Elizabeth Steele (00:00.238) research farm or something that just had some land and they had planted Canlow and Alamo there I think. But and we after the Sharp brothers in Missouri shut down then Nicolas Lirio (00:17.388) Did they sell to anyone or did they just close down? Elizabeth Steele (00:21.312) So the Kansas branch is like the Nicolas Lirio (00:26.067) yeah, yeah, yeah. Loren Steele (00:27.038) Let me grab a boy. She won't want any ice in her. She's allergic to ice. Kent Boucher (00:31.886) But Elizabeth Steele (00:33.774) It just makes me cold when it's cold. I'm kinda like a lizard. I need something to keep myself warm. Loren Steele (00:37.239) Ha ha. Kent Boucher (00:41.918) That works good for working in the prairie. Man, I've overheated a couple days. I'd never had that happen to me before. And I remember this one day I was hoeing weeds out in a rough blazing star field, I think it was. And this guy that I was working with, a seasonal guy, he needed to go home early for something, doctor's appointment or something. So he's like, Hey, I gotta go, can you take me back? And like looked up at him and I was like, Huh? He's like, What's the matter with you? And I was like, What you talking about? Elizabeth Steele (00:44.449) Yeah. Kent Boucher (01:11.952) And and then I was, you know, like all lightheaded and man now on the first hot day of every year I worked it affects me. And as the summer goes on I build up that tolerance, but it's like it triggers my body to go back into feeling you're gonna throw up and faint and stuff like that. Elizabeth Steele (01:20.174) Exactly. Nicolas Lirio (01:31.146) Not good, dude. well we coup before we get started here, a couple housekeeping things. I've got these going. We are not here to gotcha. So if you wanna you just say, hey, can you pull this out? Right? And then I run the transcript through. So anytime anyone asks me to pull it out, it like pings me and I can pull it out, no problem. like even if you say something, you're like, actually I don't I don't know if that stat's true or some people One time we asked about a topic and he's like, that's in in in my home area, that's pretty heavily debated. Could we cut that part out? So happy to do that. Okay. We're here for your expertise and your opinions on stuff. You have hard fought opinions on things. We're here to hear them. Kent and I, I'm pretty sure, are both registered independents. we have staunch Republicans and Very far left liberals to listen to the podcast, just be aware. Every basically every podcast we put out, someone yells at us for something, you know. So just know that. but don't let that, you know, shy away from your opinions on what you're thinking. I'm definitely gonna ask you about cattle and bison. Kent Boucher (02:46.902) And we are a very pro cowboy hat on the podcast. So if you wanna wear the hat, it'll look good on YouTube. Nicolas Lirio (02:49.56) Yeah. I'm trying to think. We'll definitely ask you about production. We'll probably ask about your dad, if that's okay. and you were raised doing cattle, right? You've been doing it a long time if I remember Elizabeth's talk on it. We'll probably talk about that. If you have any questions for us, don't hesitate to holler. We've talked about you a bunch on the podcasts. We tell people, hey, if you're in the northern half of Missouri, give us a call. If you're in the southern half, just call him up. They're closer. They're gonna, you know, just just give or Arkansas. So I hope that's been good for you. mics. They gotta be really close. Don't hold them up here. Don't do this. Hold them down here because there's a touch screen on the top. You might accidentally mute yourself. yeah. And then you can really manhandle it. No, you'll probably want it closer than that. Yeah. and yeah, it's a little stiff, but if you pull if you really yank Yeah, yeah, that's great. And you're great. I'll have you talk a little bit, Elizabeth. Elizabeth Steele (03:45.962) Such. Closer. Elizabeth Steele (03:53.23) Okay, can you hear me now? I should keep talking. What am I gonna talk about? I don't know, that's Nicolas Lirio (03:58.05) Question. Loren Steele (04:00.822) Yeah. Can you hear me? Is that what you like? Nicolas Lirio (04:04.056) Perfect. Kent? Kent Boucher (04:05.642) Mike check, Mike check. Hello, hello, hello. Nicholas is defrauding the federal government. Nicolas Lirio (04:13.368) I do that. Loren Steele (04:15.394) You wanna come over here and take over Clementine? You can you can sit in for me. Nicolas Lirio (04:19.31) Man, my wife's doing something very similar. She's working on a big project with it for a friend. Is she? Yeah. and we'll start with so we always do the same intro. Okay. It is, and we'll have both of you do it separately. Your name, your title, and this is the Prairie Farm Podcast. So Kent, give them an example. Kent Boucher (04:39.214) My name is Ken Boucher, production manager at Hoxy Native Seeds, and this is the Prairie Farm Podcast. I also like it though when people say, Hello, my name is you know, usually it's just people will be like, name, title, prairie farm podcast. But you know, have some fun with it. Elizabeth Steele (04:53.246) Mm-hmm. Nicolas Lirio (04:55.34) Okay. Yep. So I think we'll jump into that. Any questions? Elizabeth Steele (05:00.692) Trying to decide what my official title is. Jack of all trades, master of none. Does Nicolas Lirio (05:04.994) Great. That's a great one Yeah, whatever you want. We had a one guy who was like my name's Doug Durin, trying to be a conservationist. This is the pr you know, just Kent Boucher (05:11.82) Like landowner trying to be a conservationist, yeah. Nicolas Lirio (05:17.006) All right. Well, whenever you're ready, Elizabeth, you do yours first. You can redo it as many times as you want. We'll just edit it. Elizabeth Steele (05:23.31) Okay, and so just my name, my title and who I'm with is the end. This is the Prairie Farm podcast. Okay. I feel like I'm gonna attack this thing here. Nicolas Lirio (05:29.467) And this is the Prairie Farm Podcast. Kent Boucher (05:36.824) We can do as many times as we need to too. Elizabeth Steele (05:38.828) You still got me good over there. Feel like it and I are a little close, but I think we're better now. Nicolas Lirio (05:46.294) Well it'll do it automatically. It does like that auto. No, I think I think we're grabbing a check her green button. All right. Sweet. Yep. Whenever you're ready, Elizabeth. Kent Boucher (05:52.14) Yeah, it's it's good. Elizabeth Steele (06:01.824) Name, position. Who I'm with. This is a prairie farm. Kent Boucher (06:07.342) Hater of ice. Nicolas Lirio (06:11.64) We had one I mean, this guy was seven hundred years old and he went in and went, My name's Russell Kurt. In nineteen seventy-four and he just like started telling a story. And we thought we were just we were just gonna roll with it. Okay, he started the podcast, whatever. And like literally like five minutes in, he goes, and this is the pod. What am I supposed to say? And Kent went in and literally cut out syllable by syllable to like smush it together and it sounded pretty good. Kent Boucher (06:15.618) Yeah. Kent Boucher (06:40.332) This is the Prairie Farm Podcast. Nicolas Lirio (06:44.419) So you'll you'll do great. Elizabeth Steele (06:50.286) I'm Elizabeth Steele. Try again. I'm a little Elizabeth Steele (07:02.306) I'm Elizabeth Steele and I'm the Jack of All Trades at Hamilton Native Outpost, but I'm the master of none. And this is the Prairie Farm Podcast. Nicolas Lirio (07:10.828) Nailed it. That was great. All right, your turn. Kent Boucher (07:12.333) Great. Loren Steele (07:16.332) I'm Elizabeth No. Kent Boucher (07:18.056) Yeah. Nicolas Lirio (07:20.122) Whoever you wanna be, man. Elizabeth Steele (07:21.398) Now it's your turn to be laughed at. Clementine, she's laughing at you. Loren Steele (07:24.974) I'm Lauren Steele and I'm just a a cowboy or livestock razor, land manager, I don't know what I am, something like that. And this is the Prairie Farm Podcast. Nicolas Lirio (07:39.062) Yeah, those were both great. all right. So Elizabeth, I met you at PFI. You were by far my favorite presentation. I'm sorry to some of my other friends who had presentations. I enjoyed yours too. it was good. Not only was the information like this is what the the Midwest needs, like exactly. Kent Boucher (07:40.43) I like that. It's good. Kent Boucher (07:52.898) That's true. He talked about it for days afterwards. Nicolas Lirio (08:02.146) But also you were engaging and some of them just were so bad. You know, their information was good, but it's like, my goodness. and the Thing that I remember the most, and I want you to just start with this and tell us about it, is you said there was from corn fed to grass-fed, everyone wants grass-fed beef. From corn-fed to grass-fed is a nutrient difference. But if I remember you correctly, from grass-fed to diverse prairie fed, there's actually as big or maybe bigger of a nutrition difference and jump in that. Can you talk to that? Elizabeth Steele (08:42.934) Yeah, so this is some research that there's a Steven Steven Stefan Van Vliet and Fred Provenza have been working on. And so, you know, it doesn't matter what kind of we've got a piece of steak here, there's certain health benefits to that. There's protein, there's iron, you know, whatever that list of things is that doesn't matter how it was raised, it's got it. But then if you raise it on pasture and sp the more time on pasture the better. It will have certain added benefits like the omega-3 fatty acids and the conjugated linoleic acids, and you say, gosh, those don't sound very tasty, but actually they're quite healthy. Sometimes you know on a bag of walnuts, you'll see like heart healthy. It has omega-three fatty acids in it. Yeah. So that's if it's raised on pasture, but if it's raised with a diversity of plants in that pasture, it actually has all these phytonutrients. And so think like You know, why do why are we supposed to eat blueberries or tomatoes? Because they have phytonutrients that are so good for us. And so basically the cow or the cattle come by, eat these plants that have these plant secondary compounds or phytonutrients, and you know, the plant is producing those maybe to protect itself from insects, from herbivores, but When the animal eats them, they are medicinal to the animal. So kinda think like essential oils. You know, the reason people use essential oils is because of these plant secondary compounds. Or think like chili peppers. What makes them spicy? That is a plant secondary compound. It doesn't benefit the plant per se, but it except that it keeps things from eating it. And so when the cow comes by, eats this You know, let's just think of her eating the blueberries. That's a silly example, right? But she eats the blueberries. That gets incorporated into into her meat or into the milk that she's producing. And then when you eat the meat or the milk of this animal, it has those plant secondary compounds in it. So you're getting all of the, you know, basic things, protein and iron, then you're getting the Elizabeth Steele (10:52.994) conjugated linolic acids, the omega threes, and you're getting these phytonutrients when they're raised on a diversity of pasture. It's kinda interesting interesting science that's emerging. Nicolas Lirio (11:01.676) That that is super interesting. I had a friend who was on the carnivore diet for like six months. He was all about it. And he was explaining to me why vegetables were bad for me. I don't think vegetables are bad for me. But his point was like plants have things in them that deter other living beings from eating them. But he was explaining that when an animal eats the plant, it breaks the Kent Boucher (11:22.958) I know where he got that idea from. Nicolas Lirio (11:30.86) those bad things down and it but it still carries the nutrients into its meat or its milk. Is there any like validity in that? Elizabeth Steele (11:39.756) You're getting outside of my realm of knowledge there a little bit, but I think the research will say that you know, and again, not my not my specialty, but I think the research will kinda indicate that you can get pretty high levels of these plant secondary compounds in the meat and milk. So it's not just a matter of, you know, like it's not that you're getting only this little fraction of it. And in fact, you're probably getting other plant secondary compounds because the silly example of the cow eating the blueberries, well she doesn't eat blueberries probably, but she eats a sunflower or she eats a rosinweed or whatever she eats and each of those have different plant secondary compounds. And I've seen some of the there were a couple of steaks in Missouri that were tested at this meat lab where you send in one of your steaks and they like look at what plant secondary compounds are in it. And I mean the number and the names of these I remember one specifically it it sounded a lot like delphinium like the larkspurs and I suspicion it was something from something in that family. I don't know that. I was jumping to conclusions. But, you know, we don't all go around eating larkspur plants, right? Yeah. And so it's a way to get these plant secondary compounds that are in the meat that we wouldn't necessarily go around eating that plant. We might eat the tomato or the blueberry, but we're not gonna eat larkspur plants. Yeah. And so yeah, it's A lot of ha you know, it's kinda like the essential oils. You're getting your essential oils in your meat. I'm sure that's a terrible way to think of it, but that's how my mind