Neither one of us would want to do it on our own. We bounce ideas off each other many times a day.
Yeah, I think that's part of the reason why we enjoy it.
Is that that was something that we always did as a family is working together farming together
regardless of whether that was when before any of the four kids were married and when we all lived at home or when
eventually moved up to just Parker and I at home and becoming more than just the labor part. That's part of it.
I think it's a joy of doing it together and getting to share the responsibilities and the joys and the victories and the difficulties.
There's another level of it now that we're married and have our own kids and we have our little girls our little
two and now three year olds
Fencing in the backyard with pigtails and a beaten up spool all summer long. It's the funniest thing. I'm going fencing Papa going fencing.
Welcome to the 349th 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 Davor editor of the land stewardship letter. I first visited Dan and Bonnie Beards dairy farm in the mid 1990s
while doing a radio piece on their use of USDA conservation programs to support their rotational grazing system.
Tucked away in the middle of the rugged driftless region of Northeastern, Iowa
Canoe Creek Dairy has long been known as a pioneer in utilizing innovative grass-based systems to produce milk. When I first visited the farm
I was struck by two things
just how incredibly hilly this land near the community of Decorah was and
the fact that the Beards had retrofitted an old hog farrowing building into a New Zealand swing style milking parlor.
When I returned to the beard farm this summer to attend an Iowa Organic Association field day
it was clear some things hadn't changed.
The land is still extremely rugged of course and the Beards are still utilizing managed rotational grazing of perennial pastures to produce milk.
And it turns out that farrowing house still serves as a milking parlor for their herd of 110 cows
which is mostly made up of jerseys. But a couple of things have changed in the intervening years.
For one Canoe Creek transitioned to organic in 2003 and now sells to Organic Valley Cooperative. In
2017 the Beards entered the grass milk market which means they receive another price boost on top of their organic premium
for feeding their cows a 100% forage based diet. But perhaps the biggest change is that Canoe Creek dairy is now being managed by a new generation.
Two of the Beards of Suns Parker and Sam have transitioned into the operation.
Parker along with his wife Esther focuses on the dairy end of the operation while Sam and his wife Jen are producing beef.
Having a couple of children continue a family's farming legacy is impressive and
exceedingly rare in its own right. But in the case of this particular family
it's noteworthy that all four Beard children are involved in agriculture.
Another son Tom owns and operates a pizza farm near Decorah with his wife Marron and Dan and Bonnie's daughter Erin dairy farms with her husband
Tori in Northwestern, Iowa.
Spend any time with the Beards and it's clear that the family has not only made farming a viable option for the next generation
from an economic point of view
but from a quality of life standpoint as well. During the tour of Canoe Creek's hilly pastures
it was evident that Sam and Parker are more committed than ever to their family's legacy of grass-based livestock production.
And in recent years they've added their own twist to the system. For example, instead of weeding calves soon after they're born
the Beards utilize a smaller herd of nurse cows also called nanny cows to feed the young stock.
This not only saves the labor of hauling milk buckets to calves while keeping them healthy
it also provides a way to make use of parts of the farm that would be difficult to graze the main milking herd on.
After the field day Parker and Sam, who are members of a land stewardship project grazing hub
sat down with me to talk about their pasture system and the use of nurse cows.
They also described why continuing a grazing legacy at Canoe Creek is so critical to them.
Not only for the land and animals but for their family as well.
Parker started our conversation by describing why producing livestock utilizing perennial plant systems
fits so perfectly with this particular landscape.
We're in the heart of the Driftless here near Decora. This is really steep ground
and you took us a little bit and you really get a view of just how rugged this ground is.
This was made for grazing. It really is something if you can find a way to
get a market to reward you for grazing. Boy this is the place to do it because it's not
meant for corn and beans you know. It's corn on corn or whatever.
It really is a grazing type landscape here.
Is that something you guys think about a lot or just kind of that this is what this land could be used for?
We are supporting this farm is supporting three families directly and we do have some hired help.
We're very fortunate with the help we have and young people who want to are excited and very much a part of what we're doing.
We're supporting them too to your note about crops. My dad remembers previous owners of this farm.
In the past this was in a lot of row crops and part of where we went up the hill to see the cows
that whole slope was in row crops and at one time it had to be farmed in 17 different pieces because of the gullies.
There were only certain places you could get across them and so it's been a long process and I don't remember that.
That was a previous owner before our parents.
The previous owners did a good job of working on repairing the land and not having.
I think they had a rule that's like 40 acres or less of corn per year of the 325 acres.
They were very diligent of not having all row crops but the previous owners weren't so much.
