general. Some of the things maybe if you're
seeing more farmers kind of integrate that into their kind of big picture holistic soil health
practices that they're doing. Okay, I am seeing more farmers who are trying to compost their dairy
manure, their beef manure. They're trying to figure out ways to do it. And it's a great holistic
approach. When you're thinking about raw manure is going to have a lot more of the bad biology in it,
the disease-causing biology, which where if you're composting it and it's composted correctly,
you're going to create a system where there's a diverse amount of biology in there. You're going
to have your amoebas, your flagellates, your ciliates in there. You're going to have your
beneficial nematodes in there and you want the nematodes that are the bacterial eating nematodes.
They're going to be great for your fields because most fields are bacterial dominated. So when
you're thinking about compost, it's great to have it tested for the nutrients, but you have to start
thinking about, okay, I'm not building this for nutrients. I'm building this more for creating the
microbial diversity that is lacking in the majority of the crop fields out there.
So it sounds like you really need to take a look at not just, I think some people get a little
confused, is say that they're doing composting for a garden. They're going to just spread that
on the garden. It's almost like another layer of soil in this case, but you're really trying to
activate the biology when you're doing it on a scale like this on a farm like this. Definitely
activate the correct biology. Create an environment where the correct biology is going to populate
and take over. Just like life, you're going to have good and bad anywhere you go and anything
you look at, but you want to make sure that if you're having somebody look at your compost,
what they're seeing is they're going to see a higher population of the good guys versus maybe
they only see one or two of the bad guys. You want to make sure that population evens out.
It's part of this too, valuing that manure more as a source of fertility and then just something to
try to get rid of. I mean, I know one of the things that's really prompted Alex to look into this is
price of fertilizer, kind of getting tired of the prices going up and down and him really realizing,
well, I have this source of fertility, which maybe he's used it as a source of fertility,
but he just, he wasn't testing, he wasn't doing the things to really figure out, well, maybe I
can replace commercial fertilizer in some cases with the manure that I'm doing here. And then he
kind of took that extra step to look at the composting, but is that part of this too, is kind of a
renewed awareness of kind of what role manure can play in that fertility program? Definitely,
manure should be looked at as a source of nutrients for your ground, for the crops out there. It
shouldn't be just something that you're trying to get rid of. It's a lost source of nutrients
that instead of spreading this and really looking at it and what the benefits of it,
we're relying a lot on commercial fertilizers to where we should be relying more on the dairy
manure, the beef manure, the farm manure. How are you going to benefit from that? It shouldn't be
something that you're trying to get away. It's not waste. You should not be thinking of it as waste.
It should be thinking of it as a source of gold, a source of how can you lower your inputs?
Is part of this kind of seems to fit into this whole, we seem to be in the past several years
learning so much more about soil health and soil biology and the life in the soil. It seems to go
hand in hand with, okay, we know that the soil is much more alive than we ever thought. We know it
can be improved in ways that we didn't realize it could ever be improved. And then, well, what if we
can add some something like a compost system to kind of activate that? That seems to maybe, are
we learning more about just as we learn more about soil health, we're learning more about the life
that can be active in that compost. Right, yep. It's a way of diversifying your land instead of
getting microbes from a different state or a different biome, a different, you know, you,
the microbes that are up north in Minnesota aren't going to be the same ones here. The climate's
different. The environment is different. You want to be able to grow your own microbes on your farm.
And those are the ones that are going to do you the most benefit. Yeah, in the last few years,
soil health has really boomed and not just, it's not just a buzzword, but we're looking at it that,
you know, we're finding out about these microbes and we're finding out all these different
activities that they do, the parts that they play, the plants themselves, they just found out,
oh, I don't remember the year it came out, but they found out about the whole rhizophagy phase
to where a growing root will exude enzymes, what will attract microbes. And when the microbes get
close to the root, the root itself will absorb the microbes inside of it. And now this plant
will absorb some of these microbes and use it for its own food. But then it will take these microbes
and it pushes it through the leaves. It pushes it through the stems and the plant itself has microbes
on the inside, fixing itself, feeding itself, doing the health of this plant. And then when it has the
new hair roots that are growing out, it's spitting some of these microbes back out into the system.