processes. Nicolas Lirio (13:10.606) You is there a huge taste difference? Elizabeth Steele (13:14.432) I don't know. That's a good question. I will say, so like I have a family dairy cow and when I graze her on natives, as opposed to fescue, fescue is a very common introduced cool season grass pasture in our neck of the woods. And I think her milk tastes a lot better. It lasts better in the fridge than when she's on the fescue. you know, taste is kind of one of those things too though that sometimes it's if you were raised eating corn fed beef Like that's normal to you and that's good to you, right? we have a good point pasture raised steer that we're eating on right now in the freezer and we find it to be quite good. And so, you know, beauty's in the eye of the beholder and to some degree taste is too. Would you add anything to that? Loren Steele (13:59.916) I think a lot of times people think that a grass finished animal has more flavor. Now, if you're used to straight grain finished all the time you might not find those flavors desirable. Some some find it more desirable than others. But that's kinda my thought. I I like both. I like grain finished beef. Grew up eating it. I like the way it tastes. I don't think it's probably quite as healthy as the as a a grass or pasture finished animal. I was and as far as what she was talking about with the the phytonutrients and things, I I like to think of it as it's like eating the vegetables without having to eat the vegetables 'cause I'm not that fond of a lot of heck of a deal. Kent Boucher (14:43.928) Vegetables. Nicolas Lirio (14:47.764) Trying to feed your cattle broccoli. Kent Boucher (14:50.35) Lauren's mom when he was a kid. Eat your vegetables. I am Nicolas Lirio (14:55.854) Just straight well I haven't found I've tried a bunch of obviously most pork is supplemented with some sort of soy or or cornmeal or so you know something of the sort. But the or byproduct, but and I can tell a huge difference in that when it's confinement raised pork and pasture raised pork, but it's like double the price. But with cattle The beef I actually can't tell taste tastewise. I can't really tell that big of a difference on the taste of cattle whether it's just regular beef you get at Walmart or if it's pasture raised or something of the sort. Now I do believe you it's like way healthier and I've tried to pay attention to like how I feel afterwards. Anecdotally I would say I feel a little better afterwards with grass fed beef, but I I you know, that's not scientific of any sort. I just I find that interesting. Do you find a big difference? Well, I want to get to this question. But first, if you had three head of cattle, you're just a hobby farmer, but you had unlimited land and you could do whatever you wanted with that land to raise these three head of cattle. Kent Boucher (16:07.766) I gotta say I hate that term, hop hobby farmer, because the work is is still intense. Nicolas Lirio (16:14.414) Look if if if it's a net loss, it's a hobby. Even if that hobby costs you Kent Boucher (16:20.782) Well, maybe financially, but I I I don't know if you if you looked at what that family is saving just by not having to buy, you know, their meat products, I wouldn't be surprised if they you'd also Nicolas Lirio (16:33.89) I think you'd be hard pressed raising a cow for less money than the cheapest beef at Walmart. Kent Boucher (16:39.522) Yeah, I I think there's there's truth to that, but I think I think if you looked at there'd be effects on your behavior that would cause you to save money in other places. And I think the number one thing would be less eating out because you feel like I have this super valuable thing in my freezer that I spent all this time and effort on raising. Nicolas Lirio (17:07.33) What about nutritional farmer? I do it for my own nutrition. So not hobby, but you're not doing it for a living. It's Kent Boucher (17:12.814) I think you call him a farm. Loren Steele (17:14.56) I thought he was just gonna say it was all the savings on entertainment because Kent Boucher (17:18.197) Yeah, that's well that too. I mean you can't go on vacation, so Nicolas Lirio (17:23.015) But if you had the perfect setup, because yeah, what what would you what would your pastures look like? Would you have on one lot? Would you rotate What would you do with just three head of cattle farming? Elizabeth Steele (17:37.068) So I mean you get better grass management when you let me boil it down to this. We want to mimic mother nature, right? Because if we're mimicking mother nature, that's a more natural system. And so when we had the bison out here on the prairie and the elk out here on the prairie, they took and they rotated themselves through the land. Nicolas Lirio (18:05.996) Nicholas edit this out. Save save you the Elizabeth Steele (18:10.818) You want me to do any of that over again? Nicolas Lirio (18:12.434) you're good. Yeah, jump right in. Kent Boucher (18:14.094) When the you were saying when the bison the elk rotated through. Elizabeth Steele (18:23.788) So on the native grasslands, and there's a lot, you know, we don't know about the native grasslands back before European settlement, but you know, i you basically had these huge herds of animals that are migrating across the prairie. You would have fire and you would have predators that are influencing the movement. And so, you know, if the wolf pack is over here. Kent Boucher (18:45.302) That's a great point, the predator aspect of it. Elizabeth Steele (18:48.096) Yeah, and that's you can look at the Serengeti and you know you don't wanna hang out near the lions too long, right? Just go ahead and migrate on through there. and so you've got not only climate things, but you've got the predators, you've got the fire. Wherever the fire has burned the grassland is more nutritious the following year. And in fact there's a whole like style of grazing called patch burn grazing and that's what they do is they take a third of it roughly and they burn that third and then the animals they have access to the whole thing. They will come over here to that third and spend their time there. And then next year you burn another third and they'll spend most of their time in that third, but they'll go back to last year's burn somewhat. And then the third year you burn the third third and you know, the longer since it's been burned, the less time they spend in it. Interesting. And so the bison would follow, you know, the fire pattern around some and where it was grazed heavily last year, it might not burn this y w during the winter, right? Because there's not as much fuel there. Yeah. And so those are all just factors we were looking to mimic that, right? And so we need to if they can come, you know how asparagus is real tender and that's how everybody wants it. Nobody wants the woody one, right? And so it's kinda like if our cattle have the choice, they always want that tender stuff. Yeah. And they just keep going back to that and they'll graze it to where, you know, they're grazing down this plant and this one, they're not grazing at all. And so this one's getting tough and woody, this one's young and tender, but we keep draining this one's root reserves. Yeah. So we need some sort of management to keep them from Doing that. Historically it was that fire, it was those predators. And so we can do that with rotational grazing. There's some new technology out. We haven't tried it yet, but we're kinda anxious. the collars. So yeah. Nicolas Lirio (20:55.032) Collar 'cause I know a small animal, a goat and a sheep, right? You can give them a good zap. Cows are like two thousand pounds. What what the heck? How are you how's a little collar gonna you know keep in bed? Elizabeth Steele (21:04.366) You know, electric fence. I mean we can put a one strand electric fence across here and if they're trained to it, they gotta understand what it is. It's not going to like constrain them as far as like they can walk right through it if they want. It's a psychological barrier. Yeah. Because they know, that thing bites, don't touch it. And so basically with these collars, it will tone them and say, Hey, you're getting close to your boundary and it just makes a little noise and then they get too close and it gives them Just a mild electric shock like a hot wire fence would. You know, I've been shocked by hot wire fence. It doesn't feel good, but it doesn't kill me. I don't like it. But it hasn't killed me yet. Nicolas Lirio (21:42.796) Yeah. Look, w like you were saying, you gotta find some pastime in entertainment. Loren Steele (21:47.542) When tell her the fence is off, it really needs to be off. I've experienced when it wasn't off and she really doesn't like it. Kent Boucher (21:55.982) You ever you ever like come across a really weak one and it you're like you're standing next to it or something brushed up against man my leg is just feeling really weird right now. What's going on? It's just like a really old weak Nicolas Lirio (22:12.021) Man, so you're doing the callers. Elizabeth Steele (22:14.018) We're thinking about it. We don't have any yet, but it's sure something we'd like to try at Hamilton Native Outpost 'cause we have some cattle. We're wanting to try it with the cattle right now. Yeah. We have cattle and we have bison, but we We don't know if it would Nicolas Lirio (22:24.8) No way it works with a bison. Elizabeth Steele (22:31.244) Well, you gotta keep making it bigger as they get bigger. How so I mean we we work the bison. i you know, we don't want them to get sick or if they are sick we wanna be able to take care of them. And so we do work the bison. so we have them up in a head shoot, you would just do it then. Nicolas Lirio (22:34.833) yeah. Kent Boucher (22:48.354) A headshoot. Okay. How do you get hands on a l live bison? Elizabeth Steele (22:56.022) Yeah, you you need a headshoot. so you know we've basically got something restraining them. No, so we use low stress stockmanship. That's our whole thing. And so basically, you know, if I keep scooting closer and closer to you, at some point you're kinda like, This girl's kinda weird. I think I should move away from her. Yeah. And so you have this little bubble around you. And so basic if I want you to kinda walk towards the door, I can probably edge you that way. And so it's kinda the same thing with with stock Kent Boucher (23:26.498) Okay. It's kind of giving a bubble, but not not so aggressively that they're in a a fight response. Elizabeth Steele (23:33.048) We're not wanting them to, you know, feel like the wolf is gonna eat right now. but basically we're kind of working out there on the edge of that bubble and we pressure and release. And they're like, you're coming towards me, I'm gonna step away. Nicolas Lirio (23:45.26) So does that take like hours to like slowly manipulate them with their own bubble to get somewhere? Elizabeth Steele (23:51.714) I mean it it can you're the stockmanship guy, let's let you answer that. Loren Steele (23:55.822) I mean it it might take some amount of time and training once they kinda know what you're doing. It depends on how they've been handled in the past. A lot of times. If they've been handled really rough, if you bought these animals in and they haven't been handled with this type of handling before, then they're very wary of what you're gonna do. Mm. But if if you're consistent in how you handle they will catch on pretty quickly and it's it's just like you and I having a conversation. They they know what you're asking and they'll do it. They're yeah. They're very sensitive bison themselves are very sensitive animals so they'll they'll move quite easily. Nicolas Lirio (24:33.882) They're not like goats. They're not buttheads about it. Loren Steele (24:36.966) I mean goats that's that's all in training too. So we've got several thousand head of goats, her and I do. This is separate from the seed company, but they they don't all handle like that. The people I call hobby people's goats or or pet goats a lot of times that are used to run into the feed bucket constantly. They can be very difficult to handle. But our goats are out in the pasture and it's not that we don't handle them, we do But we're not like baiting around with feed. We don't go out there and pet and so they react to you very well. They herd really well. Kent Boucher (25:11.756) Yeah. Interesting. H have you ever had a real sketchy bison moment when you're trying to round up to Nicolas Lirio (25:12.268) Yeah. Loren Steele (25:19.202) Her brother is the one that does most of the bison handling and I I think he's had several of those kind of sketchy Elizabeth Steele (25:27.022) The Bicenter, you know, they're not nearly as domesticated as cattle or sheep or goats or any of these things and so they are you know, you can you can handle you can use low stress stockmanship on And a lot of people don't, you know, don't do that. They're they're always handling them from a machine and you know, then anyway, I guess there's pros and cons to a lot of different things. But if you're a good stockman, like they will respect you and you respect them too, like it's a two way street. So Nicolas Lirio (25:55.978) Interesting. I am not texting, by the way. I am I've had so many questions pop up for you that and I'm I keep not asking them, so I need to start writing them down. Otherwise I'll I'll I'll forget them. Do you think that America and the Midwest specifically? Kent and I feel like there's too much corn and beans on the ground in Iowa for our own health sake. We're not we're not we've been really clear, we're not 100% against corn and beans. We just