You must have seen it maybe growing up too that grazing really healing that land.
I really can't remember it in anything other than grass.
My memories of this farm are a grazing farm and to me it feels like that's what it should be.
If for some reason we quit milking cows it would be goats or sheep or stockers or beef cows.
I think grazing is in our blood and this farm's blood too.
It's a grass farm.
So kind of up to date now you have mostly it's a jersey herd right?
The base is jersey with lots of other breeds in the mix.
How many cows are you milking?
About 110 with an additional herd of 32 cows raising calves.
They're not in the milking string.
Previously we had been milking.
Previous to two years ago we milked all the cows we had and would dedicate 15 to 20 cows.
For feeding calves.
Let's talk about that.
That's something that we went over and looked at the nurse cows I guess you call them.
But talk about that's why you kind of went to that system and how you have that set up.
People might not be familiar with that at all because they're used to just weaning them right away.
But talk about what went into the thinking behind that and what the advantages are.
Maybe some of the challenges is using a system like that.
Since we're grass fed how something that really benefits our calves is feeding and milk for longer.
So we don't typical weaning age is what six weeks or something like that.
For us we feed our milk to our calves.
Before we used nurse cows we feed milk about 10 months or eight to 10 months let's say.
That means you need to like when we would feed them we would milk the cows.
All the milk out to the calves wherever the calves were which sometimes was miles away from the milking parlor.
And then sometimes it was in the winter time and it was freezing.
And so sometimes you'd be handling handling 10 to 16 five gallon buckets out of the parlor into the whatever pickup utility vehicle.
Into the feeders for the calves and then moving the calves every day.
So it was hours.
I actually saw buckets hanging in that barn and I was like oh there was a lot of labor that went into that.
Yeah so it was just and I did a lot of that and I enjoyed it because the calves were doing really well on that.
But I was just getting some of my back was hurting and I didn't carry that many pails doing that much that often.
We my wife wasn't able to help us as much because we had our first baby.
And my mom was kind of she started to milk feeding calves that way and that's how we got into feeding calves that way.
But she was getting not as able to do it or not wanting to do as much which makes sense.
And so we just kind of felt like we needed to change something to make it more manageable labor wise.
To take care of the calves and we had resisted the idea of nurse cows because we kind of thought we could do it better.
And we could make we could grow the calves more uniformly and do it better almost.
But we kind of felt like we got to the point like hey maybe something has to get yeah something had to change.
So nurse cows are or nanny cows some people call them.
But it's a cow dedicated to feeding calves and often I think most of the time at the calves she feeds are not her own.
But they're grafted on through a process of separating them and giving them time to bond.
At sometimes it's very simple and sometimes takes a little more attention and coaxing.
Depending on the cow and her attitude and the calves persistence and lots of factors.
But last year was the first year we did it.
We had 23 nurse cows and an average of two calves per cow.
A few had just one if we wanted to.
We wanted to make sure we didn't push the cow too hard or set the calves back by making or not giving them enough milk.
So basically matching calves to cows as they calved.
And this year we have 32 nurse cows and about 63 calves all in one group.
And the calves vary in age from well they were born over the span of about six weeks probably or more than that.
So they vary some in size but they as soon as they were bonded in individual pens we cut them out on grass and trained them to electric fence.
And very quickly went from one strand or two strands of polywire down to one.
And when they seem to respect that pretty well then they're basically ready to be mobile.
And we use them to graze the fringes of our farm.
All the areas that are not as good a quality feed and not as easy for the milk cows to get to.
So you have kind of it's like a two it is a two to one ratio basically.
So it works out pretty good.
We saw that group over here that that was a group you're talking about.
That's an interesting angle to it too is then you can use the calves to great use that group to graze those areas that.
Yeah maybe it's just not worth it for the milking herd kind of thing.
I hadn't really thought about that but that's it's just another way to make use of that land a little bit.
I think the nature of this farm we talked about it being really rugged.
And so there are lots of open areas but we also have lots of woods and partially forested pasture.
And so we graze have ended up grazing a lot of that with the nurse cows.
And it's not that the nurse cows need lower quality feed.
And so I think part of what we're making them do is making their working harder than the milk cows are in a way.
Because they're having to eat lesser quality feed but at the same time still feed or still milk quite a bit to feed those two calves or however many calves are feeding.
So because it's we we try and keep it to just two calves but there's lots of times the cows got milk and there's hungry calves.
There's three or four or five calves trying to get on that cow.
So it's not limited to just those two calves necessarily even though that'd be the most ideal probably.