The microbes go back out, get more food, and then they're attracted to the root again and the
process starts all over. But that's something that's just new that they're finding. And it's
just phenomenal on what you think about how these microbes, these things we can't see,
are really affecting our plants. And you start thinking about that and it's like, oh, well,
you know what, maybe I shouldn't spray the plants for this. Maybe I need to start thinking about this
a little bit differently. And I think that's going to come. It's a mind change, but we have to
understand the process first. And there's so much to learn yet. But yeah, we've learned a lot in the
last five, seven years, definitely. Well, that example just blew my mind. I hadn't heard that
one. That's a pretty good one. I mean, when it can, it's almost like the plants can become
self-perpetuating or self, kind of self-sufficient in a way. It is like, it's. Oh, absolutely. Yeah,
absolutely. That would be, that would like be the golden ring, wouldn't it? If we could
develop a system like that. Yep. If we have the healthy soil, the plant itself will take care of
itself. It will send out the enzymes. It will send out the roots. It's going to make its own
connection with the mycorrhizae. It's going to make its relationship with the biology that's in the
ground. And they're going to start exchanging nutrients. Is every plant going to be healthy?
No. Again, you have the good and the bad everywhere. But if you give mother nature a chance,
she'll fix herself. She will provide for herself. That's, I think, something that is a really
important lesson to learn that you can kind of create this soil that's self-sufficient and all
of that. And one of the things that while we're here at the field day, and we were looking at
some compost that Alex has been making, that he's been experimenting with, there was a lot of
questions. I noticed people were kind of going into the old school way of thinking and saying,
oh, so if I add commercial nitrogen fertilizer to this, can I speed up the process? Is there
an extract I can add to this to kind of speed it up? And you really made the point, no, this is a
process. It's a very complex biological process. And what you have to get into the mindset is,
I'm growing biology, whether through the composting system or through using no-till and
cover crops. I think that's a really important lesson. And it almost feels like people need to
get out of an old school mindset to kind of look at, I'm growing biology overall. I'm kind of
looking at this whole system and the compost is part of that, as well as the no-till and the
cover cropping and maybe diverse rotations and that kind of thing. It's definitely a different
way of thinking. You have to be open to it. It's like we're planting a seed in people's mind to
just start thinking. And eventually it's that aha moment, okay, I understand this. And definitely
composting is just increasing the biological activity. And that's what it should be
thought of. And so yeah, inputting those external fertilizers, they've got the salt in there,
you're not doing the microbes any good by adding that.
No, and you talked about that, because that was the thing that you can really set back that biology
with that. It's not just that it won't, it's a complex balance and you're going to throw it
out of balance, but also you're going to do some damage to that biology.
Composting is a tool, like you said, just like doing the no-till, doing the reduced tillage,
maybe cutting back on some of the chemicals you're putting on your field. But it's all a tool. And
you got to think about how are you going to use that tool in order to benefit, use the maximum
benefits of it. I keep going back to the word holistic, but it's kind of a big picture way of
looking. It is definitely holistic. Definitely holistic. And that takes, again, going back to
you have to get out of that mindset of I've got this one silver bullet solution, kind of the input
based mindset where I've got this one problem, I'm going to deal with it. And sometimes when you deal
with a problem with a solution, that solution causes other problems that you didn't think of.
Right. There's so much going on that we get so focused of, okay, if I need to fix this one
problem, but actually what we're doing is addressing a symptom. And we're not really taking a step back
and thinking about, okay, what is truly the problem here? What's the cause? And so we think we fix it
and then down the road there's another problem. Okay, now we've got to fix that symptom. So it's
trying to take a look and trying to just share some knowledge and get people to start thinking
differently and okay, you know, what might the problem be? Where's it going to start?