have too much. Could we rip up 20% of the land and put it in prairie and have practical use of grazing, even if it's not intensive grazing, but just have some use out of grazing. Because I feel like it's more palatable if we say, hey, we need to take some of this out of corn and beans, if people feel like they're producing something on it. You know, whether they're raising sheep and goats, or they've got giant chicken pastures or or pork or or bison and bison and cattle. Do you feel like that? would actually work like there'd be a market, people would actually want it and be willing to pay the extra thirty percent or whatever it is for beef when it's raised pasture wise. Elizabeth Steele (27:04.782) Yeah, I think it's an interesting question. I think that, you know, like we w we went and visited some friends in Maryland and they actually have a chick rental business. Now, I can't do that in my neighborhood. Like there's not enough people they had like a hundred, two hundred, three hundred people renting chickens. little chicks for a week and I mean it's a great deal because then this family can take the chick home. They get to experience farm life in a little bitty way. And in a week they bring the chick back when it's getting noisier and messier and then yeah. So now again Kent Boucher (27:42.794) To feed your livestock for a week, so Nicolas Lirio (27:44.958) Yeah, and they're paying you. Yeah. Man, that's like a Nicholas deal right there. Kent Boucher (27:50.542) Crazy? Yeah. Elizabeth Steele (27:51.48) So I do think there's a customer set that's very concerned about health. There's a lot of concern, you know, just even outside of just ignoring my agricultural friends, if I listen to other friends, they're like talking about nutrient density in their food and this sort of thing. And I think grassland agriculture can get us a lot more nutrient dense food than, you know, raising our animals where they don't have access to the land and all these diversity of plants and all this, right? So I do think there's a set of customers that is willing to pay for it. yeah, it's did you wanna add anything to it? Loren Steele (28:28.87) I think one of the big things I think of that is is the health that would add add back to the land w and in turn back to us eventually in in that whole process. But yeah, I don't I'm not here to harp on on other farmers and ranchers, but the the way that we conventionally grow corn and soybeans is probably not real healthy on the land. I mean just observations driving up here today at at at the soil erosion in a lot of the fields. It's kind of appalling to me. Yeah and a lot of those fields were highly sloped fields, you know, like it going back to what you said, maybe we maybe we just take out some of the more marginal ground and and put that back into into grassland agriculture. And I I sure think there's opportunity there. And right now, in particular the commodities are not very good. Corn and soybeans are Right. Not been great. You know, it's been a pretty tough several years in a row here. If you're in the in the commodity business on the corn and soybeans, but beef has been really good. it's kinda surprising to me that we don't see more of it going back that direction. But a lot of times you know Nicolas Lirio (29:38.132) yeah. Nicolas Lirio (29:47.97) Well they sold all their equipment twenty, thirty years ago or Loren Steele (29:50.988) The fences are gone, the equipment is gone, the knowledge is gone a lot of times. These guys they they don't know they don't have the animals agricultural knowledge anymore. And so but it it it offers opportunity for s for young people that are want to get into it, I think. Nicolas Lirio (30:07.926) Yeah, absolutely. The Ry I give Riley tons of props. They didn't have cattle when he was growing up. He went out and there's a bunch of research on cattle, you can find it all over the place. Well, he just said, I'll do bison. Well, the research on bison's like you guys and calling Bob Jackson. And there's one other YouTuber that he says does a lot with bison. And so he was just and he just went in with that. but I do think there is a lot of opportunity For it. So you guys know Bob Jackson, I'm I'm sure, right? I don't know. my goodness. He's in southern Iowa. He's got like three hundred head of bison. Okay. by Promise City, Iowa. You should look up. He I mean Kent Boucher (30:48.014) I bet your brother knows him. He's been around forever. Elizabeth Steele (30:49.208) He might Nicolas Lirio (30:50.7) He's quite a bit older and he Kent Boucher (30:54.306) He gr he grazes his on prairie as well. Nicolas Lirio (30:57.42) He does he does a great job. And he said he had a neighbor who was tilling the side of a hill, like basically plowing it. Kent Boucher (31:08.012) had to go he had to go f you know, from the bottom to the top. And or no, he would he plowed down. It was too steep to plow up the hill. And he'd have to, you know, after he got back down he'd have to trolley around to the other back side of the hill then come back down. Nicolas Lirio (31:22.88) And Bob was like, What hey, what are you what are you doing here? What do you got going on? He's like, Well, my corn and bean field at the bottom of the hill, all the soil eroded away. So if I plow this up, the soil will erode back down. And I was like you know, and I was like, That is the short s most short sighted fix I've ever What is that? man. But yeah, my nightmare. You know Kent Boucher (31:39.306) Unsustainable agriculture. Nicolas Lirio (31:47.788) The prairie business kind of took over from my dad, you know, and what he could handle, especially when he started doing more Forbes. but he told me several times he missed doing cattle and he really wanted to get bison, but it was the it was the fencing, right? The price of the fencing was just kept him out of the game. And but he told me that and now I've been trying to get the team to get on board with like goats and sheep. Kent Boucher (32:10.456) Yeah, guess who's not doesn't have in room in their schedule to go chase goats and sheep. Nicolas Lirio (32:14.604) Yeah, no way. I wouldn't I wouldn't that time. I had I'd but I'd rent them and take pictures with them and I'd send them back. but your dad was kind of a legend as well. Was he the one who originally started Hamilton native outposts? Elizabeth Steele (32:28.12) So both of my folks, my mom and my dad started the seed company. So they both worked for what's now NRCS. It was the soil conservation service back in the day. And they moved were gonna move my dad's job up to northwest Missouri. And he they decided they didn't want to move to northwest Missouri. He's an Ozark boy through and through. And so there was a lot of interest in the warm season grasses for grazing at that point. And so he And this would have been back in like eighty one, I think, is when they say they first started the business, nineteen eighty one. So they started harvesting warm season grass seed and then, you know, it just kept growing from there. They started like being out on the prairies and seeing these wildflowers and they're like, Those are kinda cool, what's that? And so then they, you know, get an ident that's a pale purple cone flower. And so then they start handpicking that and, you know, it all just grew from little bitty quantities to I mean we still do some things hand picked, you know, little bitty quantities. And those are of course valuable and everybody looks at it like, Wow, that's really expensive. I'm like, wow, do you realize how much work we're doing? Nicolas Lirio (33:37.262) Yeah. Yeah, we're just trying to I know it says a thousand dollars a pound. We're just trying to break even. That's break even cost. Kent Boucher (33:42.862) I I grow wild strawberries, native wild strawberries, and the labor in that is just unreal. I mean you're down on your hands and knees crawling through wild parsnip and and everything else that wants to grow in there with them. Yeah, yeah, that too. Yeah. Nicolas Lirio (34:00.014) Yeah. Especially he's got like he so when he says the labor in it, he's got his little kids out there picking strawberries made his job. Kent Boucher (34:07.178) Not my two youngest. Those two are two little black bears. They'd clean me out if I if I cut them loose on the bird. Nicolas Lirio (34:14.29) But I mean it's literally like you start doing the math on break even, it's like eleven hundred dollars an ounce on on the wild strawberries, you know what I mean? And and that's tough to you know, but it's you we want We want to be able to have Yeah. Especially in we do a lot of like backyard prairie stuff, right? Where people are buying a quarter acre and and stuff like that. And Kent Boucher (34:29.966) Yeah, they're important part of the prayer. Nicolas Lirio (34:39.244) I want to for people to be able to have them in there because I think the emotional connection with their prairie people would have if they started getting food out of it would be un like it would change the Midwest. And so if we could start being like, no, you could physically have some food out of this and it's some of the best tasting food you could find anywhere, I think that would really go a long way. But Elizabeth Steele (34:59.454) Yeah, and I think, you know, like to add to that you can we we do make some Harry Mountain Mint ice cream. Well that's pretty tasty story, right? So he doesn't like mint, so he thinks it's terrible. But the rest of us all think it's wonderful. Nicolas Lirio (35:12.95) Is that would that be better than like common mountain mic? Could use we don't have hairy mountain? Elizabeth Steele (35:16.726) Yeah, the hairy for us is the best. one I'll like take the leaves and like steam some milk. Well, usually I just go, you know, pull some like raw off this time of year before they bloom or something. And I'll steam the milk and put the some of the leaves in there. And so then I'll, you know, get it to almost boiling and then cool it and take the leaves out and you've got milk Kent Boucher (35:19.894) Rind up the leaves, is that what you do? Kent Boucher (35:44.568) Very flavored. Caitlin, take notes on this, please. That sounds that so that sounds awesome. I love that idea. Nicolas Lirio (35:49.838) Could you send some to work with Ken? Elizabeth Steele (35:55.27) But then too, like from the beef perspective or the bison, you know, whatever kind of meat you want to eat, if we can also help people to see that yeah, you can eat the wild strawberries and Harry Mountain Mint ice cream, but if you can eat beef that is raised in a way that's consistent with, you know, loving prairie, then how much better can that get instead of, you know, and again not trying to pick on somebody that raises corn and soybeans. We need some, right? Mm-hmm. but instead of that sort of monoculture situation, we can have a polyculture out here that's so much better for the livestock, it's so much better for the soil health, it's so much better for the wildlife. And those things can all coexist instead of just having our corn production or soybeans. Kent Boucher (36:44.78) Well said. Nicolas Lirio (36:45.858) Well, so with your mom and dad, what did their neighbors think? I gotta f I feel like their neighbors had opinions when they were fur you know, the first ten years when everyone thought they were crazy. Elizabeth Steele (36:56.854) One of the good stories I've heard, the mail lady, local mail lady, she told me there one time, she's like, Yeah, I'd watch your parents and they'd be out on the roadside like picking, you know, some seeds y in Missouri. We can pick them for our own use but not to sell. So back in the day when you're trying to get it ramped up, you know, they would be out there like picking these and they've got us kids sitting out there on a picnic blanket or something. You know, this is not a busy highway or anything. And she's like, I'd see around and she'd think, What are these people doing? And then she said, Now I look at all these barns and it's like, my goodness, they've really built something. And so, you know, it is people don't know the native plants necessarily. We're in a really rural area. there is an appreciation for them more and more, I think, from the forage perspective, you know, like using big blue stem or Indian grass. A lot of people are just using monocultures. I think they could be better with polycultures like Let's plant forty species or something for our cattle instead of just two or one. Yeah. But yeah, so not a huge set of knowledge, but everybody likes the pretty blooming fields. and so it's kind of a you know, it's changed over the years, but still kind of the same. Kent Boucher (38:08.128) One of the things I I n we went down to I guess it would technically be northern Missouri this last November, which as a deer hunter was a lot of fun. I I think we Nick gotta see his first rut action. He's not a hunter. But not a hunter. Remember that that that but Nicolas Lirio (38:26.132) I could never forget that brother. I could never forget. Kent Boucher (38:28.83) we stopped the truck in the middle five. Nicolas Lirio (38:35.022) That's because Kent yelled at me to stop the truck. Don't make me sound like a weird- Kent Boucher (38:37.294) But the the a weirdo, come on now. The the one of the things I noticed was like how many fence rows were left and I guess what we would generally classify historically as hedge rows, how much timber around the edges. to me it from what I've seen and heard about, it w it almost reminded me of Iowa what Loren Steele (39:05.718) What Kent Boucher (39:06.73) Iowa's more like when I was growing up