Ep. 280 Biofuel Energy, Evangelical Environmentalists, and an Organic Farmer

Aug 15

This is a a group of interviews of people who are fighting hard for conservation in their own way. To start we have Steve Mowry with Horizon II. He has worked diligently to help put tens of thousands of acres onto the ground in Iowa and Missouri. Next is Tim Olsen with Evangelical Environmental Network. He discusses his work in the Christian Church to help them understand the importance of God’s creation and our stewardship. Lastly, we have our friend and neighbor, Aaron Van Wyk. He is an organic farmer just trying to do right by the land.

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00;00;00;00 - 00;00;20;02
Unknown
Hey, friends. Nicholas Livio here. We have a really cool episode for you all today. We've hinted at it before, but we took three of our favorite episodes of people who are doing something awesome for conservation. These are brand new episodes and we put them all into one. These are three totally different people doing totally different things for conservation.
00;00;20;07 - 00;00;41;22
Unknown
Just to get a peek under the hood at what actually is going on. And hopefully it'll inspire you all to think of how you can have an impact on conservation as well. We hope you enjoy. I'm Mark Canyon, I'm doctor Julie Meacham. I'm Steve Hansen. I'm Jill bee about Chad Gravy. My name is Jeremy French. I'm Laura Walter, Carol Hawkesbury, and owner of Native Seeds.
00;00;41;29 - 00;01;03;10
Unknown
And this is the Prairie Farm podcast. This is how Hairy Backcountry Hunters and Anglers podcast. Skip slie or whitetail. Valerie van Coton, state historical society of Iowa. Doctor Matt Helmer of Iowa state University. My name is Carla Berger with the native habitat project. I'm Jen Mccollam. I appeared out of the wilderness, and this is the Prairie Farm podcast.
00;01;03;14 - 00;01;29;19
Unknown
Welcome to the Prairie Farm podcast. I'm Steve Mallory. I'm the director of land development and prairie establishment from Race Line Alternative Energy. And this is the Prairie Farm podcast. Well, thanks for having me. Yeah. No, I'm really grateful. You know, it's it's really cool. I think that, you would make the trip from central Iowa all the way down here to Kansas City.
00;01;29;22 - 00;01;52;25
Unknown
I know it's a business thing, but, you know, it's really more than that when you walk around and see the intensity of this industry in in grassland birds. And that's really what is focused around is the plight of our grasslands, grassland, birds, grassland, wildlife. It's it's really neat to me at this stage in my life to see so many people coming together, recognizing the problem that we have.
00;01;52;28 - 00;02;15;08
Unknown
And really, I think the plan is out there now. It needs to be done. It's just a matter of getting the will and the resources together to to fix it. Yeah, that's that's interesting. I mean, the will like, mobilizing humans that what a difficult thing to do. I it's so underrated when we talk about historical leaders that they led there.
00;02;15;08 - 00;02;39;19
Unknown
So they did that. And you think well they made smart decisions there. Just the fact before they made any decisions with large amounts of people, the fact that they got large amounts of people to back them, that is a feat unto itself. It's really incredible. Well, there's there's something about human nature that seems to be transcendent. You may remember the old Jim Croce song that has a line, the never seems to be enough time to do the things you want to do once you find him.
00;02;39;21 - 00;02;59;17
Unknown
Well, you think about, you know, we were lucky with the buffalo because there was a couple of people that decided, you know, at the critical time to hang on to enough buffalo that we were able to bring them back. And now they're, you know, they're a population that is safe because they have found an economic market. They found an economic driver.
00;02;59;22 - 00;03;28;05
Unknown
Yeah. To to keep them going. But the we didn't have that economic driver and we didn't have the people that cared enough about the passenger pigeon. We didn't understand that they were going to be gone. Yeah. Same with the Carolina parakeet or, you know, other birds and animals that entered our country. I mean, I don't know, they still talk about, about the the big woodpecker, that, you know, down in the southeast that's gone and maybe there's still 1 or 2.
00;03;28;05 - 00;03;51;08
Unknown
But if we could have known early enough or. Understood. Yeah, that maybe we could have avoided that whole situation just by being judicious about a few, a few anecdotes. It seems to be when things go extinct, it's not like us. Well, it's a slow decline for a while, and then we notice it. By the time we notice it, they got two years left in their their genetics are there's not enough genetics left to keep them going.
00;03;51;08 - 00;04;14;26
Unknown
You know, it's just like not the gene pool is not there. And and then all of a sudden three years later, we don't have a species. And, and and we talk about the big like the sexy ones, you know, the the monarch butterfly and the bison and all these really charismatic ones. But there's I mean, we're finding new plant insect species all the time, let alone the plant and insect species we never discovered in the first place because we killed them all out, you know.
00;04;14;29 - 00;04;38;05
Unknown
Well, Nick, let me give you a little a history. I'm. I'm from Nevada, Missouri, which is in southwest Missouri, in Vernon County. My father was born there. His family had a farm to the north end of town, and he told me that, when he was ten, 12 years old, he would go out a Saturday morning and shoot, and shoot jackrabbits and bring them in to sell at the Sale barn.
00;04;38;08 - 00;04;56;27
Unknown
They had jackrabbits, and they had prairie chickens in southwest Missouri and all the way up to 1952. And I asked him if he had a theory as to why they disappeared at the same time. And he his theory was that they had an invasion of army worms, and they came in with DDT and just inundated the county with DDT.
00;04;56;27 - 00;05;17;08
Unknown
And he said that was the end of our prairie chickens and the end of our, jackrabbits. I don't know that that's 100% of the reason, but we had some pretty good grasslands, you know, in Vernon County. After that, most of our prairie chickens were gone, but we had a few hanging on in southern Vernon County until all the late 70s, early 80s.
00;05;17;08 - 00;05;37;10
Unknown
But they're all gone now. You know, eventually it's habitat. Yeah. And the the the prairie folks like the Missouri Prairie Foundation that I've been a part of for so long. We've collected as much prairie as we can that are native remnants. But I think we found that for prairie chickens, at least, it needs to be a working land.
00;05;37;13 - 00;05;56;02
Unknown
You can't have seven foot tall grass everywhere. Yeah, and provide everything that a prairie chicken needs throughout the year. It needs a probably a well grazed lek to do its thing in the spring. Something the 6 or 7ft tall or three foot tall after winter just isn't going to do it. Yeah, I, I mean, prairie chicken. What?
00;05;56;05 - 00;06;19;26
Unknown
We're seeing elk before. We're seeing prairie chicken. A greater prairie chickens come back to Iowa. Elk. That's crazy. That something so monstrous could survive so large could survive in Iowa. And we can't figure out how to have greater prairie chickens back. I mean, we figured it out. We know what to do. It's just the willingness and the mobilization and the will to get it done is kind of lacking there.
00;06;19;26 - 00;06;38;18
Unknown
And it was interesting. You and I were just at a banquet, led by, mutual friend Ted Cook, who's, the, executive director for anyone who's been on this podcast for a while. You guys know, we've interviewed Ted a couple of times, executive director of North American Grouse Partnership. And, it it's not as talked about.
00;06;38;18 - 00;07;10;15
Unknown
Right. Devon, even though grouse, there's, what is it, ten species that are really struggling for grouse and they're there all across the US and we're not we're not talk we're talking about monarch butterflies. More love. Monarch butterflies. They're beautiful. But what about these birds that used to be so as, the, Cal, Ryan Callahan was saying in the banquet, they were so numerous there that they would create giant clouds of dark spots that would spook, the antelope out there, you know?
00;07;10;15 - 00;07;38;07
Unknown
Well, in the West, at least. And, and and with so that with the prairie chicken, the greater prairie chicken being one of those species that we're fighting to have back, it's just like, how do you mobilize that, you know, to actually bring the change back? Because economic, driven purposes kind of eradicated them. And now we got to flip it and make it make it that some sort of driving, will factor brings them back.
00;07;38;07 - 00;08;02;15
Unknown
And I don't know how to do that. I don't know if you got thoughts, but. Well, there were two really famous biologists that worked in Missouri. I actually met them right at the end of their lives. Charles and Elizabeth Schwartz, they did a book in 1945, Prairie Chicken in Missouri. The highest population of prairie chickens at that time was in Adair and Sullivan County, Missouri, which is in north Missouri, not the far western side.
00;08;02;15 - 00;08;33;28
Unknown
It's very much central to northeast Missouri, and the prairie chickens were so numerous that you had to be careful driving down the road, or you could break out your windshield. That many prairie chickens would fly across at a time. But that was before my time. But when I when I grew up in southwest Missouri, you had to really guard yourself in the morning when you were walking to your deer stand or in the dark, maybe walking down to duck hunt in the morning because there were enough quail that if you stepped on a covered quail in the dark, they'd fly up underneath your coat and, you know, just scare the crap out of you and
00;08;33;28 - 00;08;59;14
Unknown
just. And we could duck hunt in the morning. And then on the way back to the car, change out our shells from 6 to 7 and a half and shoot quail on the way back. And quail and rabbits were ubiquitous on our landscape. We just thought, that's just the way it is now. I bet you have not seen a covey of quail in Iowa, unless you've intentionally gone out to look for them.