That's a really good point. Just in general, what you said you're seeing more farmers take an
interest in composting, what kind of methods are you seeing them kind of practice and what ingredients
are they using? What all are you seeing some of the folks doing? Well, there's just a few of them,
but it's definitely the dairy farmers are, I've seen talk about it more and they're trying it.
They're doing, some of them are just doing the static piles where you just pile it up and leave
it sit for a year. Others are trying to actively turn it. Like here at the field days, Alex was
experimenting with multiple piles, multiple small piles to see what ratio would work the best.
If you can get your hand on the sawdust, if you can get your hands on some wood chips, which you're
using, you know, what are the ingredients in your bed pack? What kind of manure do you have? It's
very easy to look up on the internet, you know, what is the general ratio of dairy manure? What's
the general carbon to nitrogen ratio of beef manure or horse manure? And then look at that and say,
okay, how do I get that to the 30 to one carbon to nitrogen ratio? How do I get that? And then
look at it and be honest with yourself. How am I going to turn this? How am I going to keep it wet?
What am I going to do if it gets too wet? How am I going to manage this pile? So it's not so big.
You hate going out there. You hate looking at it. It should be something that you get excited about.
So as for ingredients, it's pretty much anything they have on the farm. Straw, hay, I've got some
people I'm working with, they're composting their mortalities. They've worked- Dead animals. Yes,
dead animals. So they're working with the NRCS to get a safe way to compost the mortalities,
because you don't want that going into your groundwater any more than you want anything
else going into your groundwater. But that's a very safe, effective way to do it if you're
doing it correctly. And the University of Minnesota Extension has a wonderful program
about composting mortality livestock. That's a really good point you made because Alex talked
about this. He's already, even though he's just kind of dipping his toe into it, he's already
thinking about things like, okay, if I'm going to be doing the big windrow system, I'm going to have
to invest in a hundred thousand dollar turner, things like that. And that's kind of defeats
the purpose of this being maybe a low-cost way of getting fertility. So you have to think about
those kinds of things that, okay, what are going to be the steps down the road? How is this going to
actually fit into my operation, both financially and management-wise too? You know, how much labor
am I going to put into it? That kind of thing. Composting, you know, is, it's an art form.
It's a very scientific art form, but you have to find the method that works for you. And you really
have to be honest with yourself and think the whole thing through. Okay, where am I going to put this
pile? What equipment do I have to work with? What are the ingredients I have to work with? What,
how, how is this going to be fun and not create more stress and, and more, you know, time management?
It should be something that you enjoy doing because the benefit of composting is phenomenal.
Whether you use it on your own field, whether your neighbors take it from you, use it in your garden,
it's a fantastic benefit. It sounds like a good tool as a microscope. Yes, and a good tool is
definitely a microscope. They're very easy to get. You can get a very general one. It doesn't have to
be a big fancy one. I think you can get one, a decent one, for two, three hundred dollars. And in
the long run, I mean, that's nothing. And when you start to look at the microbes and you kind of learn
what little critters are running around under there and you know what you're looking for, they become
easier and easier to see and easier to find. And if you have that in your own home, it's so much more
fun to just run out to your compost pile, take a quick sample, run in and look at it and you can see
firsthand, you know what, okay, the populations aren't there yet. Or, hey, look at this thing
running around. I wonder what that is. And now with the internet, it's so easy to find out what
things are and what's going on. But definitely having a microscope makes it more fun for the
landowner to get involved with the compost and know what's going on. Some of this kind of ties
into this whole idea of the soil health movement in general, which is when I've seen farmers get
into it, they say, I feel like I have more control over my own operation. I kind of feel like I can.