as a kid, but also fifty, sixty years ago, what Iowa was probably like. Which leads me to think there has to be quite a bit more remnant prairie intact in Missouri than what we have here in Iowa. I think in in Iowa we're point one percent of our you know, original prairie is left. Is any ideas on that for Missouri as far as how much is left versus Nicolas Lirio (39:25.324) Less than point one per Kent Boucher (39:35.874) I mean, you guys obviously are like us, you're working in the prairie reconstruction business, but is there quite a bit of remnant seed sources still around in Missouri? Elizabeth Steele (39:45.356) I mean you can find you know, sometimes and especially we're North Missouri's, you know We're a little further from North Missouri. We spend more time in western Missouri. And you know, there are some remnant prairies out there that'll be a section, so you know, a mile by a mile. those are not super common and they're old hay prairies and so they've just been hayed and hayed and hayed for like hundred, hundred and fifty years in a row, which is amazing that they can still produce anything on something they're not fertilizing them. And this diverse ecosystem, they can keep producing hay on those. But So there's some of these remnant hay prairies. in Missouri. There's also like the Missouri Prairie Foundation, our state game and fish agency has some prairies. and there's some private ones around too. And so there's a few scattered around, but you know, then i it's not that i you can find some scattered plants on the roadside sometimes. but you know, most pastures, most most It's it's so there's so little prairie left. we also get into a lot of glades, which is an ecosystem where the bedrock is shallow to the soil surface. Kent Boucher (40:55.402) I've never heard that before. That's interesting. Nicolas Lirio (40:57.058) That's Kyle Leibarger talked about glades. Okay I think they have several areas out there where they have like these prairie glades. Kent Boucher (41:05.131) Mama. Elizabeth Steele (41:08.94) Yeah, yeah, so you know, the bedrock is just a little bit of soil on top of all this rock and the plant community of course is way different because it's not got deep rooting depth. And so I think Nicolas Lirio (41:20.84) Does sage handle that well? I feel like I see wherever there's shallow soil, I see lot of sage. Elizabeth Steele (41:26.73) And by sage do you mean like the Domesia or the like broom sage? Nicolas Lirio (41:31.028) No no no the the prairie state. What is that? Lude Kent Boucher (41:33.149) White Prairie City. Elizabeth Steele (41:36.32) Yeah, that's not one that's super common in our areas. but we end up with some really some of the pr or the glade plants are really unique. Like there's the Missouri primrose, which is not the biennial one, but it's a low growing and it has these huge yellow flowers that are like three or four inches across and they make these really neat pods that roll across the soil. You know, and they're made to roll because there's not much vegetation there because of all the rock. Nicolas Lirio (42:04.943) Artemisia Ludov Ludafisk. Yeah Kent Boucher (42:13.17) That's a Swedish fish di dish. Nicolas Lirio (42:18.614) I believe you. okay, so when your cattle are grazing, I remember, and we've been saying this on the podcast since I heard you say it, it is important to introduce randomness in in your grazing as much as like plan out your randomness. Because otherwise, like I bet those hay fields have selected what plants work well because if they're haying at the same time every year or somewhat of of a similar regimen, it's gonna do it's gonna do that. How do you if I have a prairie field, how do I protect protect the diversity in it because you said cattle will kind of graze whatever is the most yeah yeah how d how do you protect that if you have an operation where you're grazing cattle? Elizabeth Steele (42:56.652) Tasty at the moment. Yeah. Elizabeth Steele (43:03.81) You wanna take that one? Loren Steele (43:05.294) yeah, I can take that. And just change your timing of what with when you're in a certain spot. You know, it it's real easy to oftentimes kind of set in a rut and say, Well, this is the calving pasture. So we're gonna calve starting April fifteenth every year for sixty days. We're gonna use this pasture. Well, that's that's what'll get you into that sort of rut where you're always in the same place. So just be more random and our operation it's easy to be random 'cause we do a lot of crazy things so it we we never do anything the same even if we tried, but just vary where you're at with the timing of year as much as you can. Sure. Elizabeth Steele (43:46.734) Basically there's always, you know, there's a season for strawberries. We were talking about strawberries a minute ago. There's a season where we all want to go eat strawberries. And if we have all the people descend on the strawberry field every year at the same time, when the strawberries are ripe, the strawberries are at some point going to be like, There is no seed to replace me, right? And you're probably not gonna pick the last strawberry. So this is kind of a silly example on some level, but basically just vary it so that because something's gonna like The some plant is going to appreciate the fact you you were grazing on the fourth of July at that spot. And something is not going to appreciate it. And so you wanna make sure you're not always favoring the same thing. Kent Boucher (44:27.148) That's a great point. Okay, this made me think you're talking about b bears and grazing. I don't think we've ever asked this question. You guys are in an area where there's black bears, right? Do you ever see black bears feeding in in prairies? I mean, we think of them more as like a timber woodland animal, but Iowa had black bears, you know, tons of them historically, and we were largely prairie. So I assume that they spent some time feeding out in prairies. They're you know, black bears sure they'll eat fawns and they'll eat, you know, small mammals and things like that. And of course a whole lot of carrion and and, you know, scavenge things, but they eat I I think for most black bears, plants make up the bulk of their their diet. Have you guys seen any of that in your part of the state? Elizabeth Steele (45:19.99) Not really, but so we're in the Ozarks and the Ozarks is kinda where the we we kinda say sometimes that it's where the western prairie meets the eastern forest. And so historically it was a lot of savannah. Sure. And s of course you have these glades, these shallow to bedrock areas in certain areas, but it was a lot of savanna, there were a lot of trees, but there was an understory of the native grasses and wildflowers. And so as I understand it, the bears are mostly coming up out of Arkansas. Okay. And then so they're in the Ozarks down there. The Ozarks is southern Missouri, northern Arkansas kinda. And so they're coming up, and so they're really not in like a lot of our remnant prairie is in western Missouri. Okay. And so that's outside of the Ozarks. So really the bears are not in that. so we haven't had any experience to, you know, know how they interface with it. Yeah. Kent Boucher (46:07.862) Interfacing with Loren Steele (46:15.198) Most recently, you know, just a couple of weeks ago I I think there was a bear there in town interfacing at the Casey's, you know, at the hitting the dumpster. Kent Boucher (46:26.292) Some native growing Casey's pizza. Loren Steele (46:28.718) Now I I d I will relay one story and this is not in our part of the world so take that into account I guess. This was a this guy was a helicopter pilot and he was they would gather livestock and do wild game counts and things like this down in Texas mostly. Anyway, he was flying in the country of Mexico and Maybe we shouldn't talk about exactly the legality of what he was doing there, but he was flying across the border doing some work for some Mexican ranchers. And he told me that he saw these he said I thought they were cattle. He said there was all these black objects out here in the f in open, very open land. You know, would have been more or less rangeland, I I gather. And in Mexico, old Mexico, the country. Yeah. And he said it was bears. He he flew over there and he said it was it was black bears. Just out in the rangeland. There was no trees around. Kent Boucher (47:23.958) Just out there on the rangeland. That is really interesting. I I I hunted black bears up in northwest Montana once and it was this was a spring hunt, so they were coming out of hibernation and there was very little from vegetation wise options available. There was certainly tons of vegetation, but it's like three things, you know. And they they were really feeding on the grasses that were There was that and then there was a glacial lilies that you were supposed to be looking for to find black bears. But I mean it stands to reason if they've been in all these these areas that have predominantly grass and and you know prairie forbs that they must find a way to make a living on it. It would just be very interesting. I've never really heard anybody talk about it, you know, for the tall grass prairie region. How did they how do they interact with that? But that's a that's a great story there. I'm sure some of the similar species that you know, maybe like mixed grass, short grass prairie, that that would probably be down there. That's that's really interesting. Man. Nicolas Lirio (48:37.227) So I I wonder I was gonna say I was like I I wonder if bears being attracted to prairie help sell the prairie or you can eliminate sales on prairie. I I wanna get a little bit into if it's all right with you guys, what the different animals like when they're grazing in the prairie. But before we do that, have you messed with any Forbes in the cool season pasture? Kent Boucher (48:38.68) Call a bear mix on Nicolas Lirio (49:04.962) Like have you ever had any success w with any of that? Elizabeth Steele (49:07.714) Like in introduced cool season pasture or in native cool season? Nicolas Lirio (49:11.022) great question. I was thinking introduced. Like can you get it to mix with fescue or something, you know? Elizabeth Steele (49:17.592) Sometimes people definitely want to overseed, especially the warm seasons. The warm season grasses are so we're in a very cool season grass dominated area. Tall fescue, they introduced cool season. I is like, I don't know, ninety f eight percent of our pastures or something like that. And so people want the warm seasons because they're not producing forage during the summer months when we've got all this sun and, you know, good temperatures and all of that. Nicolas Lirio (49:43.67) And southern Missouri has a lot of Elizabeth Steele (49:46.474) We get summer, yeah. And so people will want to overseed that. I mean overseeding is always, you know, if you want a good corn crop, you go plant it out here on a clean field, right? Yeah. if you want a good eastern gamma grass crop to come up, you go plant it on a clean field that's you've killed all the existing vegetation. Now that being said, sometimes people will get a, you know, decent overseed. But sometimes it doesn't happen. And so d I think it's just important to realize it's kinda experimental. You know, we're doing this, to see if it will work, but we're not gonna bank our whole business on this working. Nicolas Lirio (50:27.542) Right. Well does it ever make sense to like cool season introduce cool season grasses? Do you ever plant a pasture of that with native Forbes? Elizabeth Steele (50:38.666) So not so much with the Forbes. That just hasn't been much of a focus. and part of the reason, which probably bleeds into your n other question about what do things eat, the cattle don't eat the Forbes as much. I'm not gonna say they don't eat them because they do eat, you know, a chunk of Forbes, you know. They really like some of those Forbes, in fact. There's one cup plant they use it as a silage crop. So they like for dairy cows, it's dairy quality. very high quality in other words, forage and they will use it in that way. So there are forbs that they like, don't get me wrong, but the bulk of their diet is grasses. And so that then from a pasture standpoint, nobody's thinking about, hey, let's put these forbes with our cool season introduced grass pasture. They're thinking about the warm season grasses because that's what they need from a grazing standpoint. But we actually some of the first diverse pastures that we started, we were like, yeah, we know warm season grasses, big blue stem, Indian grass. And we're like, we know cool season grasses in agriculture. Tim orchard grass, I don't think we put Timothy in there. Orchard grass, we did some of the endophyte friendly tall fescue. you know, et cetera. We're like, yeah, we know those. Now those are both cool season introduced species. But in agriculture, that's the things we think of. And we planted those all together, the warm seasons that are native, the cool seasons introduced and we really weren't happy with the results of that. Yeah, so that it's in our case, that particular case, we the warm seasons never expressed themselves well. wow. And so because the cool seasons just come on first and then they end up taking center stage and we just never ended up with much warm season production out of that. Interesting. so then we were like, Nicolas Lirio (52:13.364) Too much cool season or not eating Elizabeth Steele (52:34.06) Why did we mix the introduced cool season grasses in there? We have native cool season grasses. So but from the grazing