00;08;59;17 - 00;09;26;28
Unknown
So our farm consistently we get a covey of 3 or 4. But that's because we have a large prairie farm and nobody else has seen them. So we're, we're the exception right. So but yes, nobody sees quail. And so we were fortunate enough to, to buy some property in Adair County. And I'm going to say 1994, in Missouri, a deer or a deer in 1994.
00;09;27;01 - 00;09;51;17
Unknown
And I'd been turkey hunting there since 1987 or 86, when we would routinely see flocks of 405 hundred turkeys down on the creek bottoms in Wow fields. The early months before the season would open, you'd have 30 and 40 gobblers and fighting it out, out on the own side. Wow. You could go to a spot and have 13 or 40.
00;09;51;17 - 00;10;09;03
Unknown
I call them fairy rings. We're 13 or 14 gobblers in a circle around you. Just going in a circle. And if you messed up one turkey, you just went two ridges over and called to another turkey. That's the way it was. That's the way I thought it would always be. That's, you know, I always thought quail would be the way they would.
00;10;09;06 - 00;10;33;16
Unknown
They were my dad thought jackrabbits would be around his entire lifetime. But we started noticing, you know, the crest of turkeys diminishing. That's when I started reaching out to folks to try to help me develop a plan to have better nesting cover. When was that? When were you starting to realize, like I say, I'm going to say 1995, 1996.
00;10;33;16 - 00;10;52;09
Unknown
Okay. That's pretty early compared to most of Turkey. Numbers were dropping off. Now the biologists will tell you that's a natural thing. After you've had reintroduction, you're going to have a crest, an unnatural high number of birds, and then they're going to flatten out. I think that the predators kind of catch up okay, to the turkey numbers and they learn a little bit.
00;10;52;11 - 00;11;11;20
Unknown
But ours were really starting to diminish to where you couldn't go from ridge to ridge and hunt turkeys. I mean, you had to hunt harder. And I was trying to head that off to where, you know, till, 3 or 4 years ago in our farm, turkeys were starting to get hard to find in. They talk about the general decline in Missouri of the wild turkey.
00;11;11;20 - 00;11;33;10
Unknown
And I saw this coming. It looked too much like the quail declined, which looked a lot like the prairie chicken decline and the. And the and the jackrabbit decline. My dad talked about, and I wasn't I mean, I was devastated by the thinking that we may there may be a day where, you know, my future grandsons that I had didn't have yet wouldn't get a chance to hunt turkeys.
00;11;33;10 - 00;12;04;15
Unknown
And so that led me to, a man that's become a great friend. His name is Frank Oberlin. He was a very famous wildlife photographer and began a native seed business called, pure air Native Seed in north Missouri and became very successful. And, he helped me begin the path of prairie restoration. So I got involved with the Missouri Prairie Foundation, eventually the the Missouri Conservation Heritage Foundation.
00;12;04;17 - 00;12;25;12
Unknown
And that led me eventually to my work with 3D race line and race line alternative energy, which is where a lot of my efforts are going today. Interesting. Okay. So I mean, part of the series, as people have heard from the intro and, and likewise that we're doing right now is, is what are you doing for conservation?
00;12;25;12 - 00;12;44;18
Unknown
And we just want to see that other people are doing something so we don't feel so alone on what we're doing. And, and if people are looking for ways to get involved in their local area or things like that or donating money, you know what? What do they want to put their actual resources behind, whether it's time, energy, effort or, finances.
00;12;44;18 - 00;13;04;23
Unknown
And, so and yours is fascinating to me what you guys have going on. So it's the project called it horizon two. Correct? That's correct. And can you just give us a rundown of what you got going on and how who came up with the idea? How? Let us know. Everything that I'm about to talk about came out of the big brain of Rudy race line.
00;13;04;26 - 00;13;27;04
Unknown
Okay, Rudy. Race line is a very successful engineer with race line and associates and out of Saint Louis, they made their bones manufacturing aluminum can manufacturing plants. But he was always very interested in the outdoors, particularly in grasslands. And he has a, a division of the company in China where he saw what's happening, the landscape there, how there's no birds.
00;13;27;04 - 00;14;03;01
Unknown
So you can go to a park and hear bird sounds and find out. It's actually because of, of, speakers that are placed in the trees. I mean, the, the, the desertification of China is terrible. It's but it's could happen anywhere. I mean, we, we saw it could have very well continued to the United States to the Dust Bowl, but he he had the vision, starting what was called Horizon One in North Missouri to approach, one of one of your least favorite industries, I think, which is a confined animal feed operation.
00;14;03;01 - 00;14;19;23
Unknown
Yeah. Capers. Yeah, I know that, they're unpopular in some ways, but. And we can talk about that another way, you know, in other times about how they supply pork for folks that really couldn't afford it other ways. But, you know, they supply a need and they're not going to go anywhere. But they they have it a problem.
00;14;19;26 - 00;14;45;19
Unknown
And that was they have to do something with their manure and it would go into lagoons. And sometime it's back in the 90s, early 2000 that manure would get out of their lagoons when they'd have big rain events. And, and they had smells that were just causing them to get sued a lot. Rudy approached them and, had a lot of talk and eventually work to deal with them, where he took control of all their manure.
00;14;45;21 - 00;15;17;09
Unknown
He built scrapers for their barns and put tarps over all those, all the lagoons, and captures the methane out of those lagoons. Then it goes through a process that essentially turns the methane into natural gas. Then the natural gas goes into, the pipeline, which is sold on the market, primarily the California market. They have an interest in paying more money than the than the regular market rate for, gas with such a a good carbon score.
00;15;17;10 - 00;15;50;14
Unknown
Yeah. And so that's been pretty successful over the years. Now that price has gone up and down. But his goal was to find a way to create an economic driver for grasslands. He served on the board under. I ask you to serve on the board of the Prairie Foundation. And he said this all the time. He said, you know, altruism is great, but you're never going to get anything changed on a landscape scale through altruism, you have to find an economic driver.
00;15;50;20 - 00;16;40;11
Unknown
So that's in people's interests to create the outcome that you want. So the economic driver that he came up with was to follow the model of what's going on in Europe, in Germany, where they would harvest biomass, put in above ground digesters and create natural gas out of it interest. And so he developed a plan of 30 million acres over the next 30 years of putting, prairie grasslands in the upper Midwest in degraded lands, maybe land that was coming out of CRP or ground that never should have gone into soybean production and ensuring that vision, he was encouraged to apply for and received a climate smart commodities grant for $80 million.
00;16;40;14 - 00;17;06;19
Unknown
Wow. We awarded where's that grant through like the United States Department of Agriculture? Okay, so it's not the, the IRA. The big, it was a separate inflation reduction. Okay. And so the idea was, the grant would allow us to lease, up to 40,000 acres of land in north Missouri and southern Iowa, particularly along the Grand River basin.
00;17;06;21 - 00;17;35;25
Unknown
And we chose the Grand River basin because that's been identified as one of the worst areas for pollution of nitrates that then go into the Missouri River, which go in the Mississippi River, that then go into the Gulf of then Mexico, now America, creating the hypoxic zone. And I'm sure you know, you're aware of that huge area where there just aren't any fish or any fishing that could take place, because that nitrogen uses up all the oxygen in the area.
00;17;35;25 - 00;17;56;28
Unknown
And fish just can't survive. And so I think with the Gulf of America now, I mean, that hits a little differently. Yeah. You think about it being our hypoxic zone. We wouldn't let it happen in the Gulf in there. I mean, in Lake Michigan. Yeah. Didn't happen in Lake Superior. You have such a kind, kind word for hypoxic zone instead of dead zone.
00;17;57;00 - 00;18;19;10
Unknown
That used to be, you know, sure. Such a more gruesome, but so. So that's why you pick that area again. Really? We signed the contract, two years ago in September. I came on board to help in January of last year, and we we got a first thousand acres within about 45 days. Wow. And then, we worked and got it seated.
00;18;19;12 - 00;18;46;11
Unknown
And then we worked, over the next year and this January, we got another 4000 acres seated. That's amazing. So the plan is this year to do 10,000 acres. We we're waiting patiently on the USDA and and doe's to decide that, our our project has worth and that we mesh up with the goals of the administration. Yeah, we think we do really well because we're all about natural gas production.
00;18;46;11 - 00;19;10;15
Unknown
We're about energy independence. Yeah. Yeah, we're about helping landowners, farmers, clean, clean water, you know, soil, protecting our soil from from runoff. We're we're associated with 13 partners, one of which is Iowa State University. You know, you have, who you working with there, doctor? Lisa Schultz. Moore. Okay. Yeah. Who has really pioneered the prairie strips?