What we really like about the nurse cows is that and grazing these more marginal acres is that they eat quite well and they graze more effectively.
And I guess conversely what we dislike about the dairy cows is that they can be pretty picky.
They're in a lot of ways the most frustrating group of animals to graze.
I would rather graze bulls and heifers and nurse cows and anything else because we can trample.
We can ask them to graze weeds and eat little shrubs and trees and they do it quite willingly.
And maybe that's partly because we're still we're very much still fine tuning.
We should figure out how to push them less hard so that they maintain body condition better.
They're working quite hard but they're also achieving other goals for us which is managing more marginal acres.
We're not willing to take the dairy cows to.
Also the cows are they're just giving milk a lot so they are more picky about their nutrition.
Is that part of it too I wonder?
Well I think a lot of people would say that the nurse cows are they're equivalent in how hard they're working.
I mean a dairy cow I guess one difference is that the milk cows are walking further.
The challenge of being in a stationary milking parlor is the cows have to walk home twice a day from wherever they are.
And we're trying to limit the distance the cows walk because there are studies showing that the further cows walk you do lose milk production.
And we've you know we value so much that the cows harvest their own feed that sometimes we will walk them a long ways knowing that they're it's going to cost production.
We're trying to limit that and the nurse cows are helping us do that.
There are fewer cows in the milking string and those cows are they can be permanently away from the buildings grazing those areas.
The calves look good to me I mean I'm not a professional calf judger.
But I mean does it seem to be paying off as far as good the calves doing well on this system?
Yeah I think so. This year has been a little bit more inconsistent calf size but I think it's also wetter years or when there's more more rain then it's harder for calves to do well.
And so last year they seemed like they did really well but last year was a really dry year and so we kind of think that there's a correlation than that.
But also I think having a little bigger group is harder I think just to make sure everybody's doing really well.
There's some ones are doing really great and some that are for most part they're all doing really well.
But there are a few that are on the smaller size.
And are you you're mostly then selling them for replacement heifers and what's your market for that mostly?
We plan on keeping them. This year's crop of calves is about 35 strictly dairy heifers.
Six or seven bull calves which we use for and some of those are beef and some are dairy.
We will use for cleanup after breeding AI and then this year we have around 20 a little over 20 calves that were half heifer calves that were half beef and half dairy.
And we kept them not really knowing what we're going to do with them.
They'll either go into Sam and Jen's beef herd and become beef cows or we'll breed them to dairy and see how they do as milk cows.
We have found that we really like cows that have a little something other than Jersey in them.
They maintain body condition better and maybe a little bit more size.
A little bit bigger maybe a little more milk production.
So the jury's very much still out on on a cow that's half beef and half dairy whether that's a good fit for a milking herd.
So we're keeping them and open to either milking them or or making them into beef cows knowing that they they can raise a really good calf.
Going back a little bit to this being a grass farm and you guys really trying to as much as possible make use of that what this farm was was kind of made for is you move the cows quite a bit.
Can you talk a little bit? I think some people surprise how often you move them sometimes.
But talk a little bit about your rotation. It sounds like that's a pretty big part of your management.
It is we move the cows the milking herd three to seven times a day depending on the time in the season the weather where they're grazing lots of different factors.
Where we are.
Yeah what we're doing a lot of times our wives move the cows if we're out baling hay in the middle of the day.
But at a minimum we move them but after every milking and once in the heat of the day.
So we don't have any housing for the cows so there's not really any option for them to come back and lay down in a free stall or a bedded pack.
So we find that moving them and sometimes that involves moving them to like giving them access to water and giving them shade giving them fresh grass at the very least stimulates more eating and ruminating.
And we're not confident that this management is effective but it seems the best way we can try to keep our cows eating.
So in grass fed production one of the most important things is to keep the cows full and they need to eat a lot.
They've got great big wide bellies and you know a grass grass fed cow is yeah need to eat a lot of grass and they need to be busy all the time.
Not all the time I shouldn't say that and a ruminant needs to spend about eight hours grazing and eight hours ruminating eight hours resting.
But and sometimes I wonder if we push them too hard if the cows are occasionally able to go move them and they're laying down and well they just they say just let us be for a little bit you know.
Having a good nap here so I guess I think part of what stimulated that many times a day moving is that we don't have a lot of water in paddocks.
So when they're close to water we would much rather have them shut out away from water give them access to water and shut them back away from water.
Then then give them permanent access where they would just walk back and forth or walk back to a water and stay there.
So I have jokingly said this before that I think our our intensive management is in a way the same thing as poor management.