standpoint, nobody like I you know, of course this knowledge is not new and unique to us. It's as old as the prairies are. Right. That the bison used to graze this sort of stuff, the elk used to graze this sort of stuff, but we've kind of lost that knowledge. So we mix the warm season native warm season grasses, native cool season grasses, native Forbes and legumes all together and created a pasture. And so that has worked a lot better. And I think there's just I'm not gonna say it can't work to mix the native warm seasons or native plants with introduced cool season pasture, but those natives have a history of working together, right? Yeah. Yeah. and you can get a lot more diversity. I think diversity is really one of the keys to it if you're going to go diverse at all beyond just like, it's a big blue stem Indian grass pasture. If you're gonna start mixing even just eastern gamma grass in there, another warm season grass or just switchgrass. I think you're better off to just go diverse because then you've got all of these things coming off at different seasons and it actually makes management a lot easier. It's better for the soil, better for the wildlife. Nicolas Lirio (53:45.102) You're saying that if you either do just big blue Indian or just go all the way, go diverse. Elizabeth Steele (53:51.5) That tends to be my take on it. And I'm not gonna say you can't come up with the perfect thing but you know, the grazing window for Eastern Gamma grass, for instance. It's a warm season grass, as is big blue stem, but gamma grass is about two weeks earlier than the big blue. Yeah. So if you have a fifty fifty stand of these, which are you gonna show up at the perfect time to graze? Yeah. And so then you're losing production on the other one that you're not at the perfect time. And so like big blue stem and Indian grass and you can mix a touch of little blue stem in there, they get along really well. Their grazing window is very similar. so that will make a good combination or if you want to go more diverse, my opinion and take on it is go diverse. you end up with problems when you have too much of one thing. You know, it's better to have multiple wild rice than it is to just have one wild rye species because those different species all have their different windows where they're green and growing. And then not everything is doing the same thing. You know, if we've got a big blue stem plant here and wild rye is all around it and it's all Virginia wild rye, well they all green up on the same day, they all grow on the same day, they're all shaped the same way. But if we'll put some early wild rye around that and some southeast wild rye, well one of these grows earlier than Virginia, one of them grows later Nicolas Lirio (55:07.518) It's early wild guy. Elizabeth Steele (55:09.166) I don't know if you guys Nicolas Lirio (55:12.11) I don't think that's very common in Iowa. Elizabeth Steele (55:15.348) So the botanists in our state have been very uncertain on wild rye identification seems to really get the botanists. kind of like sedges, yeah. Kent Boucher (55:23.23) Sudges. Nicolas Lirio (55:25.378) Yeah, the Elamises are they're they're crazy. So cool season wise, just Elamises is or or Wild Rise, is there anything else that you would put in there? we Elizabeth Steele (55:33.698) We like basically any of the cool seasons. The wider the blades, probably the more palatable in in general. Kent Boucher (55:39.96) Do they like prairie June grass at all? Elizabeth Steele (55:42.284) The June grass is good. It's not a huge tonnage producer, right? But it has a I like to have it in a mix if sometimes it gets kinda expensive to put in a grazing mix. Kent Boucher (55:45.23) Yeah, it's such a slight. Nicolas Lirio (55:52.396) But Blue Grma's technically a cool season, but it's kinda halfway it seems to me kind of a late cool season. Do you do you guys have that at all in Missouri? Elizabeth Steele (56:00.446) We're just so much you know, we get forty, forty five inches of rain. And it it just when you got little short plants, they just don't Kent Boucher (56:10.296) That might have been what those bears were eating on. Blue Groma. Nicolas Lirio (56:14.166) The Elizabeth Steele (56:14.508) But the like the sedges, they make a wonderful addition to this. Nicolas Lirio (56:18.542) I've had mixed responses on that, but you guys have seen them munch on sedges plenty of time. Okay. what about Prairie Brome? Elizabeth Steele (56:24.044) The wider bladed ones, the better. Elizabeth Steele (56:30.808) So that's not a species we run into much. We do have like bromus pubescens, woodland brome. Yeah. Nicolas Lirio (56:37.568) And but isn't that like crazy expensive? Isn't that kinda hard to come by? Elizabeth Steele (56:41.157) but like if you're in an area that has some of the plants, they're happy to eat it. Okay. that'd be where more of my observations come from. Nicolas Lirio (56:48.238) Ahora Kent Boucher (56:48.926) There's two well I want to point something out. There's so there's a I and I understand. I'm gonna start by s by saying this. I understand the concern. There's a a recent push, it's always been there, I think, to some degree, but there's a recent push to start asking for wild rice to be left out of seed mixes because the awls on the A W L, I can't pronounce that correctly with my lazy Midwestern draw. But the owls, however you say that, they work their way into the I guess the bloodstream, the way I understand it, of the bird dog and they deposit random places around I mean Loren Steele (57:38.245) Horrific. Nicolas Lirio (57:38.803) And just start and b they'll infect Kent Boucher (57:41.324) Yeah, th just horrific injuries. I've heard of people find be on the back of their dog's eyeball a bit, you know, you know, in their I think in it they can even end up in like internal organs and th things like that. That's horrible. I I hate I hate that that happens. but then we hear I don't know, we've probably ten times since we've done the podcast. Man, I just I I long for the day when Nicolas Lirio (58:04.11) Heard Kent Boucher (58:10.988) When Iowa has free roaming elk and bison again, that'll be then we know we made it as con and yeah, me too. But it would seem that the if we if we go the route so so when we are reconstructing prairie, and I especially think of this when we use like just the like let's go back to the wild strawberry example. They they don't exist on the market barely, right? So you can't restore you can't just all of a sudden everyone starts saying, Hey, we you know, we're gonna do a hundred acres of CRP, put ten pounds of wild strawberries, and it's not gonna happen. What we're doing is we're laying the foundation for maybe a hundred years from now, things get that we have enough of these reconstructed prairies around and land usage completely changes and it's allowed to kind of creep back out and spread back out into the prairie. But what if if we start switching The philosophy of no elements in any any of our prairie reconstructions because it's it's horrible on the the bird dogs. You know, I just don't see how you can then have the dream of having bison and elk if you're taking away such a critically important cool season food source for these big time grazers. And yeah, you can sub in prairie june grass, you can sub in these brome species these native bromes, maybe some sedges. But I think the reason I'm I'm turning this question into a it's I guess it's just a discussion point for all of us to weigh in on into a little sermon here. That's where I I think it's so important that we have to answer the question, who's the prairie for? And And the same thing happens with the ticture foils. Hold the ticture foil, please. I hate it getting on my socks when I go out in the prairie. And when we try to custom fit our conservation efforts to our own preferences. Yeah. With a manicured Nicolas Lirio (01:00:22.752) You end up with corn. If you if you're just gonna customize what's good for you, yeah, manicured yard and corn. Kent Boucher (01:00:30.264) I mean c could they survive if we do you think those big time grazers if we if if we had prairie back on twenty percent of Iowa little wild rise, I mean do you think that could support bison and and elk without that cool season foundation? Nicolas Lirio (01:00:39.724) But no wild rides. Elizabeth Steele (01:00:47.096) So you need some sort of the cool so what we find the warm season grasses are excellent quality right now here in what is it, June? Excellent quality. Like we can get amazing rates of gain on growing animals. So but it come winter those warm season grasses have turned brown and the quality has left. It's kinda like eating the cardboard you ate the pizza back in the summer and now you're down to the cardboard. Kent Boucher (01:01:11.948) that's a that is a great Loren Steele (01:01:14.103) Four. Nicolas Lirio (01:01:15.008) Man, that is kinda similar to you, Kent. Kent Boucher (01:01:17.486) So let's go check out your kitchen right now. Got a stack of cardboard boxes in your fridge, I bet. Nicolas Lirio (01:01:23.374) Don't worry about that. Ketchup on Don't you worry about that. I I heat up in the oven, the cardboard boxes. Elizabeth Steele (01:01:32.064) So those native cool season grasses and some of the Forbes native Forbes or wildflowers, whatever fancy words you want to use for they actually serve this purpose too. But they are the the four they're the they're the quality boost during that wintertime. So you can get a lot of belly filler out of that brown warm season grass. But you can't you need some little pizza pieces to go with your cardboard, right? It makes the Kent Boucher (01:01:52.386) Cardboard. Elizabeth Steele (01:01:58.218) makes the cardboard a lot more palatable. Yeah. And and the quality of your diet has bumped up. So that's what role the cool seasons are really serving is that fall, winter, spring time frame, they're boosting the quality. And so, you know, maybe you don't have to have wild rice, but you need something. Yeah. And it needs to have some tonnage to it, right? Like you can't just have some of the sedges. Some of the sedges are quite leafy and will have quite a bit of green forage in the winter. but some of them don't. Kent Boucher (01:02:29.122) Yeah, some are basically just all stem. Elizabeth Steele (01:02:31.372) Some of them are basically all stem. That's not gonna provide much forage. I'm not saying there's not a wildlife value or some other sort of value to that, because there's a lot of values to a lot of the different plants. But yeah, so we need some sort of cool season. The bulrushes make a great addition, you know, foul manna grass is great. And I say cool native cool season grasses, but I really mean native cool season grasses and grass-like species. so You need some sort of quality. I do wonder sometimes if and I think from the grazing standpoint this is true too, diversity. Let's not make it our only cool season grass out there or grass like species is wild rye. And it's all Virginia wild rye because that has it's you know, your bird dog is more likely to come into a into contact with it when it's covering the whole entire field as opposed to if it was, you know, just ten or five percent of the stand Kent Boucher (01:03:26.998) Yeah, that's right. Elizabeth Steele (01:03:27.424) And so I think diversity can really be part of the answer. but yeah, there is that tension like, you know, what do you do about the things that well, I'm planting this for purpose X. I want to walk in it. Well, I don't like the tick tree foils. Right. Or I'm planting it for forage. Well, maybe I don't want the non palatable plants. Maybe I don't want the mints, like bergamot or whatever is not very palatable. And so maybe I wanna avoid that. But what benefit am I missing to the bigger picture? Maybe even like as a cattleman, maybe my forage production could be better with some of those plants because you have things like hydraulic lift where some of the deep rooted plants are bringing up water to share with some of the shallower rooted plants. So I don't know, I think diversity diversity is one of the big keys and no, we don't have to put every species out there that you know is produced, but at some point you get to be in two picky. Yeah. Kent Boucher (01:04:24.344) Yeah. Nicolas Lirio (01:04:26.092) What do you are there any Forbes that you find that cattle like more than I I know that cup plant and if you got cup plant in your prairie, you should have cattle, 'cause cup plant get real as Dr. Kaiser says, woolly. It gets real woolly out there. You know, it gets thick and they're tall and they've got giant leaves that can kind of shade out everything else. They're but besides cup plant, is there anything that you find 'cause people call us all the time. Hey, I'm not a hard hobby farmer, full fledged farmer. I've got two cattle. two heads a cow. what what prairie should I put out there? And I tend to just lean towards diversity, you know, they'll munch on something, but is there anything specifically we need to be making sure we're putting in there? Elizabeth Steele (01:05:07.98) I mean again, I think diversity is really you know, there's some that are definitely more palatable than others. and we've tried to make some of those observations. Nicolas Lirio (01:05:18.435) yeah, always hoary vervain. You ever see these pastures? There's never a hoary vervain touch. They all stick. What is up with them? Elizabeth Steele (01:05:24.342) Well, it's probably got really high plant secondary compounds that are basically making it taste bitter. Interesting. You know, it's kinda like when you