00;19;10;18 - 00;19;29;08
Unknown
Yes. She's really gotten a lot of coverage. And, I mean, you guys, we just interviewed one of her, her, coworkers, doctor Matt Helmers as well. And. Yeah, so smart group of people, really. You know, I'd really commend you to to get hold of Lisa. I mean, she's really a brilliant person, and you're not the first to say it, so we're going to have to do that.
00;19;29;08 - 00;19;53;18
Unknown
You're. Yeah. She's very and I mean very brilliant. And and in Iowa really you have a lot of prairie strips. We, we don't have many in Missouri yet. Interesting. We've been fighting 90% of the nitrate runoff can be captured in 10% strips. Yes. Just 20ft. You know, that's all you need. And a a, high quality, diverse, dense prairie buffer is all you need right now.
00;19;53;18 - 00;20;12;11
Unknown
We're partnered up with the Missouri Prairie Foundation and the University of Missouri and a lot of other, you know, organizations that, yeah, that are helping us get there. But right now, as of today, we have 5062 acres. Wow. We have lease. Congratulations. That's over the last 13 months. And you're shooting for 40 and we're shooting for over five years.
00;20;12;11 - 00;20;36;12
Unknown
You for five years. Yeah, it has acres. And then we will have a program of harvesting some amount of the biomass on some basis. We haven't completely figured that out yet. And taking that to the digester to create natural gas. Okay. So I've heard someone tell me that those digesters can only handle one species at a time, but you know, that's just not true.
00;20;36;13 - 00;21;00;04
Unknown
And maybe government regulations are so geared to to that your feedstock approved for, you know, D3 Rins may be only one one, but your digester can certainly handle. Yeah. Anything that will make methane, it can handle animal waste. It can handle fat. It can handle anything that will make methane. It's just an how. You just have to have the right microbes and and have the recipe done correctly.
00;21;00;04 - 00;21;23;02
Unknown
You know, I there's, this, story of this gentleman that I really admire came the wealthiest person in Korea, founded, Hyundai. And he grew up so poor that when he was at school, he had to go home to poop in a bucket, because if his family didn't poop in the bucket so they could use it for fertilizer, they would have starved and died.
00;21;23;02 - 00;22;05;06
Unknown
That's how poor they were. And now my my point is not that we need to be pooping in buckets, but the more desperate you get, the the, the further you're willing to go for conservation. He was being conservative fiscally, but we're being conservative ecologically. The further we're willing to go, ecologically and and what's really cool is that, like a parallel with his story is that we've got a lot of byproduct that we use in our society through, through our giant economic driver that is the US, consumerism that that can be used way better stuff that's going to landfills that doesn't need to go to landfills the way that we are.
00;22;05;08 - 00;22;26;28
Unknown
The way that we are managing our natural resources or just flushing things down the toilet, metaphorically, that I feel like we could just use a better job. For instance, the the methane from the, from the hogs. You know, there's these byproducts where we go out of our way to get power when we've got a lot of this energy here in this methane.
00;22;26;28 - 00;22;41;21
Unknown
And if we would just put a little more due diligence, be a little more efficient, we wouldn't have to be so wasteful on some of the other things. But, anyway, I'm going on a tangent about a kid who used to have to poop in a bucket in order to survive on the farm, but, I'm I'm curious.
00;22;41;21 - 00;23;00;06
Unknown
So with with you guys is 40,000 acres, and you guys are putting in this seed. What? When you're putting together these mixes, what are you looking for? How are you designing them? Why are you designing them that way? Because there's all sorts of stuff. You know, some people do. Switchgrass for just switchgrass. I'm like, well, okay, it's better than nothing.
00;23;00;06 - 00;23;16;03
Unknown
But, you know, there's a long ways from, you know, then some people they'll send, they're really proud of the mix. They've got 12 species in it. And I'm grateful that they've got the 12. But we're, you know, we're we're 40 species away from kind of what I consider a minimum threshold, you know. Well, this has been a long journey.
00;23;16;06 - 00;23;39;05
Unknown
There was a lot of research done back in the mid 2000, early 2000. It's up to the University of Minnesota. And they came to the conclusion that for the production of the most biomass, you needed a minimum of, 12 species. Okay. And so we obtained that and really went up there and, and talked to doctor, Clarence Layman and his partner and came up with, you know, that information.
00;23;39;07 - 00;24;06;05
Unknown
Then we consulted with, our conservation partners because we have a three part Venn diagram that we operate off of with, with, race, land, alternative energy. One part, obviously, is gas production, because that's what's going to pay the bills. But one other part of the van is ecological services. And the ecological services are retention of water. And, you know, infiltrating water into the into the ground below.
00;24;06;11 - 00;24;30;06
Unknown
Yeah. Avoiding runoff. You know, most people don't think about this, but if you have a, a good pasture like a, a prairie and you get a three inch rainfall, the amount of rain, amount of runoff from that prairie is about 2/10 of an inch. If you take that same three inch rain on a bare row crop field, you get two inches of runoff.
00;24;30;08 - 00;24;51;19
Unknown
So multiply. You know, a 300 acre farm if two inches against millions of acres. And what does that do to our rivers? Yeah. In rain, in big rain events. Maybe not just a three inch rain. Maybe you get an eight inch rain in a 24 hour period. Well, I how many 500 year rainfalls have we had or floods have we had in the last in the last 20 years?
00;24;51;19 - 00;25;04;06
Unknown
Yeah. It's not so much. We've had big rainfalls. Yeah. It's that we're not allowing the water to infiltrate into the groundwater, into the under into the system. You know. You know, it's.
00;25;04;08 - 00;25;31;23
Unknown
Yeah. If you think about it, it's it's a bell curve okay. With rainfall, if you have rainfall falling on grassland, it starts off slow and it gently goes up and it and it slowly goes down. But if you have no cover or you have an impermeable surface like a parking lot, it starts and it immediately goes high and for a short duration, then immediately goes low.
00;25;31;25 - 00;26;08;03
Unknown
And so that's what creates the flood situation. Yeah, we have water like that. That's where your topsoil goes. It goes right into the rivers. So that's something I've found really interesting. Recently. We talk about the 100 year floods. 500 year floods. That's like Spencer, Iowa just had a crazy southwestern Minnesota sided crazy flood. And what I've noticed is that every town might only get that flood once every 100 years, but that town is one of 400 towns and are in a watershed area.
00;26;08;07 - 00;26;37;03
Unknown
So the river doesn't get it. Once every 100 years. The river gets it because it has a catch. That rain in that watershed, it gets it once every 15 years. Now, I'm not a meteorologist. I'm not a, statistician. Statistician. I don't know, I don't do math, that often, but my my point being that like, yes, yes, that one town might only get that flood once every 100 years, but that watershed into that river, the Missouri River, it's getting it every five years.
00;26;37;10 - 00;27;02;05
Unknown
And it's becoming quite an issue. And especially not only thinking about like, the major flooding we're doing is we're analyzing the rivers, but the amount of nitrates that boom immediately in the water, the amount of nutrient sediment that's just directly going down to the Gulf of Mexico, America. Well, at the same time that we've converted our grasslands to marginal row crop, we've also converted our grasslands to cool season grass pastures.
00;27;02;07 - 00;27;24;29
Unknown
They're dominated by fescue. Yeah. Or, you know, our other just cool season thing. No diversity. And they don't they don't retain the water. Yeah. It's shallow rooted stuff. And so it runs off. And a lot of times you'll have these pastures are that's one of the beauties of, of cool season fescue is the cattle will graze it all the way to the ground and there's nothing to slow that water down.
00;27;24;29 - 00;27;51;14
Unknown
And so it's not much better than just bare dirt. Interesting. Where, where in Iowa and Missouri do you have diverse grasslands being grazed in large scale? You really don't. Yeah. We're trying I mean, we're we really believe that's the future. And it really every cattle guy, from what I understand, should have 25 to 30% of their operation in warm season grasses, just as a hedge against those drought years.
00;27;51;17 - 00;28;13;07
Unknown
Yeah. Because, you know, they have broad shoulders that, you know, a native prairie, Missouri or Iowa doesn't care about a drought. It's going to be green. It's going to produce 3 to 6 tons of forage an acre. When in July or August, a fescue pasture is going to go to zero. Yeah, absolutely. That I was talking about the the three parts of the Venn diagram.
00;28;13;07 - 00;28;36;08
Unknown
Yeah. Sorry. We tracked on ecological services. That's all right. I'm disciplined. I'll get you back right here. And the second part was ECA services and the third part's wildlife. Okay. That's you know, that's so important to me. That's probably my number one thing I talk about. And it's so important to Rudi because, you know what's happened to ground nesting birds in the Midwest since 1970?
00;28;36;10 - 00;29;03;12
Unknown
We've lost the great majority of them. Oh, yeah, we haven't lost all the species, but we've lost so many of the their numbers. And there's some that are just critically imperiled. Yeah. And, like I said, when I was a kid, you know, the northern bobwhite quail was ubiquitous. Now it's not in those days, we had wildlife like the quail because of the way people accidentally farmed.