I mean a better a better choice would be to invest in water systems and we're in the process of doing that and we have at times had more water infrastructure and it has gotten worn out for one reason or another.
And and we pretty much make do with what we have we have used a mobile water wagon and at times and lots of different things.
But we sort of stick to moving the cows three times a day at least and we found that in the heat of the day even if they're hot and unhappy or or if they're full and laying down giving them fresh grass stimulates more eating and they'll go at it for a while.
Well I was I'm wondering if that really helps build a soil soil health too because you're moving them so you're spreading that manure more you're the disturbance and you're not wearing out those paddocks.
I mean have you noticed that at all if that's helping that kind of build that the soil health and the forage quality a little bit.
Yes I think so.
I think part of the downside of the milk cows is that when they have to go home twice a day lots of times they take their poop with it and then they poop in the barnyard instead of in the paddock.
And so a moving them does help stimulate that and then they get up and they poop and then that stays there.
But yeah that was the idea and moving them more often is that would be more trampling more manure spread more more urine and that they would be building soil health.
It depends sometimes it's really helpful and sometimes it's not sure.
We hope so.
I think in a lot of ways we're our own worst critics and we have a hard time seeing improvements that are being made over time.
And I still wonder we haven't done much soil testing and we've also wondered about compaction in places.
It seems like we have untapped yield potential.
It seems like the way we manage should be producing better yields year after year.
We might be.
I think we're just doing the same thing day after day can get can feel like we're not really making progress when we can look back.
And one thing I have noticed is in the last few years a much greater presence of dung beetles.
The other thing that in moving the cows we've you know we're trying to learn more all the time and we've been experimenting with you know the effects of paddock shape on the way cows move and the impacts of a long skinny paddock makes the animals move a lot more and so they'll trample.
You know I definitely talked about being annoyed at the dairy cows.
It's the hardest group of animals to build soil health with because they eat what they want and they'll stand there and fuss until we give them more.
And so if we want milk it almost feels like we have to choose between doing our best to get production or managing for to improve soil health.
And so that's that's kind of the beauty of having different groups so we can be really encouraged by what grazing heifers does because they do an incredible job of eating and trampling and we see the effects of seems like greater effects on soil health.
The milk cows are just a challenging group but I think that they're still making progress.
You kind of I think identified it as your semi seasonal you were seasonal for 20 years where you weren't milking in the winter.
Yeah what's semi seasonal. How would you describe that.
We did care of all in the spring. That's the spring seasonal.
And now we've been a little bit more lax and so we have a few more calving throughout the summer and into the fall and then a few cabin in the winter too.
And so the idea with that is that we'll have a few more fresh cows to help us have enough milk to milk through the winter.
And so our co-op they like us they like each pickup to be at least over a thousand or fifteen hundred pounds.
And so we like to when we get down to 30 or 40 cows sometimes we haven't had a problem staying over that.
But when they. Yeah.
So it's helpful in helping get a few cows through the winter to have a few fresher ones.
And so it's we are still predominantly spring seasonal but there's a few that for whatever reason some of them just didn't settle right away.
And then we kept them anyway when we would have usually sold them in the past.
And so in some ways we're just not calling as hard and then having fresh cows later in season to help carry the production to.
Yeah there are lots of reasons we did that.
The main thing was for a milk check year round going I don't know how my parents did it when they were in charge and being seasonal.
I mean it was definitely a choice for quality of life.
But in some sense I think that it just concentrated their stress over 10 months instead of 12.
And there was still stress when they were dry because they were still paying bills with no milk check to offset it.
As our families got bigger Sam and I got married and started having kids the pie needed to get bigger.
And so one of the easiest ways we thought that could work is to to not be as strict about culling purely based on a seasonal schedule.
So we were selling a lot of good cows that just maybe capped in June or July instead of March or April.
And so they were only six five or six months in milk when we wanted to dry up.
So we would sell them despite their high level of production purely based on us needing a vacation.
And so that didn't didn't really make sense.
It seemed like one of the easiest ways to get more milk was to milk through to keep those cows and have a milk check year round.
And the months that we historically had been dry are also the months Organic Valley pays a pretty significant winter premium.
And so even though we're not making much milk in the winter it's it pays.
How old are you guys?
I'm 32.
I'm 30.
So you are young beginning farmers I still consider since you're half my age.
But and I was talking to your dad when we were looking over at the other paddock there at the nurse cows and he was very proud.
I just might as well tell you it's very proud of the fact he says four of my kids are farming.
And because you have a brother Tom who has a pizza farm and then you is it a sister who's got the dairy over in northwest Iowa.