get a hold of something and you get a you know, whatever piece of fruit and you're like, does not taste very good. Yeah. And so you spit it out and think, gosh, I'll try another pineapple another day or something. Kent Boucher (01:05:42.348) More corpse f fruit, please. Durian or whatever. It smells like rot. Elizabeth Steele (01:05:47.146) Sounds terrible. Yeah. So that the plant secondary compounds in there are making that not taste good to you. And so that's the same thing. The vervanes, I don't know what the plant secondary compounds are. mints. Cattle do not like mints. I happen to love to eat mint plants, right? Interesting. And so there's some in fact a lot of the mints are actually toxic to livestock. And so, you know, like but they're not toxic to us as humans. So different species have different preferences and can tolerate different plant secondary compounds and Nicolas Lirio (01:06:20.554) Is milkweed as toxic as they say? I've heard I've heard conflicting views on that. Elizabeth Steele (01:06:25.164) Yeah, so what we find is like butterfly milkweed, they won't hardly touch it. Have you ever seen touch a butterfly milkweed. Loren Steele (01:06:32.718) Mm, I can't remember for certain. I've definitely seen eat common milkweed. They'll eat it to the stem. Now if you put in a entire field of it, I doubt they would do that. But when there's just one little patch out there in the field, yeah, I've sure seen eat it. Elizabeth Steele (01:06:37.652) Milkweed, yeah. Nicolas Lirio (01:06:40.344) They don't get sick or Kent Boucher (01:06:52.588) Well, that confirms what we've heard. Yeah. Yeah. That's Loren Steele (01:06:55.646) It you it's very hard to predict what animals are gonna do and I I contend that they're smarter than we are. They Yeah. They know what's in those things and and anyway I I had I'll tell a little story here. I I put a pen of stalker cattle out on a it was like a two hundred acre pasture and it was in a patch burn graze type of setup where they'd burned a third of the field. And I only ha I've grazed this field a number of times, you know, probably s seven or eight times now and One time I saw cattle go in there and there was one part of that, it was a planting, and there was like eighty acres of that that had a lot of white beard tongue or Pennstaman digitalis in it. Yeah. And it they ate most of it one year. And the rest of the time maybe they nip a end off here or there, but they eat, you know, five percent or less. And why they ate it that year, I don't know. I don't know if really that was a put together set of cattle that had been put together out of the sale barn so they were not home raised as a herd. I don't know if there was just a handful in there that were d deficient of something and they were craving it and they taught the rest, or if the whole yeah, whole pen was a little deficient in something, or the weather that year caused caused some difference in the plant and they liked it. But I saw eat it and I Nicolas Lirio (01:08:18.498) You know Loren Steele (01:08:21.365) I've never seen him do it again. That's real. Kent Boucher (01:08:23.351) Interesting. Nicolas Lirio (01:08:24.129) Bob Jackson talks about so the way he got into bison was he was basically his job was to chase down poachers in Yellowstone. And he would just hang out with the bison for months at a time and he started to realize okay they they have a family dynamic, right? And it was the grandparents normally teaching the young the young bison what was palatable and what wasn't. And he said, if you get a bunch of bison, he says, I see it all the time with cattle, you get a bunch that aren't related to each other and they get pulled in together, they don't know what they're supposed to be eating. They kinda like freak out and they'll like mow down everything. But if you have a family of bison, they start training each other what's good when, and they do a lot better and they kind of self they self select there. I I That's my only guess, but that is a weird story with the the foxglove pentamon. Do you let's go to goats. We have a bunch of people, they ask about goats, a lot of people are getting goats. what do goats like to munch on? I know they're more browsers than really grazers on the on the grass, but what are they like? Loren Steele (01:09:35.037) They they prefer the Forbes or, you know, broadleaf plants and they like to eat up high. I mean, there's no height gauge on any animal, so I mean if there's something they like down there on the ground they're gonna eat it too, but they tend to graze higher than sheep. Sheep have tend to graze low, is been my experience. They're they're very willing to graze down very short anyway. Goats will do that if you have if you leave there. Nicolas Lirio (01:10:01.216) So if you like Maximilian Sunflower and towering above them, they like that or Yeah. Loren Steele (01:10:06.006) The goats. Yeah. they don't mind it. Okay. I really don't have a lot of sheep experience. but what little I have and then what I've seen other people they do not like tall stuff. They just I think they they don't know what's in there that's gonna eat Yeah. Eat the sheep. And so they're scared to go into tall stuff, but the goats seem to have no problem with it. They'll march right into something that's ten feet tall and go to go to reaching up and grazing as high as they can or walking it down and grazing it, whatever. Interesting. the one thing I will say too is there can still be concentrations of those secondary plant compounds that'll keep them from eating plants or make them very non preferable. Nicolas Lirio (01:10:50.828) Is there anything they they really they touch la 'cause like goats eat everything, but it's just what order is what it seems like. You know what I mean? Loren Steele (01:10:58.146) Kind of. I I I think you know, a lot of people think that a goat to eat a tin can and they'll they'll live on it and do just fine and I find that to be very very much of a hoax. Kent Boucher (01:11:08.556) Yeah. Nicolas Lirio (01:11:09.742) With like two thousand head of goats, I feel like you would know. Well and it sounds like you actually keep fed with preferable things. You know, they're eating a shoe, it's probably 'cause they haven't eaten anything, you know. Loren Steele (01:11:19.608) Yeah, and to go along with that everybody fence won't hold water, it won't hold goats, but as long as they've got, you know, what they need, if if you keep in something to eat, they're not that difficult to fence. but there's even the same plant. So if we come along in a and we're we're grazing some native prairie right now that's pretty encroached with brush and that's why we're there. We're trying to swing that back towards the the grasses and forbs and a little less brush, get some brush control. Kent Boucher (01:11:21.858) Do they put ketchup on there? Loren Steele (01:11:49.844) like Sumac. Nicolas Lirio (01:11:52.198) yeah. Loren Steele (01:11:53.568) Larger plants that are at least second year growth or older, they love it. They will eat that, they'll strip the bark off of and at top kill those plants. But what comes back, that first year growth, they won't hardly touch it. Now very early in the season it seems like they'll go ahead and eat that too, especially after a burn. But now that we're up in June now and I'm seeing refuse it, they won't Nicolas Lirio (01:12:19.906) How do you deal with it then? 'Cause that's that's a lot of people's strategy is goats once, it comes back, goats a second time, and that kinda kills it. Loren Steele (01:12:27.552) Yeah, I don't have a perfect answer for that. And I asked Fred Provenza about this one time. I called him and asked him and and he had a special name for it and I can't remember what he called it, but it you know, it was one of those fancy terms that he knew exactly what it was. He's like it's an anti herbivary response in that plant that's how they keep from getting killed. Yeah. Is they have real high tannin level or something like that that makes it not palatable. Nicolas Lirio (01:12:54.444) Man, so I'm I am curious, what the heck do you guys do with that many goats? That is so many goats it sounds terrible to deal with all that many. Loren Steele (01:13:04.088) So they're meat goats. Okay. So they they'll go into the meat market. we do some amount of prescription grazing we call it with these goats. Where well we what however you want to say that I that's not the term I use, but we'll someone will pay us to to bring those goats in and and graze the weeds or brush back and for for that weed or brush control purposes and and then it feeds our goats at the same time and Nicolas Lirio (01:13:12.998) we read out, kind of. Nicolas Lirio (01:13:33.726) Sea goat at Walmart. So who's buying that much goat meat? Because that's a lot of goat meat. Elizabeth Steele (01:13:40.854) It's not your everyday average normal American person. It it that's been here for a lot of years. It's the people that come from other countries because it is a like the preferred meat worldwide. And so, you know, like we don't we didn't grow up with it. Back to that culture, you know, cattle they learn from their mother, bison they learn from their mother what to eat. Our mothers didn't teach us to eat. True. And so we don't know how to cook it, we don't know what to do with it. But it is Kent Boucher (01:13:52.972) Yeah, for yeah. Kent Boucher (01:14:04.791) Yeah, true. Elizabeth Steele (01:14:10.548) really preferred meat. So there's a lot of cultures that want it for holidays or festivals or that sort of Nicolas Lirio (01:14:17.758) Interesting. Pound for pound, what do you guys eat the most of in your household? Elizabeth Steele (01:14:22.466) So we didn't grow up eating goat meat either. and so we really don't eat much goat meat. I've had it before, it's good. but we eat a lot of beef, we eat some deer, we eat a little bit of bison. pork. And some pork, yeah. We we every year we one of the crazy things we do at the seed company, down in Missouri is we it's a Christmas thing that You get a pig, but you have to come help butcher your own pig. And so it's a really good experience for people to like you know, like they've never had that experience of having to harvest their own meat and I I mean, they're not necessarily doing every step of it, right? Maybe you're just packaging the meat, but it's a great experience for people. Nicolas Lirio (01:15:05.602) We need a yearly pig. Like we get it in January and we butcher it in for Christmas every Kent Boucher (01:15:11.774) The what? That thing would be enormous. Loren Steele (01:15:14.658) Well yeah, but Nicolas Lirio (01:15:14.892) Yeah. You know, it'd still be awesome to like have it all year and it'd be a tradition and and we could chant while we kill it. That was just a joke. Just a joke. Man, okay, so so goat meat I mean you gotta be like a decent percentage of the goat meat provided in the Midwest, you know what I mean? It's gotta be Elizabeth Steele (01:15:34.478) You know, it's not as common in Missouri or probably even Iowa, but like you get into Texas, there's a lot of goat meat producers. Nicolas Lirio (01:15:42.046) Okay. Interesting. Loren Steele (01:15:43.97) So to go with that one time we there was a fellow I've sold a lot of goats to in Rhode Island has a a smaller kill facility there and anyway we were there one time on a Saturday and I bet there was people speaking ten different languages wandering around there and it was it was kinda like going in a way like to like a third world country. It was it was different. Yeah. Very interesting. Elizabeth Steele (01:16:08.12) They've got their chickens by the feet, carrying across the parking lot. You don't see that at your average Walmart, you know. we all are used to our meat cellophane wrapped at Walmart. It was yeah. Nicolas Lirio (01:16:13.387) Yeah? Nicolas Lirio (01:16:17.806) yeah. Yeah. My my mom and dad grew up in the Philippines. My dad is Filipino, my mom is pale, and they grew up in the Philippines and I've been in the Philippines a few different times and the dogs there are all scared of humans and they run in packs as like a protective thing. Why? 