00;29;03;15 - 00;29;31;29
Unknown
Now, if you want quail, you have to do it for me. Because of the change in farming practices. Yeah. He didn't have roundup in those days. We didn't have you know field of field or edge to edge farming in those days. And so if you want to preserve your quail or your other ground nesting birds, you have to act foolishly and leave some habitat for them and, leave the kind of habitat that they can utilize not just for nesting but for breeding cover.
00;29;31;29 - 00;29;51;06
Unknown
And what you guys do in promoting Prairie, it's all about really all about breeding cover. It's about creating the insect base so that, the birds have something to eat once they hatch. Most people don't understand that you can have a switchgrass field, and you're not doing really a ton for your birds. You. It is cover, but it doesn't supply food.
00;29;51;08 - 00;30;16;16
Unknown
Yeah. You know, switchgrass didn't turn out to be a great fuel for producing, electricity because of all the glass that's in the stems. The silica, because it, you know, the silica. Collected on the on the heat exchangers. They ruined the heat exchanger. So they had to go away from that huge project. It was in Iowa and north Missouri, ten years ago or 15 years ago.
00;30;16;19 - 00;30;36;15
Unknown
That's because of all the silica. The same thing is with bugs. Bugs can't eat grass really the same way because of the silica. But they survive on or forbs. And so in our 28 species mix, all but five of our species are forbs. Wow. Because that's the basis for bugs and the and without bugs, you're not going to have birds.
00;30;36;17 - 00;31;05;11
Unknown
Yeah, absolutely. What are the five grasses that you've got going on? Big bluestem, little bluestem, Indian grass, switchgrass inside oats. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Man, that is super awesome. So 40,000 acres. That's a lot of acres to manage and deal with. How who's doing that? Well, that'll be us. Yeah, you know it. It'll transfer over from, you know, grant money to race line money as we get our digesters developed.
00;31;05;13 - 00;31;24;04
Unknown
Yeah. And, you know, it'll we'll have a program of harvest and rest and maybe some grazing. Who knows? Yeah, at at times. But, right now it's it's been a matter of planning it. And then we, we mow it a couple times a year. For the first two years of establishment, we figured by year three will be harvesting.
00;31;24;10 - 00;31;47;24
Unknown
Okay. How do you, are you comparable the rental rates on on ag fields or. I mean, northern Missouri, southern Iowa, it's a little more forced said there's like, it's not that big long flat, you know, the corn fields that I had to get on the learning curve pretty quick and figured out that, parts of the north Missouri are different than other parts.
00;31;47;24 - 00;32;08;19
Unknown
Oh, yeah. For example, Mercer County and Decatur County are considerably lower than gentry and worth County. And that that land over there is a little less sloped. It has a little better soils. And so the rental rates are higher and we can't compete with them. Just like CRP has a hard time competing with the rental rates over there.
00;32;08;22 - 00;32;28;04
Unknown
Yeah, but if you get a little, you know, like in Mercer County, we we do better. And what we've learned is it so many of the landowners are hunter conservationists and not just Missouri folks. A lot of folks from Wisconsin, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, all over the country have purchased land there for the goal of having a 200 inch deer.
00;32;28;06 - 00;32;44;08
Unknown
And the problem of, you know, they could do the same thing in Iowa. The problem is, you can't get a deer tag in Iowa every year. And so they want to get as close to that Iowa line as they can, thinking that's the magic thing about being close to Iowa. So they can buy a tag over the counter in Missouri every year.
00;32;44;11 - 00;33;02;26
Unknown
But, you know, they're learning that with the habitat, they'll kill their 200 inch deer. And we have some really successful hunter conservationists, and they really love the prairie. Yeah. It's not much of a sale to them. They come to me, but we just happen to be blessed in that area to have that many hunter conservationists.
00;33;03;03 - 00;33;28;12
Unknown
You know what's really interesting? I don't think this. I think this is the very first time I've ever talked about species not going extinct, but great species decline, water infiltration, the economics of making it makes sense for landowners and the, and hunting all in one. I mean, you really you really carry a lot. You're at a, a joint venture, I think that represents the pheasants forever and the grouse partnership that you've been a part of.
00;33;28;12 - 00;33;46;24
Unknown
And and, I think that's awesome. I'm curious. People are looking and they say, well, that's great, but what can we do? You know, if people are specifically who are in the region of northern Missouri, southern Iowa, what, what are you looking for? Or do you guys have it all set up and you're just you got a good to go?
00;33;46;26 - 00;34;12;18
Unknown
Well, I've been preaching this for a long time. If you have the financial wherewithal to buy land, buy it. Land is going to double every 7 to 10 years. Just always has in my lifetime. You're not going to lose money over your lifetime in purchasing land. If you have a a prairie ethic or a wildlife ethic and you have the ability to do it, buy it.
00;34;12;21 - 00;34;40;07
Unknown
It's so much better than just renting it or just asking permission to buy it. And what you'll find as a hunter. I'm older, and so I've been through these processes. You know, when you start off, you just want to kill any animal, then you want to kill a lot of animals, and then you want to kill the trophy animal, and then you come around and it becomes more important to have the animals than it does to kill them, because by then you have grandchildren and you want to preserve that opportunity for your grandkids.
00;34;40;10 - 00;35;04;17
Unknown
And so not everybody has the financial ability to go spend $4,000 an acre or whatever it is, on buying land. But if you do do it and find out all of a sudden that your life is going to have a purpose that you didn't know it could, it is so rewarding to go out and kill a field of fescue and plant 30 species pollinator mix, and then next thing you know, you know, you kick up a covey a quail.
00;35;04;24 - 00;35;26;26
Unknown
Yeah, there's nothing more rewarding than that. It really is great. But I understand most people probably don't have the ability to do that. But you can come together with other folks in organizations, and there are so many good conservation organizations, you can come together and help support them. I'm a big supporter of, you know, past president, Missouri Prairie Foundation.
00;35;26;29 - 00;35;49;28
Unknown
Yeah, Missouri Prairie Foundation has preserved over 5000 acres of native remnant prairie ever plowed in the state of Missouri. Wow. From our founding in 1966 and just a little donation there added up with other donations mean that every time one of those native remnant prairies come up for sale, we buy it because it's not just the things that are growing above the ground, it's what's below the ground.
00;35;49;28 - 00;36;17;23
Unknown
Yeah, it's the, you know, the native remnant prairie soil. You can't recreate a thousand years. Yeah. We can re construct a prairie, but we'll never have the soil that that native remnant in our lifetime or maybe ten lifetimes. It's, once it's gone through agriculture, the very specialized soil microbes disappear, you know, generalized soil microbes. And, we're just.
00;36;17;26 - 00;36;43;24
Unknown
You can't replace those species. Oh, and above the ground. So there might be 250 species and an 80 native remnant prairie, maybe 300. Good luck doing that. In a reconstruction. It's really good luck even sourcing that many species from you. You can call every native seed producer in the United States. I mean, good luck. It'd be tough. Well, I'm curious, so if someone's got land, are you still accepting landowners for the project?
00;36;43;24 - 00;37;00;25
Unknown
Absolutely. We're going to. We're going to talk to them. We're going to have them ready, ready to go. Right now, we're primarily interested in, row crop. That is marginal. We don't want your good road crop. We want the marginal road crop up on the hillsides. We'll talk to you about ground that's in pasture, but that's more complicated process.
00;37;00;25 - 00;37;21;16
Unknown
The federal government requires us to go through what's called a CPA 52 review. So if the land has not been a row crop for the last seven years, it has to be reviewed two levels by the USDA. And it's, so it is it is more challenging. And and since the change of administrations, they've laid off the one company that was doing the CPA, CPA 52 reviews.
00;37;21;16 - 00;37;49;17
Unknown
So we're kind of on hold on taking pastures right now. Yeah. But I'm curious. So so you got, you got a field, got a lot of biodiversity you're chopping up. You bring the, the hay or the, the tonnage over to this plant. I mean, to haul that tonnage is hundreds of dollars, so it's expensive. So, you know, I have a hard time imagining that that truckload of tonnage is going to provide.
00;37;49;20 - 00;38;05;14
Unknown
It would need to then provide thousands of dollars worth of electricity. Well, we do that. We are. Well, we're not make electricity. We're making gas. Yes. That's right. So we're focusing within the 30 mile radius of each plant. Oh okay. So you have a couple different plants. We'll have five different plants. And so yeah I didn't realize that.
00;38;05;14 - 00;38;26;23
Unknown
But when you string those all together it's it's all of Mercer County. It's all of the air County. It's all of Sullivan County. Yeah. It's a lot of, you know, counties in north Missouri and southern Iowa, and you the way this the plants will be located. Interesting. Yeah. Well, that is a really cool project. I really appreciate you joining me, Steve.
00;38;26;25 - 00;38;37;06
Unknown
Before we go, if there's one thing that you could change, snap of the finger about this world, what would you change about this world? Yeah.