Your dad was very proud of that fact.
I got to think that this this is so unusual for I mean do you have other siblings.
Is there a sibling that didn't get so all four there are four that is I got to say that is pretty impressive.
My question is it must be kind of I know this is it's not every day is not pie in the sky.
But it must be kind of cool to be able to take some land that is not prime land and show that you can a family can.
Cross that generational divide and transition into farming and do it in a way that's you're being good stewards and you're making like you said this is a grass farm.
It's meant to be a grass farm. You're you're storing it in a way.
It must be a little bit of I don't want to put words in your mouth but it must be a little bit of a motive motivation a little bit to know that that's something that you're you're able to do because your parents were pioneers in grass.
Daring and now here we are decades later and you guys are making a go of it and livestock must play a major role in that I would think if you were just trying to do row crops here I don't know if it would be the same we'd be talking about the same situation here.
Livestock is key and we feel so blessed to have been raised on this farm and our parents were always working.
I think a lot of maybe the younger generation thinks about work as something apart from life and we grew up you know if we wanted to see our parents we had to work with them and we very much wanted to and we got a lot of joy and satisfaction from learning how to work from our parents and working with them.
Yeah it's we're so blessed and so fortunate to that the way we were raised and also the opportunities it's afforded us I mean I think of other young people our age without this upbringing and this experience and this opportunity to mean salmon are each taking over different parts of the farm.
Sam's taking over the beef cows and we're in charge of the dairy but they're very much intertwined neither one of us would want to do it on our own.
We so often say boy I'm glad you're here Sam. We bounce ideas off each other many times a day.
I noticed immediately when Sam's gone for a couple days I gotta decide this by myself.
So we just love working together and yeah I guess we have our parents to thank for a lot not necessarily saying that here this is how you do it but just encouraging I mean we've gotten a lot of encouragement to try different things to go away from being seasonal to push harder in the way we graze to any number of things that we they're small changes.
We don't really have any intention of getting away from dairy and going to conventional anything really but we've been very encouraged to try new things and I think that's had a large part in us wanting to stay here and kind of make it our own.
Yeah I think that's part of the reason why we enjoy it is that that was something that we always did as a family is working together farming together regardless of whether that was when before any of the four kids were married and when we all lived at home or when it eventually moved up to just Parker and I at home and becoming more than just the labor part.
When you do stuff more by yourself it's fun but it's not as much fun as getting to do it with your family or dealing with other people you care for so it's that's part of it I think is the joy of doing it together and getting to share their responsibilities and the joys and the victories and the difficulties.
It's definitely more hard when you're we don't have that.
We'll say that there's another level of it now that we're married and have our own kids and we have our little girls tagging along with us it just is our little two and now three year olds fencing in the backyard with pigtails and a beaten up spool all summer long.
That's the funniest thing I'm going fencing Papa going fencing it's it's really special now to have our own kids and and thinking about this relationship between life and work and you know I we wouldn't see our kids if we didn't take them along and they that's what they want to do they want to be a part of what we're doing and they have already have this deep love of the things we love animals and the land and being outside and working together and good food.
And family that's pretty sweet hosting this field day I know these can be it can be a hassle of host a field day and it can be stressful.
It is so important I met a handful of beginning farmers who are in various stages of either starting a farm or transitioning maybe they're working with another farmer and thinking about transitioning into their operation and for them to see that it can be done you know not that you you know guys are the ultimate success story but you are plugging away and doing it.
I think that is so because people need to see other examples before they believe that can be done and I it was really important I think for them to be able to kind of see what you guys are doing here and that it is you are able to do it with livestock with dairy on some pretty marginal farmland.
Yeah thanks Brian and it really is that's pretty sweet of you to say and I we you know we have so many people that we were always learning from from other farmers and we love to go if anybody's having a grazing field day we.
Let's go see what they're doing and try to glean something from what other folks are doing so it's sure a continuous process of learning and the sky's the limit we really I mean it feels like more often than not we say what are we doing wrong.
That comes more often than wow we got that right no that doesn't happen very often. I think Sam you'd said earlier yeah every year there's some success or some innovation that we come up with but then every year there's a challenge that comes along with it.
It seems like last year it was dry and so adapting adding more pastures and then this year was really wet so like trying to utilize okay so grass is really growing now how do we do we make more hay or do we not graze as much because last year we had to graze everything and so yeah.
Every year's new challenge and that's it's part of the joys but part of the difficulties of farming too so that's for sure.
For more on adaptive grazing and transitioning farms to the next generation see the podcast page for ears of the ground episode 349 at land stewardship project.
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