'Cause we eat them there. We we we Yeah, my mom has some stories about that. But like we eat the dogs and and the point being, that like people there are a lot more connected to their food. So much so that you literally could find a dog in the street and like eat it for dinner. You know what I mean? It was so much more connected and when you're carrying around chickens, you're probably more connected to your food. I imagine that is a healthier way to go. Not necessarily eating like dogs that have starved for a year, but in general just being connected to your food is Elizabeth Steele (01:17:11.98) Well and understanding where your food comes from and how it's raised, you know, getting back to that whole concept of we can raise meat, you know, if you don't even understand that meat comes from an animal, there's no way for you to make informed decisions about I want my meat raised in this manner. Yeah. You don't even realize that the cow can graze on prairie or it can graze on, you know, something less healthy. And so, yeah, being connected to your food and understanding where food comes from is important. Kent Boucher (01:17:41.834) I should have asked this earlier. so gra I mean you're grazing what we'll just call domestic species on on prairie and cattle and and goats, but then grazing bison, which is a animal of the prairie. Does the meat reach a fuller the quality of the meat, does it reach its fullest potential with bison and even maybe to a notice a notice a noticeably different degree with the bison than with cattle. When you you know, if you were to so if you were to graze them both on or not not graze them, feed them on a feedlot with with corn. that gives you this flavor profile and and reaches this level of potential. And then maybe if you go grass fed, it's at it it's just a straight you know, invasive cool season grass, grass fed cow, is that a step down from a a corn fed cow or just a step differ? Elizabeth Steele (01:18:51.31) I mean yeah, y I think it beauty's in the eye of the beholder, you know, that taste is in the eye of the beholder too. I think the research that I've seen I think was done on cattle, with that plant secondary compounds and the health of the meat, you know. But I think that it would apply to other animals as well. You know, w if they are able to eat these different things and get them in their diet, then it will be in their meat or milk. Kent Boucher (01:19:17.198) And then we get the benefit. So then if you go a step further and say we're only gonna raise this herd of cattle and this herd of bison on on you know North American native prairie species, does the bison come out delivering even more flavor, more phytonutrients, more secondary compounds that are beneficial? Because that is you know, it's lock and key, you know, they these things belong together than what say, you know, a domesticated cow would would deliver. Is there is there any knowledge on that? Elizabeth Steele (01:19:56.283) I don't know like, you know, do you have anything you would Loren Steele (01:20:01.358) no. Elizabeth Steele (01:20:03.842) I mean I think it would be similar to the beef in that, you know, the flavor profile may be more what was the fancy word you used earlier, like more robust or whatever. when they have a bigger variety of things to eat instead of, you know, it may be a little more I wouldn't call a corn fed steak bland, but you know, less less robust I guess. I would think it would be a but like I haven't, you know, had a grass fed one, prairie fed one up here and a corn fed one over here and so but I think it stands to reason, like the healthier the land is, mm-hmm. You know, and part of the health of the land is having a diversity of plants, having things growing in all the seasons, this sort of thing. you know, the healthier the land is, the healthier the plants are, the healthier the animals are, the better that meat is. Gonna probably both taste and be for you. Yeah. So Loren Steele (01:20:55.061) Interesting. Kent Boucher (01:20:55.554) Have you noticed any difference in calving with with the cattle that you raise on prairie versus cattle that are raised on, you know, we'll say conventional cool season pasture? Is there are the yeah, is there better, you know, better success rate of of, you know, carrying the term and and having a healthy calf? Is there does the calf put put on Nicolas Lirio (01:21:11.278) Like overall health. Kent Boucher (01:21:22.646) weight better if it's on prairie or anything like that. Have you have you noticed any that pre prenatal advantage that happens? Elizabeth Steele (01:21:26.861) Yeah. Elizabeth Steele (01:21:31.416) So I'll give you the background on our introduced cool season forage and then I'll let you tell the Kent Boucher (01:21:37.334) That'd be prenatal and neonatal maybe. I don't know. Elizabeth Steele (01:21:39.66) So our tolfescu is a cool season introduced forage. There's a fungus that lives inside this plant called an endophyte and it produces a compound called called ergovaline. It's kinda like think of it kinda like LSD, the drug LSD. And I think L S D's fallen out of favor in t in favor of like opioids or I I don't keep up with it. But okay, so Kent Boucher (01:21:57.346) Very familiar with that. Elizabeth Steele (01:22:08.578) They're eating this stuff that's like LSD in the plant when they eat fescue. It causes them to run a fever. They have poor blood flow to their extremities. And so it really imp can impact their health. And that's what ninety percent of our pastures are. And so we had an experience it was when Lauren was managing the cattle for the seed company, where we saw some real impacts of that. I'll let you still that. Loren Steele (01:22:35.874) Well, one year we had least a neighbor's pasture and so we were gra and it was mostly fescue and so we grazed the cows over there for most of that summer. We were rotating still but but anyway they were on fescue for a lot of that summer. And it we do breed our cattle for or theirs for spring calving, true spring calving, like April, not not February. Some people's definition of spring in mine are Kent Boucher (01:23:07.51) Yeah. Loren Steele (01:23:08.218) Anyway, so that puts your breeding season in like July and August, which is not a prime time to breed stuff in southern Missouri, especially on fescue where they're running a fever from grazing on that ergovalin that's in the in the fescue. Anyway, that fall we preg checked the cows and we had like a s sixty percent breed up. It was terrible. Wow. And then the following year, same cows. I was the same guy managing them, still same basic management. We didn't have the lease on the neighbor's place that year and we had a few more seed fields that you know, big blue stem or whatever that we didn't need the seed from that much that year. We had a surplus and so we were grazing natives. And w come fall that year, breed up was ninety seven percent in the in the cattle. And so I was like wow, more impressive than I thought. And also the the s the calves weighed about seventy pounds more than weighed in the previous year. Nicolas Lirio (01:24:13.452) What what advan is is that any advantage for ya at all? What does that mean they'll get bigger in the end or does it mean they get bigger faster as they're growing? Loren Steele (01:24:20.59) So, you know, right now a five hundred pound calf is worth like five dollars a pound, so you know, an egg extra seventy seventy pounds. They weren't this valuable at that time, but if you put it today's market, which cattle are really valuable right now, we're at a all time market high, but that'd be, you know, like an extra three hundred and fifty dollars per calf. Kent Boucher (01:24:24.622) Yeah. Wow. Nicolas Lirio (01:24:34.606) Okay. Nicolas Lirio (01:24:47.628) Yeah. That's unbelievable. That that answers a question that I really want to make sure we get to and then we gotta make sure you guys are up and on the road to get to your family function and really appreciate you coming out. Yeah, we it it's just cool to like there's not that many people in the world I can relate to and complain about the format of seed tags. You know what I mean? Like there's not that many people who understand it. so it just Kent Boucher (01:24:59.808) Yeah, this has been fantastic. Kent Boucher (01:25:14.114) You guys wanna swing by the farm on your way back? Nicolas Lirio (01:25:16.14) Yeah, please feel free. We'd be happy to give you a tour for real. But is there health health of humans, health of your herd, that's a real good reason to move at least some of your pasture to native warm season diverse prairie. But monetarily, you just answered this for now for for the cattle. Is there any other reason? Does it pencil out better? Does it you know acre per acre. I'm sure you're doing tight math on your ROI for your for your cattle. Like people who are saying, Hey, will prairie save me money or make me more money with my cattle? Is is there any spots that it's doing it? Obviously with the with the calves being born, but anything else? Elizabeth Steele (01:26:02.562) Yeah, I think the other thing that pops into my mind is the production. So we can produce more forage on an acre, you know, if we have an acre of fescue over here and we have an acre of diverse native grassland over here, we can produce more forage on that diverse native grassland. Nicolas Lirio (01:26:17.216) But Festigue gets two seasons, right? It gets a spring and a fall. So you Elizabeth Steele (01:26:20.62) produce in the spring and the fall, but if we have a truly diverse native grassland, we've got all year. you know, winter really slows down, right? But it will kinda even keep growing th some through the winter. So we're able to collect sunlight three hundred and sixty five days a year instead of, you know, fescue right now in June we're well, we've had a pretty mild spring, so it's maybe grown a little bit more than it usually does, but basically in the summer it shuts down. We're not produ we've got Nicolas Lirio (01:26:26.766) yeah. Elizabeth Steele (01:26:50.208) heat, we've got sunlight, we could grow plants. The prairie grows great plants in the summer, but fescue doesn't grow in that season and so we're missing some of those crucial growing days. So mixing the warm and the cool seasons along with those Forbes and legumes, like really can boost the and there was a study in Minnesota by David Tillman. And what they showed was that you know if you had a monoculture, just one species Nicolas Lirio (01:26:53.973) Days. Elizabeth Steele (01:27:18.73) If you would plant just sixteen species, your production could be two hundred and thirty eight percent more than that monoculture. Wow. And so in some of those plots of monocultures were even switchgrass, which is a big ton producer. But you get a lot more stability of production, right? Because if all you have out there is we're talking about switchgrass, if all you have is switchgrass, it grows during just this window. Yeah. Nicolas Lirio (01:27:30.68) Yeah. Elizabeth Steele (01:27:42.22) And then you're not growing anything outside of that window. Well, what if the weather is not very good? Maybe it's too cool for switchgrass to really like it, or you don't get enough rain, or you know, you name the problem, the bison come through and eat it down, the army worms eat it, whatever happens. But if you have a diversity of plants, then it's like you always have something different coming off. If it wasn't just right for the early wild rye, well maybe it's just right for the Virginia wild rye. If it's not just right for the Virginia wild rye, maybe it's right for the Southeast wild rye. Wow. So diversity can really give you more stability. Nicolas Lirio (01:28:15.436) Dad used to always say that people would be like, Well, this is my topography, and this is the kind of soil. And he'd be like, save all that information. I'm just gonna give you as diverse of a mix as I can, you know, for now. And Judd is like a true nerd. He's the guy on our team who answers the phone calls and does that. So he really he wants to dial it in. but I I think diversity is like a really great way to go. And you know, in our CS mixes, people like I get pushback all the time from the offices, we don't want Seed box and monkey flower and blue vervain and there's another one I not swamp milkweed. What's the other wet one that I normally put in? Dang. Is another one prairie clover? No, no, no, no, no. It's it's a wet it's a a wet Lobelia, cardinal flower. that I like to put in the mixes. And hey, these are wet species. This is not a yeah, but if you get a wet year or or there's just one small area, and I'm not dumping it in the mixes, but I want something. That can be wet, that can handle that wet. And so I I try to do that on landscape, let alone with with animals. and the last thing I I really want to make sure we touch on Eastern Gamma grass. What I've heard is that you put eastern gamma grass in it, even if you're flash grazing them through, they will destroy it and and they'll graze it where it doesn't come back. My guess is you guys have success to the contrary. I'm curious what your your experience is on that. Elizabeth Steele (01:29:40.96) Yeah, you know you grazed a lot of gamma grass growing up. Loren Steele (01:29:44.138) Yeah, actually w so I I learned a lot more about natives after I met my wife, but we did have we did have native warm season grasses on our farm as a as I was growing up. And a lot of that time we we weren't very good at managing our grazing. We we didn't move our cattle around nearly as much as we do now. We did some, but anyway we had some gamma grass there and we grazed that Nicolas Lirio (01:29:50.936) So did I. I met a lot more after I met your wife. Loren Steele (01:30:13.442) Really severely, even with horses, and horses are known to graze stuff really close to the ground. And we were in the business of raising quarter horses there and we'd have fifty to seventy head of horses around any given time. And so we got to kind of camping those broodmares out down there on this gamma grass field and and they grazed it. I thought we thought it was gone pretty much. And then I got interested in in managing the grazing and I was like, I'm gonna see if we can bring that back. And so we let it set for an entire season and didn't graze it at all. And then we started grazing it again the next year, but doing it, you know, on short duration, long rest period type grazing. And we brought that stand back. Now it it is full of fescue still. It there's it's all fescue in the gaps and that field's still there, still has has gamograss in it. but we were able to bring that back, even when it looked like it was gone. Also on another place I leased just some remnant fesc or gamma grass that was out there in the fescue. you know, I'm talking not a lot, just like a few plants is out there and we were rotationally grazing that and it seemed to be expanding in that field, you know, like I was getting more plants as the years went by. And so watching that I thought, I wonder if we can drill that into it