00;38;37;09 - 00;39;01;16
Unknown
I think it would be about the disconnect that we have between humans and the outdoors. I really believe there's a something that I've heard the expression it's like outdoor deprivation syndrome, where if you know folks that live in the cities that don't get the opportunity to get off a concrete, they really lose perspective in their in life about what's important.
00;39;01;18 - 00;39;21;20
Unknown
Yeah. You know, we have in politics this great divide between the rural areas and the city folks. I mean, everything is it seems like it's blue in the cities and red in the country. And I want I'd like to see that come together. And some of it is coming together where city folks are wanting to know where their food comes from.
00;39;21;22 - 00;39;49;11
Unknown
And they like locally sourced food. Now, you know, wealthy folks can afford that moderately, you know, moderately income folks really kind of have to rely on the industrial. Yeah. Agriculture. But to, for folks to, for everybody to have the opportunity to get their, you know, the feet, their feet and the wildlife. Yeah. The feet in nature and experience wildlife is because it it just does something to your blood pressure.
00;39;49;13 - 00;39;55;21
Unknown
It does something to your outlook. You know, about.
00;39;55;24 - 00;40;25;28
Unknown
About why we're here and, what we can do for our grandkids. Yeah. You learn that it's not all about you when you're working out in the field, working on prairies, and you're working for animals that, you know, need some help? Yeah, that that is amazing. I you share that exact answer with, John F Lacey and, our good friend Tabitha Panis, who said we got to get outside.
00;40;26;00 - 00;40;50;08
Unknown
Otherwise, we're not connected and we make poor decisions in life. So I really appreciate it for everyone listening. You guys know well that just like Steve is doing, just like everyone else here. Listen, about in this series, conservation can start with you because conservation happens only one mind at a time. Hey, this is Reverend Tim Olson. I'm the upper Midwest coordinator for the Evangelical Environmental Network.
00;40;50;11 - 00;41;10;08
Unknown
Welcome to the Prairie Farm podcast. Okay, I really want to just I just want to do this. I'm going to do it. Okay. Reverend, I just wanted to say that when someone someone has. Reverend, it's just makes me think of, like, an old Western movie or something like that. Okay. My turn, my turn, my turn. Okay. Okay. Reverend.
00;41;10;10 - 00;41;35;07
Unknown
How was that? Oh, we feel. You know what? Just call me Tim. Oh, my mom call me Tim, and that's good enough. I wanted to call you vicar because that's my other favorite. Or father. Man of cloth. Man of the cloth term. I remember when I graduated from seminary and the first time someone called a pastor, I looked around, see who's he talking to?
00;41;35;09 - 00;41;59;23
Unknown
So? So, we we have Reverend Tim Olsen here, and, we're at Smokey Row, and you're welcome for thinking of that Colter Wall song right now. It starts ours. I. Reverend, what is that song? Do you remember that? I think that was the first Devil Wears a suit and tie. Okay, okay. There's a great, great song. Was that the one that I introduced Colter Wall to you know, introduce me on, Kate McKinnon, or so I do like that one.
00;42;00;02 - 00;42;18;12
Unknown
Black sleeping on the black top or something. Yeah. Nick, like, nearly tipped over backwards out of his chair. The first time. I mean, it's real. Well, and I felt relevant for once, and I shared it with a bunch of my friends, but I will say Kent spoiled it a little bit because he was like, yeah, he's well, he described him.
00;42;18;12 - 00;42;40;18
Unknown
So if you don't know Colter Wall as just look him up. By the way, he did a podcast. Now I think he went on, whose was it? It was Dale Brisby maybe. Dylan maybe. And, look, Colter Wall, if you're out there, we love the prairie. We love ranching. We love all that lifestyle. If you ever want to do another podcast, come on over to the Prairie Farm podcast would be a great time.
00;42;40;20 - 00;43;07;07
Unknown
But anyways, we have Reverend Tim Olson here with us with the Evangelical Environmental Network. Say that five times fast. I came across Tim at the Practical Farmers of Iowa Conference this past January. I hope you didn't get sick after that. By the way, I, I was fine, okay? Because I was man, it feels like every time we go to meet, I have some kind of health ailment.
00;43;07;10 - 00;43;40;14
Unknown
I, I didn't know it yet then, but I was coming down with the worst sickness I think I've had since I was a little kid. Influenza A, I've never had that before. Yeah, okay. Is allergic to the pureness in your heart. So it's like he starts hissing and foaming at the mouth. But, but I was I was walking by my feverish stupor and I saw this, this, he had some kind of, banner or something, and it said just your name.
00;43;40;15 - 00;44;06;15
Unknown
I was like, evangelical environmental network. Those are two things that don't go together. And I think I stopped and I turned around and I said to you, hey, those are two things that don't go together evangelical and environmental. And I think he thought I was going to be some kind of like, anti, religion, you know, complete, you know, over the overbearing, crazy person.
00;44;06;17 - 00;44;33;02
Unknown
And so I could tell you were like, like loading like, okay, what's this guy going to say next? And I told you I go to church. But what I was hitting on was this reality that it has, I grew up in the church, and I was a biology teacher for eight years, and understanding nature and science, which is really can just be simply said, science is the study of nature, right?
00;44;33;02 - 00;44;55;09
Unknown
I don't care if it's physics. I don't care if it's chemistry. You're looking at the natural world, trying to come up with some kind of explanation. And yet I felt like when I was at work while I was a teacher. So when I was at work from Monday through Sunday, and this is a joke. Okay. One man, and but then, but then when I'd go to, when I was at work, I could, I could be curious about these things.
00;44;55;09 - 00;45;29;20
Unknown
I could, I could seek this out and it would, it would all feel good. You know, I'm learning. I'm even in school, you know, as, as a college student figuring things out. But then when you're in the pew on Sunday, that stuff's out the window. We don't talk about that here. In fact, if you bring up certain topics like climate change, we I it's a selfish, like, thing that I do on here when I know that I have a fellow, Christian or believer on the podcast.
00;45;29;22 - 00;46;00;19
Unknown
I like to ask him, hey, what do you think about climate change? Or what do you think about the creation story? You know, what do you think about. We just did that. We've done that. I think to Chad Gravy twice now. Nicholas and John O'Keefe, we did once. Yep, yep. And, the topic will come up. You know, Aldo Leopold talked about, he, he had this little diss on, how Christians view the land they called the Abrahamic view of nature.
00;46;00;21 - 00;46;22;26
Unknown
Which is dominion, right? The Dominion man. Yes. And I think I figured out why he says Abrahamic. By the way. But I'm not I am not an expert on Islam at all, but Abrahamic would include. Yeah, Christianity and Islam. So and so that my gosh, I always thought he mixed up Abraham and Moses because Moses was the one who wrote the Torah.
00;46;22;26 - 00;47;02;17
Unknown
Oh, no. No, it's it's like, it's a it's a technical, historic Judaism. Yeah. Yeah, it it's a technical historical term is Abrahamic religions. Okay. So that, that that's why that term was used. Okay. I figured that out. The other it dawned on me, but, that the oil and water relationship of the church and, and, science is you can feel it, you know, I mean, if you're in a, if you're in a, a group of people and you're talking about it and I'm not saying it's just one denomination, it's, it's I think, well, evangelical brings up a lot of denominations.
00;47;02;17 - 00;47;28;24
Unknown
Right. Would you agree with that and stick close to your mark. Don't forget it's, I would say that first of all, you were not the only person who said the same thing. Okay, good. So you were you were one of four people. I went to three different conferences like this. And every conference, somebody said evangelical and environmental issues seem to go together.
00;47;28;26 - 00;47;47;10
Unknown
You like pain? I know. In fact, I was at one conference where there was this term. Little lady came up, said quietly, sir, that says evangelical environmental. What does that mean?
00;47;47;12 - 00;48;29;19
Unknown
Well, n has been around for 30 years. Wow. Trying to bridge that gap. Yeah. Between those who claim to be evangelical and the whole climate environmental movement and understanding. In fact, the president, the CEO of E n is not only theologically trained, but she's also has a PhD in climate science. Wow. So she she fully understands that you can't separate one's faith from the science, because it seems to me the science oftentimes proves the faith.
00;48;29;21 - 00;48;56;01
Unknown
There was a, we were promoting a documentary called From the Heartland, and it's it follows the journey of a Minnesota farm family who, 2014, started this journey of moving from conventional tillage to to soil health. Regenerative on on 7000 acres. Whoa. Wow. I mean, this is up. Yeah, that's that's huge. And there's in documentary. There is a soil scientist University of Minnesota.
00;48;56;01 - 00;49;13;03
Unknown
And they're looking at the soil and they're and they're kind of overwhelmed by the number of earthworms that are in that. Yeah. Well, we showed this documentary, in fact, just this afternoon, and a pastor in the audience said two words, said, tell me more about this earthworm thing.