I'm not relying on if there's a war overseas, all of a sudden the price of energy goes up and I'm
paying exorbitant prices for inputs or yeah, supply disruptions, that kind of thing. Really,
it's kind of fun for them to be able to kind of take control, use local resources, their own kind
of what they have on the farm to kind of build the fertility and kind of become in a way like
that plant you talked about, more self-sufficient in their own way. It just seems like it's more
of a mindset that yeah, this is something I can kind of generate on my own farm and have control
over what goes into it from labor to expenses to whatever. It's definitely a way of managing
your farm more efficiently, becoming more self-sufficient. I personally think it's a
great way to work with what you already have in your farm. Why keep bringing inputs on when you
have this great resource? If you can find a way to manage with it, if you can find a way to work
with it, it's a great resource. If somebody was looking to get, let's say they are a crop livestock
farmer and they were looking to get into composting, what are some of the first couple of steps they
would look to do to kind of jump into something like this or at least experiment with it? I would
say there's so much on the internet. Everybody has their favorite way of composting. You're going to
have to find out what works for you. Maybe spend an hour or two because you can really go down the
rabbit hole on YouTube, but look at some of what other people are doing for composting and see if
that gives you any ideas of how this can function for you. What equipment do you already have on the
farm that you can work with? What is a safe area that you can put your compost piles in? Just start
giving it, I would say the first step would be research it a little bit and then really be honest
with yourself, okay, where can I start? Start small. Don't start with a huge pile that you just
can't keep up with and manage because you're going to hate it right away, just like with anything else.
Try it, see what happens. Have your goal. Do you want your compost to be done in three, four months?
Are you okay with it sitting for a year or two? What is your end goal for the compost? What's
the purpose of it? If you're doing it just to do it, how do you know if you fail or if you succeed?
So that's what I would start out thinking about or start out doing. Yeah and see what you
develops on that experimental pile, kind of what Alex is doing here, and not say, okay, I'm going
to have a pile of compost next spring so I can go cold turkey on commercial fertilizer. Yeah, definitely
don't do that. Have your trial errors and if you're going to use it for the purpose of fertilizer,
have it tested. Make sure you know what you're doing, but for compost what you're looking at
mostly is there nutrients in it? Absolutely. Every batch is going to be different,
but think about it more as, okay, I'm trying to grow the microbes in here. I am trying to
create diversity of the microbes in the soil. If you look at it that way, okay, that's great,
and then you're not thinking, okay, I'm going to decrease all of the nutrient inputs, but think
about it that way, and then down the road you can start thinking about, you know what, maybe I don't
need to put on as much as I did before because then the microbes are doing their thing, but it's
definitely not, okay, try it and then cut everything else off. It's a tool. Learn with it. Figure out
what works for your operation and then go from there. Yeah, and you were saying let it do the
work. That was a really important lesson here because you folks were looking at some soil samples
and we were looking at earthworm casings and we were looking at that glue, that glomulum that
holds it together, and we were really seeing, and I think that was a really good point that you made
to the farmers here, hey, let these do the work. Let it do the work, and that's something Alex has
really promoted too on his farm. He feels like they have, because of some of the things they've
done, they've been maybe letting nature do some of this work. They've got more time on the farm,
are able to kind of enjoy farming a little bit more. Right, and like Stephanie said, if you have
the earthworms in your field, they're removing two tons of soil a year. I mean, that's huge. Is it
slow? Absolutely, but it's working and you're keeping your soil aggregates together and you're
keeping, you know, the glomulin is working, keeping everything together, and so let them do the work.
For more on composting and soil microbiology, see the podcast page for Ear to the Ground episode 359
at landstewitshipproject.org. There you'll also find links to a podcast interview we did with
Alex Uderman of Meadowbrook Dairy, as well as episodes related to LSP's research into the
Johnson-Sue Bioreactor Composting System. If you have comments or suggestions about this podcast,
contact Brian DeVore at bdevor at landstewitshipproject.org or you can call 612-816-9342.
It helps us greatly if you can give Ear to the Ground a rating on whatever podcast platform you
utilize and word of mouth is the best way to spread the news about our podcast. If you like what you
hear, tell at least one person about LSP's Ear to the Ground. Thanks to Laura Borgendel, Western
Minnesota musician, for Ear to the Ground's theme music and a special thank you to all of Land
Stewardship Project's members who make initiatives such as this podcast possible. If you're not a
member, visit landstewitshipproject.org to learn how you can support LSP. Thanks for listening!