and get this to work. And so we did. And the first year After that I never found a plant. I was like, that was a hundred percent failure. Well you Nicolas Lirio (01:31:44.258) drilled eastern gamma grass into the fescue. Yeah. Loren Steele (01:31:47.126) Into Fescu sod and I could not find a plant. I'm like, well that sure didn't work. And the next year I found like, you know, ten. And this is like, you know, I'm supposed to be a guy that knows what this stuff is. You know, I'm worked with the seed company. I I could not find those seedlings out there. And about the third year, then all of a sudden I was like, I see it. I can find the rose where we drilled it. And it continues, those plants have been very, very slow to develop. And so we're like six years deep into that now and it's starting to express itself fairly well. there's still f you know, it hasn't crowded the fescue out by any means, but the eastern gamma grass plants are still expanding and getting bigger. you know, just the crowns of the plants are and starting to be a significant part of that stand. And so it did work that time It's not something that I know that I recommend, but it seems like those two do play together okay. If you're gonna plant a warm season into fescue, Gamma Grass seems to seems to tolerate it if you can get it established. But it's gonna take a lot of time. So if you want things to happen quick, go a different route. Yeah. Nicolas Lirio (01:33:02.958) How do you guys justify the price of Eastern Gamber? Because per pound it's not crazy. I mean, wholesale, really cheap. You could find it at 15 to 20 bucks, but usually you're paying mid to upper 20s wholesale. and and that's like wholesale. That's like when we're buying a pallet, you know, or more. Yeah. And that but that's not the problem. Because that's just a little more expensive than Black Eyed Susan. The problem is There's like four seeds per pound, you know. So to actually get enough seeds to get to grow out there, you need like five pounds. Well, well or not five like forty pounds per acre and forty times twenty, you know, eight hundred bucks an acre to get it to be at the quote unquote seeding rate that you're supposed to. How do you justify that when it's tripling or quadrupling your price per acre? Elizabeth Steele (01:33:53.954) So part of what I would say is like get the seeding rate where it needs to be. So you can put forty pounds out there, but that's probably four times the amount that you need for a full stand. Wow. So if I was gonna plant a full stand, I would plant ten pounds to the acre. If I thought that wasn't enough, I'd go fifteen. Nicolas Lirio (01:34:12.47) And you're drilling you're drilling this one. Elizabeth Steele (01:34:15.379) usually we recommend drilling eastern gamma grass. We have done it broadcast. Elizabeth Steele (01:34:28.434) Yeah, we're like usually aiming at a half inch. Which is too much for anything else basically, right? so one of my big complaints with the seed calculator where we're dealing with those PLS seeds per square foot, you know, and we're doing all that math. One of my big complaints is it doesn't work for some species and gamma grass is one of those Kent Boucher (01:34:31.118) Yeah. Nicolas Lirio (01:34:49.266) One seed per square foot of an Aster is not the same as one seed per square foot of a tictrafoil. It's not even close. Right. And we're trying to solve that actually on our website right now, but it's tough because you have to go through each individual species. And I'm trying to build this thing where people can pick they can pick the species they want and then they can just say a little, a medium amount, or a lot. But that would d that would vary for every species, seeds per square foot and pounds per acre. That would vary. So you'd have to go through like two hundred different species on that and type in how much, you know, it's just a a ton of work. I'm trying to have it not take me two weeks to figure this out. But Eastern Gamma grass, okay, so that is a lot more palatable. Ten bucks or t ten pounds per acre at twenty five, thirty bucks is is really not Elizabeth Steele (01:35:39.022) But you can also plant diversity with a little bit of gamma grass in there for about that same price a lot of times. Yeah. G for grass heavy diversity with some Forbes in it. Nicolas Lirio (01:35:49.101) When it's Nicolas Lirio (01:35:53.442) Would one seed a square foot of gamma grass show up? Okay. Elizabeth Steele (01:35:58.066) boy. I am trying to think. So what we're ultimately looking for in a square yard is something like four plants. Like because, you know, they get as big as a wash tub. And so now if you want it to not take quite as long for them to get to their to get to fill up the field, you know, that's when you go to the fifteen pounds to the acre. But I just don't I end up not thinking about it in that I just know that if I want a full stand of it, ten pounds to the acre. If I want a half stand, five pounds to the acre. Okay. And so I tend to think about it that way. But Nicolas Lirio (01:36:33.782) A pound or two per acre in a really diverse mix would be fine. It would show up and Elizabeth Steele (01:36:38.094) That's probably a ten or twenty percent stand. You know out in the future, ten years out or whatever. It's probably ten or twenty percent of your field covered with Nicolas Lirio (01:36:40.172) Okay. Yeah, yeah. Nicolas Lirio (01:36:46.55) Yeah, Eastern Gammacra Eastern Gamma grass is kind of like the beloved stepchild. Like but it's still a stepchild, it's kinda weird. Kent Boucher (01:36:53.934) Well an another outsider grazing species that I know you guys have experience with because I watched one of your YouTube videos on it with your dad in it is purple top or greasy grass. Yeah, I I think I first came across the idea that it's good for grazing on a USDA data sheet or something like that. But have you guys grazed greasy grass much? Nicolas Lirio (01:37:04.376) Tridon's flavors. Elizabeth Steele (01:37:18.734) So it is pretty common in our neck of the woods. it'll just show up in pastures, like even introduced cool season grass pastures, it just shows up in them. you know, some like especially hay fields it'll show up in those. But Kent Boucher (01:37:32.706) So it's pretty resilient and and Elizabeth Steele (01:37:35.114) I mean if you wanna overgraze it and, you know, do poor grazing management, I I don't think it's really gonna persist that well. But like a hay field when we're just coming in you hay it at just the right time, it really favors that grass species. And so but it's really quite palatable and w what we find is that like gamma grass comes off earlier in the spring. So you got your cool season grasses, you're grazing along, and then your gamma grass is coming off and your switch grasses, then your big blue stem and Indian grass are coming off and then You're finally getting over here to like, you know, August and the warm season, the big blue, the Indian, the, you know, eastern gamma grass, switchgrass are all quality headed downhill because we're approaching, you know, the end of summer. And so but the purple top or greasegrass has a little window in there where it will really respond to the rain and it will put on a really good boost to quality before your cool seasons come on. So we really like to put some of these lesser known warm seasons in the mixes for that reason. Kent Boucher (01:38:37.74) They fill in those holes. Nicolas Lirio (01:38:39.7) So it is it's a it's got a lot of value to a very diverse mix. My guess is it's not your first pick for like just a single stand like Big Blue or Indian. If you were doing single stand, would you pick Big Blue Indian or I kind of treat as the same, you know, in a lot of ways. And it's actually getting harder to separate More and more people, their big blue field is getting filled with Indian or vice versa. And so they're just selling it as like a batch. but It probably's saying it probably wouldn't be your pick for a single stand and that's Elizabeth Steele (01:39:11.886) If I'm gonna do a single stand, I'm either going to do Eastern Gamma grass, or I'm gonna do switch grass, or I'm gonna do like big blue Indian, add some little blue in there at a minor component if you want. Kent Boucher (01:39:22.946) You're saying a a monoculture to graze? Is that what you guys are talking about? Elizabeth Steele (01:39:26.754) I yeah, if if I'm going monoculture, of course I really think diversity is where it's at. But if I'm like somebody's like, I don't want the complication of that and I would make the argument that diversity is actually less complicated. But if they're still like, No no, I need to you know, maybe they have a weed problem they want to deal with or whatever, then I'm like do a monoculture of gamma grass or a monoculture of switchgrass, or you can mix big blue stem Indian grass and little blue stem together. Nicolas Lirio (01:39:32.077) Yeah. Kent Boucher (01:39:53.742) Very interesting. Nicolas Lirio (01:39:54.574) Is there anything you would make sure that you you would tell us do not put this in native pasture? Elizabeth Steele (01:40:02.538) You're gonna have to make the decision of whether or not you're gonna put the unpalatable species in native pasture. Because, you know, like the worst case scenario is what if you put bergamot in there, let's say, and it really likes it and now it's ten percent of your stand out there. Yeah. Nicolas Lirio (01:40:22.327) And they're grazing everything else, so it's got a huge advantage and Elizabeth Steele (01:40:25.214) Yeah, and you're just perpetuating the problem. So I think now I think it can be a successful addition. Maybe if pasturage was my first goal with it, maybe I'm gonna put it in a really minor component. So it's just kinda I don't know, would you avoid anything in particular, like do not put in Loren Steele (01:40:44.456) Ashy sunflower. Nicolas Lirio (01:40:46.247) Ashy sunflower. It's not Does it take over for you guys or Loren Steele (01:40:50.03) It can be. It it's just its palatability seems to be pretty limited. It'll make a pretty thick stand at times, you know, it's usually kinda colonies patches, but it's just not one that I would probably intentionally put in there at this point. Even the goats don't like it a lot of the time. I mean they'll eat it at times, but cattle really Nicolas Lirio (01:41:07.16) Yeah. Nicolas Lirio (01:41:14.619) Interesting. Loren Steele (01:41:17.216) And that's in our our neck of the woods. It could change, you know, and I don't have experience outside of Missouri really. And so you know we're we're up here in Iowa, this regionally there could be differences that make things act different. Nicolas Lirio (01:41:35.052) You guys are experts and people should follow along with what you're doing. Where can they follow along with what you're doing? Elizabeth Steele (01:41:40.11) So Hamilton Native Outpost dot com is our website and then we also do a lot of YouTube videos. Go to the field with us digitally. Kent Boucher (01:41:45.602) That great YouTube video. Nicolas Lirio (01:41:49.814) Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Kent Boucher (01:41:51.214) I've watched your videos before, they're excellent. Nicolas Lirio (01:41:53.708) Yeah. The the you're like our standard for what we want. We do a lot of shorts. Like, hey, here's a quick little fun fact. But you guys is like very structured seven minute videos about what's good and what's not good. The best on prairie that there is out there. Highly recommend anybody checking those out. If you're in the southern half of Missouri or Arkansas or really any state touching that area and you need some native species, give Hamilton native outpost a call. every time I've worked with you guys, you've been great. Fantastic. Great service. Real nice people down there. And I thank you for doing this podcast. I know it can be kinda weird for some people with, you know, two different seed companies, but it was really cool of you to come on. Elizabeth Steele (01:42:33.59) Yeah, it's been fun to be up here in Iowa and it's always good to know other people that are doing the same thing that you're doing in a different area and you know, get out and learn from other people too. Kent Boucher (01:42:43.66) I just got a text front shout out to Juan from N L. Just got a text from him yesterday about how you know, how their harvest was going so far this year. Nice. And it's just nice to know that you know, I could share Nicolas Lirio (01:42:57.186) Someone else is also having a terrible harvest now. Kent Boucher (01:42:59.586) Well well I mean you there's not a lot of people that can relate to you know, I've had it where I've been talking with, you know, conventional corn and bean guys and they're very interested but they don't know how to relate, you know, they don't know how well here's what I would do. You know, it's like they're the you can tell they they wish they could tell you something but they're not quite sure what to say. Whereas when you talk with another person who's doing this, it's even if you're not necessarily sharing trade secrets or anything You just knowing that, hey, this person knows what it's like. There's there's comfort in that. Nicolas Lirio (01:43:33.32) Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. We really, really appreciate you all. And you got brilliant minds. I I I just have to say, and all of you all know. Conservation, all of this that we do, native prairie, whether we're helping with the water, helping with the landscape, helping with the beef that we eat, all of it happens just one mind at a time.