00;49;13;05 - 00;49;36;27
Unknown
What does that mean? You means because of a concentrated soil health, of putting more, organic matter in the soil and cover crops. That helps with earthworms. Yes. And the. And the soil scientist said this. We have to move from working against nature to working with nature. We can put that in faith terms. We have to stop working against God's creation.
00;49;37;04 - 00;50;11;24
Unknown
Yeah. And partner with God in his creation. Yeah. And when we do that, it changes the whole perspective of our responsibility of honoring the mandate that God gave us to tend the garden. Yep. Yep. Yeah. What does it look like to successfully tend the garden. I think as an organization for me it is a is that we can guarantee our children and our grandchildren and great grandchildren and our descendants, we can guarantee that they're going to live in a world free of pollution.
00;50;11;27 - 00;50;29;24
Unknown
They're going to be able to drink the water without fear of, pollution. The air is going to be clean, the food is going to be healthy, and we're going to live lives of abundance. Yeah, I like that. It's a beautiful picture we just had. Well I had Halle hearing on Nicolas had a power outage and disappeared.
00;50;29;27 - 00;50;49;20
Unknown
It was a huge huge bummer because I dude was awesome. Yeah. So Halle hearing from ba and writes for Field and Stream, you just joined us yesterday for a podcast and he, he brought that up. He said, can't I envision a day where your grandkids can take a tin cup and dip into the Des Moines River and get a drink?
00;50;49;22 - 00;51;14;10
Unknown
And I mean, that is such a far cry from where things are right now. But it is a quantifiable, point that we could reach if if, everyone could get on board and, and see these things as being an important part and see the problem as being a crisis, which it is. And so I agree with you, I think, though I think those are those are great sentiments.
00;51;14;12 - 00;51;39;25
Unknown
Could you imagine the miracle if the if the soul in the Gulf of Mexico began to decrease and disappear eventually. Yeah, yeah. Just like when you talk about a miracle of God. Yeah. There we are. Truly a miracle, right? Right. Yeah. So let's let's talk about that a little bit. The tend the garden thing. So what Tim is and we understand that if you're tuning in this, you may not you may not be a follower of Christ.
00;51;39;25 - 00;52;02;10
Unknown
You may not be a Christian. You may think that, we believe in fairy tales and that kind of thing, which is. But you're fair. That's fair. You can you can think that everyone's entitled to their opinion. But, and know that we still love you. Yeah. We don't think differently of you. Right. But if you understand the Bible, you go back to the Genesis account.
00;52;02;12 - 00;52;32;12
Unknown
And, when God made man, the first role that he had was to take care of this perfect natural existence, which was the Garden of Eden. Right. And, that's actually where I got one of my daughters names. That that concept of living so close to nature, having, like you said, like you describe there in abundance every resource you could imagine that you would need was there.
00;52;32;15 - 00;53;03;23
Unknown
And man's job was to tend it. And where the Dominion mandate comes in, which is mentioned in there as well. Right. You will have I don't remember the exact. Nicholas, can you do a quick search? Find the Dominion Bible verse. This idea of my guess is Genesis 128. That's a pretty good guess, I bet. I just want to put that Chad Gravy was the one who used this term.
00;53;03;23 - 00;53;33;17
Unknown
It use this terminology, which I, I really, really appreciate it. You said Genesis 128. Wow. Read it, read it. I know I didn't pull it up. All right. One keep going Chad gravy. So Chad Gravy said dominion doesn't mean dominate. Yeah. It's, same root word, but it's like. Yeah, because I used to. I used to like whenever I heard that word dominion in the Bible, believing that it is God's word, right?
00;53;33;20 - 00;54;09;19
Unknown
It's like, why do you have to use that one, you know, and and but he's right. He's like, no. When something has dominion over over creation in this case. Right. And and, even if you don't believe the Bible, I think we can all agree that man has an outsized effect on nature. We've had people on here talk about how they they believe that some of the, one of the reasons we've lost so much of our biodiversity is because for millennia, humans have been changing the landscape in some way.
00;54;09;19 - 00;54;39;08
Unknown
And now, of course, today it's very outsized. And how we do that, we excavate, we pave, we, clear cut and and, so on, so forth. Right. Pollute. And so the idea there being that if you have so much influence over something, there should be care associated with it. Right. And, and I think the best example is, is boss employee relationship.
00;54;39;08 - 00;54;58;22
Unknown
Your boss technically has dominion over you while you're at work to like, say, this is what you're going to do. This is, this is, your, your to do list. But if you've ever had a boss who then bleeds over into the dominate, where, you know, I have a friend who he, he's retired now. He had a boss that would dominate.
00;54;58;22 - 00;55;20;09
Unknown
He would. And if you if he knew that this guy had plans to, go away for the weekend, he'd say, hey, I need you here Saturday morning. Just because he knew he was going to have his kid's graduation party or whatever, you know, that is that is, an inappropriate usage that is dominating something. And I'd be a terrible person to work for, right?
00;55;20;11 - 00;55;36;29
Unknown
Whereas Dominion would be. Hey, you know what? I'm I'm responsible for these people here at work. I need to make sure that they're safe. And you make sure that they're equipped to do the work that that's here. I need to make sure that, they feel supported and cared for. I need to make sure that they're getting their work done.
00;55;36;29 - 00;55;54;28
Unknown
Yeah, I you know, that is just such a healthier view of that. Well, even even looking at the relationship between parent and child, the parent has dominion over the child. If my kid has a fever and is sick, what am I going to do? Right. Yeah, I'm going to take that child to the doctor because they might be healed.
00;55;55;05 - 00;56;21;27
Unknown
Yeah, well, if we have dominion over creation, creation has a fever. Yeah. It's our responsibility to find a way to help creation heal itself. And within God's unique and genius creation story, the means of healing is already there. We just have to come alongside and trigger it. I think I think that we. Well. And stop doing some of the things that cause the fever.
00;56;21;29 - 00;56;51;19
Unknown
I think that's part of it too, in some of us. Convenience. Right. We like to do things easy. We want insta gratification. You know we can talk about conservation agriculture. And one of the, one of the real concerns is having the patience to allow the system to correct itself. Yeah. As I work with farmers who have gone through, no chill and Stripped Hill and so on, they are not seeing real benefits until you're four or 5 or 6 after they start.
00;56;51;22 - 00;57;14;15
Unknown
Well, if you're expecting, I'm going to change today, this growing season and this fall, I'm going to see a difference. It's not going to happen. Right. And so part of our role, I think, is as folks of faith, is to have enough faith in God to allow patience to guide us. Right, that if we wait on God, we're partnering with God, we will see change in benefit.
00;57;14;17 - 00;57;39;11
Unknown
You know? And I think that's that's a real critical story. As we think about, how do we encourage more farmers, producers to move in that regenerative direction is that we have to be patient with them, and they have to be patient with the system to allow the the already intricate type of healing to take place. It's there. It's just like that, that site.
00;57;39;11 - 00;58;15;24
Unknown
So site is showing that that clump of earthworms. Yeah. Health is happening. The biodiversity is moving back in. Yeah. Do you think God cares about what happens to the earth? I think God cares very much what happens to the earth. Why? Well, I think from the standpoint of we were upfront in the Genesis narrative, God tells us to tend well, actually before that in the in specially in chapter one of Genesis, every time there is a adding an addition to the creation story, what does he see at the end of the day?
00;58;15;26 - 00;58;26;25
Unknown
It is good. And he saw that it I saw from the beach on that trivia. And those are one of the foundational things I wish you knew less about the Bible.
00;58;26;28 - 00;58;52;03
Unknown
And I think that's one of the critical things in that narrative. We have God at the end of each day saying, and it is good. And in the six days it it is very good. Yeah. So God thinks it's good. Yeah. Then God must have a love for his creation, right? And he has a love for creation. Enough love for humanity that he said, humans, I want you to care for this creation of I, which I believe to be good.
00;58;52;03 - 00;59;18;20
Unknown
Yeah. Our trouble is we've lost the definition of what it means to have a good right relationship with not only God but with creation. It's all about relationship. How do we relate to the world around us, the natural world. Yeah. How do we relate to to even even our backyards? Yeah. To the grasses and the and the critters that we find back there is it is it more domination or is it dominion?
00;59;18;25 - 00;59;49;16
Unknown
Yeah. Are we in right relationship. Yeah. And I think how we relate to the natural world speaks and is a reflection how we relate to God. Yeah. Nicholas has been saying something similar for a long time. What what is it like? It goes against our internal like our internal world reflects. Oh, yeah. How how we people like having control over something because they don't have control over what's going on inside of them.
00;59;49;16 - 01;00;15;25
Unknown
Right. The thought is kind of a derivative of how we do. How we do one thing is how we do everything. And we as humans, usually out of fear, occasionally out of greed, but usually it's out of fear, love control. We really want to control things and just how we want to control the earth around us, and how we will often end up finding ourselves trying to control relationships around us, control the people and the organizations around us.
01;00;15;25 - 01;00;40;07
Unknown
And it's just a control nature around us. So it's just not, better. And so if if prairie Kansas prairie is a rebuke, I would say, not disagree with that, but I would say prairie is it is a test because, prairie doesn't fit in perfect boxes. It doesn't always look beautiful. Sometimes it just looks like what we are conditioned to think is wheat, green weeds.
01;00;40;07 - 01;01;08;21
Unknown
Right. There's nothing. There's hardly anything flowering or maybe a little bit of yellow, but it's just a lot of green. And, how are we able to handle that and be, not. Our internal world isn't all messed up over not not being able to control our external world. And if we are able to have peace with that, peace with how Prairie looks, I think that goes a long ways with, our eternal soul and and, the peace we experience there and it can we see beauty in the chaos.
01;01;08;23 - 01;01;36;24
Unknown
Oh, I see a great class. Can we say beauty in that? And I think that's part of this, this, this right relationship with God's creation. We're not we're not worshiping creation, but rather by doing that right relationship creation. We're worshiping the creator, right? And we're we're. And because it's almost a sacred task, right? How do I care for this, this piece of of God's creation that I am been called to take care of?
01;01;36;27 - 01;02;04;05
Unknown
How do I take care of in such a way that honors God, right? Cares for my neighbor downstream, right? Yeah. And gives me something that I can pass on to the next generation that is better than the day I found it, right? Yeah. The. I think when we see those, you know, you walk into a really healthy prairie or you look out on some alpine vista or on a, you know, a big canyon or something like that.
01;02;04;05 - 01;02;30;17
Unknown
And you see all the diversity. It's not just diversity of life. We talk about that all the time on here. It's diversity of color. It's diversity of shape, diversity of light, diversity of sound, even smell. And those are those are moments when I feel like I'm staring at the fingerprints of God, like, this is this. This is his creativity played out for me to see.
01;02;30;17 - 01;02;57;22
Unknown
Here, I get it. I get to crawl into his white, you know, his view of things a little bit and, and, if you if we have more of those places, I think that does something spiritually for people. They it helps them. We have a good friend. He'll know, that we're telling his story here, but we won't mention who this friend is.
01;02;57;24 - 01;03;36;13
Unknown
He sent a, thing to Nicholas and myself once, and he talked about the time when he realized there was a God. After being agnostic for a long most of his life, it was he witnessed something in nature happen. And he said, I just knew that something had had to make that. And while you're describing when we leave behind more of those fingerprint places, I think that is a gift, a spiritual gift given to those who come after us to come to know God.
01;03;36;15 - 01;04;05;26
Unknown
Because of it's all beige and windblown and and, foggy and, bland. It's pretty easy to think that there's something better. But when you see all of that diversity, of all those things coming in through your five senses, it, it it overwhelms us and it changes our focus from around us to upward and, and or should.
01;04;05;26 - 01;04;25;17
Unknown
Right. And, you know, because you brought up a good point, you can't get caught up on worshiping the creation instead of the creator. I think Romans talks about that right. Your focus needs to be directed upward, but a very helpful, a very helpful tool that is being able to see those things that inspire us to do so is a creation healing?
01;04;25;19 - 01;04;50;27
Unknown
I mean, how many times have you had a tough day? Yeah. You go out and just be in the openness. Yeah. It's like your blood pressure decreases. I can breathe again. Yeah. When I was doing some nonprofit work in South Dakota, we were building teaching gardens for title one elementary schools to teach Stem principles and story after story from teachers who talked about students had behavioral problems.
01;04;51;00 - 01;05;17;09
Unknown
They will get in the garden and they would take their hands and dig in the soil. Yeah there's something about that. And they became calm. Yeah. Their behavior changed you know. And there's something healing about that. That touch that. Yeah. Feel of creation. I'm a beekeeper. And if you want to believe there's a God, watch how a colony of honeybees behaves and operates and functions.
01;05;17;09 - 01;05;40;16
Unknown
Yeah. I mean, there's a superorganism, and they're one of the few creatures that we humans have tried to dominate. Yeah. You can't write. They don't read the same books I read or watch the same beekeeping YouTube videos I do. Yeah, they change the rules all the time. So? So as a participant in creation, I have to become a learner.
01;05;40;18 - 01;06;04;20
Unknown
Yeah, an observer and a reader. Like one of the greatest things that happened that that was really, I think, detrimental to understanding how science is. It's science, but also it's applied science of husbandry, the idea of husbandry, of a being able to look at the soil and read the soil, you know, read what weeds are there, read the moisture, the insects, just like inside.
01;06;04;20 - 01;06;23;15
Unknown
Go to my bee colony. I have to be able to read the corn. And that tells me how healthy the bees are. Yeah. Or do I have to have intervention? So part of that comes only because we step back. We look at the wonder. And let either the land teach us or the beehive teach us. Yeah. Yeah.
01;06;23;19 - 01;06;59;05
Unknown
Wow. You know, so something that that makes me think of was Carol told me once last summer we had some mishap on the farm or something and he said, just remember, Kent, this business will humble you. And it's so true because you have to know all these different species. You have to know how they respond to different, different things you introduce them to, to how do they grow with other species, how what weeds want to take over their field, you know, and and it's it plays right along with what you're saying.
01;06;59;05 - 01;07;23;06
Unknown
It it forces us to humble ourselves. I don't have all the answers here. Well, you know, if you're any beekeepers might be listening. We've all been humbled. Many, many times by our stinging friends. Yeah, but even the land for your joints, I here. Well, I hope so, but again. And I think the land humbles us. Yeah, certainly weather humbles us.
01;07;23;06 - 01;07;51;17
Unknown
Right. And I think part of our role is, is how do we we, we can see the change happening. I mean how many falls have we had now consistently and, and concurrently falls that have been warmer than normal. Right. Yeah. Deep into October and November something is going on. So it causes us in to figure out how do we as humans watch nature and not have nature adapt to us.
01;07;51;19 - 01;08;21;05
Unknown
Yeah, but how do we figure out how to work with nature in those cases? Right? Right. Yeah, I think that's a good point. And, and, we should want to be able to answer that question. You know, it shouldn't just I think that's where a lot of other people fall is and not really interested. And I think the argument can be made, obviously, people have natural interest in certain things and and not interest in others, but everyone should be at least a little bit concerned about the environment that they're living in.
01;08;21;05 - 01;08;41;14
Unknown
You know, my son just got, a fish, a fish tank for his birthday. And so we're going through the whole process of getting the water right and making sure, you know, you got the right fish in there and, right, right. Water quality, you know, age different, you know, dissolved oxygen levels, carbon dioxide, nitrogen, all that stuff.
01;08;41;14 - 01;09;14;06
Unknown
Right. It's all going to be right. Or the fish don't do well. And eventually the fish get flushed. And, and so the, the we're in our own fish tank. We thankfully it's much bigger and and much more resilient to different things. But at some point it does affect our quality of life. And I would argue that everyone should be concerned about it, regardless of what your faith is or what you know, what interest level you have in science or the natural world or climate or whatever.
01;09;14;08 - 01;09;36;16
Unknown
It should be something that you should at least want to get to the bottom of and not not be disinterested in. And if we touch three times a day. Yeah. Breakfast, lunch, dinner. That's right. Yeah. We have a direct relationship with our food. Right. And food is raised where. Yeah. In nature. Trees. Yeah. Right. It's raised ivy. Yeah.
01;09;36;18 - 01;09;59;02
Unknown
But I think, I think one of the things that we bring to the table in our conversation with faith and agriculture is that every time you eat, you are sharing and creation. Yeah. And and so how do we raise food that is nutrient dense, that is healthy, that is safe for us and for our and for our children and grandchildren.
01;09;59;04 - 01;10;17;19
Unknown
And so part of that is how do we care for the land. Yeah. How do we care for the livestock. So there's this, there's this thread that runs through it. Yeah. That I think tells us whether you live in an urban suburban area and don't drive out in the country very often. You sit down, eat today, you touch nature.
01;10;17;19 - 01;10;37;20
Unknown
You touch God's creation. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's a great point. Great practical reminder there. We're going to get into a little bit here, like some of the stuff you guys are going to eat. And but before we get off the topic, if you had one, one challenge here, Reverend, so you give out challenges, right?
01;10;37;22 - 01;10;56;22
Unknown
If you had one challenge to, Christians on the topic of, environmental health, ecology, whatever you want to call it. Climate health. What would that challenge be?
01;10;56;25 - 01;11;29;09
Unknown
Outside here. Like, look around you. Listen, see, hear and feel peace. All of God's creation interfaces with us every moment of our life. And if we are true to the mandate of Scripture, we have a responsibility to be sure that same feel of God's creation gets passed on to the next generation. Yeah, I love it. I think that's a I think it's a great challenge.
01;11;29;12 - 01;11;54;05
Unknown
I, I've been, I've really, since hanging out with Ken, been paying more attention to the natural world. I mean, like, specifically like what is natural and what's not, you know, because it you can feel like, oh, I'm outside. I'm in the natural world and and, it's. Nick took down all the pink flamingos in front of the coffee shop, and I told those are real, you know.
01;11;54;07 - 01;12;20;02
Unknown
Well, it's interesting. The more our hands tend to be into something that, like less health, that seems to have, you know, which is which I really struggle with because it's like, oh, can we do anything that has purely positive consequence on, in, in the ecology and the, the biome around that's in Genesis three. I know that one. Well, no, you know what I mean.
01;12;20;02 - 01;12;35;24
Unknown
Like, is there any kind of agriculture, you know, because it seems like every time I turn around and do something, even if you're trying your best, it's like, well, actually what you're doing there is leading to this. And that's actually kind of bad, you know, and then and I know it's a diminishing return. You can't fix all the things.
01;12;35;24 - 01;12;54;29
Unknown
But, you know, at some point it's like, well, where do I go anyway that I'm just connecting with you? What you were saying about looking around and paying more attention to it. And the reality is, is it's the whole life cycle. It's understanding. Yes, there's birth, there's life, there's death. But oftentimes there has to be death for there to be life.
01;12;55;02 - 01;13;19;28
Unknown
And to me, that's part of understanding this remarkable creation life story that God has given us to live out. Yeah, that it is not it is not clean. Yeah. It's not linear. It's it is chaotic. Sometimes it is. It's unpredictable oftentimes. Yeah. And our call is to receive it, to lean into it and to learn to love it.
01;13;20;00 - 01;13;41;29
Unknown
Yeah. Wow. Yeah. That's awesome. Yeah. I find myself thinking those exact words when I get into a discussion debate or I'm or I'm in passionately explaining, you know, this is why I do what I do or this is why this is a problem over here. And then I can see that the other person, Luke French, and I joke about this.
01;13;42;02 - 01;14;02;11
Unknown
You can you can tell that the person you're talking to is just looking at you, eyes glazed over, thinking, when is he going to stop talking? And it's at that moment I want to just scream, take a look around you and what what I mean by that is if you really did look, you would see this huge gap in biodiversity.
01;14;02;11 - 01;14;21;16
Unknown
You would see the warm, you know, wow, man. 75 degrees in November again. You know, you would you would see all the droughts that stack upon each other year after year after year. You and some of the other connections. And then you would, you'd want, you'd want to say, well, why is that? Because that is the first step.
01;14;21;19 - 01;14;42;16
Unknown
And and so I think I think you're spot on there. And I think it's also an effective argument when you come across somebody who's a dogmatic naysayer, you know, I've, I've had people that old and, and historic, I would just ignore them because it's too exhausting to try and take them through, you know, give them a science lesson on, on.
01;14;42;16 - 01;15;02;20
Unknown
Wow. This is actually what that means. Well, when someone tells me I don't believe in climate change, these little usually say it like that. My new response is, well, what would it look like if it was real? What you tell me? I mean, obviously you have a strong opinion here that that, whatever we're experiencing now can't be it.
01;15;02;20 - 01;15;26;25
Unknown
So tell me what it would be if it was. And what that does is it forces them once again to take a look around them and, and draw some kind of a conclusion there. So I think that's, I think it a great challenge to give there. All right. Well, go ahead, Nicholas, I would just add, I part of the conversation that I really struggle with having with other people is, the, you were talking about the yearly cycle.
01;15;26;25 - 01;16;01;21
Unknown
Hey, it's warmer this November. There's this beautiful biological phenomenon where women forget how painful that, childbirth is. And I feel like we do that about winters, you know? And. But then also, it is a little bit of like, we're, a boiling frog. It wasn't like, boom. All of a sudden, winters hardly existed in Iowa. Well, it is, you know, and but I find a lot more success in hey, if you pick any, any city in the United States and you take the averages a hundred years ago and the averages like a 20 year section 100 years ago, in a 20 year second, like it's not it's right.
01;16;01;23 - 01;16;20;09
Unknown
Every single city, is it? And so, you know, something like that. But it is it is tough because it's kind of like no, that's you know, this year we just had a couple more floods than normal or well, yeah. And you can't be. There's a difference between weather and climate. Weather is short term climate. Yes. Yeah. Climatologist needs 30 years of weather data to determine climate.
01;16;20;11 - 01;16;44;21
Unknown
Well, however, you can look at a smaller sample and notice trends within there. And yeah, if those trends, like Nicholas said, if you go back far enough, if you start seeing that trend like the stronger the evidence. Yeah. Gets as that trend extends and you can do that. But even you know, I'm 35. So I've had one climate, one climate set of data in my lifetime.
01;16;44;23 - 01;17;04;25
Unknown
And I you know, I wasn't I wasn't an expert weather observer as a kid. But I was pretty observant kid. I can definitely see a difference. Today and recently I was, with, our good friend, Russell Kerr, who's well into his 80s. Now. He's 85, maybe. Yeah, we interviewed him when he's 82, and that's three years ago now.
01;17;04;25 - 01;17;32;09
Unknown
We're not. And, we're riding together in his truck, and, he has the best reconstructed prairie I've ever seen. Same for Nicholas, too. Yeah, well, over 100 species. Hardly an invader of any kind. And, I was riding with him. I said, hey, rusty, I mean, men are here for a while, so. Yeah. You notice anything different in the climate in between when you were young and when you're 85?
01;17;32;11 - 01;17;54;13
Unknown
And he. I could barely finish asking the question. Oh, yeah. And here's a guy who taught, and he was a he was a professor of biology at the collegiate level for his whole career. And, somebody who's been paying attention. Right. And it was, it was, instant. And then he started, you know, walking through this is what I've seen.
01;17;54;13 - 01;18;12;12
Unknown
This is what has happened. The big thing was the winters. I remember him talking. And then the effect of all these warm winters is now everyone's got a cat nose are out and they're out in their treeline pushing trees in and, and, destabilizing riverbanks and those and remnant prairie excavating this and that, you know, and he's like, that's.
01;18;12;12 - 01;18;31;06
Unknown
So it's a runaway train at that point because now it keeps, you know, the things that help stabilize our climate die because the climate is unstable and we're able to have more work days out in the field. And, in the winter. So it was it was an interesting thing, though. But the point of this isn't to convince you of climate change.
01;18;31;06 - 01;19;03;04
Unknown
In fact, if you've been listening this long, you probably don't need convinced. But it is, it is important to talk about how if you find yourself in a similar position as Nicholas, Reverend Tim here and myself and you feel alone, which I got to say, when I met you at that, I felt like I wasn't alone, you know, I felt I felt, there's somebody hey, there's somebody else who gets, from my point of view, who understands that this is an important thing that, followers of Jesus Christ need to understand.
01;19;03;07 - 01;19;25;21
Unknown
And, so that was that was a big deal. But let's talk a little bit about E.M.. You references film? Yeah. It's kind of been a, a, relatively recent project that you guys have taken on, right? Yeah. It is, from the heartland. It's a documentary written, actually. And produced around the story of my next door neighbor.
01;19;25;24 - 01;19;44;08
Unknown
Wow. The famous. It's interesting. I live in a little town in Minnesota. We live in a cul de sac. And it was one of those warm February winter days. Yeah. And I had Tim was outdoors and trees. Right. Those are the kinds of trees up and, and I was, you don't say and trees, you say clean it up.
01;19;44;09 - 01;20;06;23
Unknown
I'm gonna go clean up those trees. Knocking them down. Right. Yeah. Ripping. Gonna clean up that creek bottom or. Yeah. And so, I had just recently retired from a previous job and just had started work with Ian, and we were talking, and I knew he farmed, and he started telling his whole story that they had 7000 acres, that they have.
01;20;06;29 - 01;20;29;14
Unknown
In 2014, we had a major flood in southwest Minnesota with 68in of rain. It was. And he said, I got sick and tired of taking my pail order down into the road ditch and digging the silk, silt out and putting it back in the gullies of my field. So this has got to stop now. So they started this journey of changing how they, so they had, minimum tillage.
01;20;29;21 - 01;20;52;25
Unknown
No, till strip, till cover crops. All of this on a big scale, 7000 acres. And that's when he said, did you know this about us? I said, no, I did not. So that started this whole partnership between five commit farms. And then and we got to know the farmers even more deeply, but also their producer. In fact, this documentary is won several awards.
01;20;52;27 - 01;21;16;19
Unknown
Yeah. It is it's a documentary. In fact, Delta Airlines is well, in their top ten documentaries watched during flights. Wow, that's pretty cool. And so it's, it's it's, it's down home. I mean, it's this is real people talk about real things and how and he he talks about Sean talks about how this is about taking care of God's earth.
01;21;16;22 - 01;21;39;15
Unknown
Yes. Idea of legacy. What am I going to pass down to my children and my children's children. Yeah. And so we created a it's called a watch party toolkit. It's written for churches to use Sunday school small groups and there's kind of three options. There's a 15 minute watching of the documentary and it has a one hour time of classroom.
01;21;39;18 - 01;22;01;15
Unknown
There's a 90 minute, there's a four week study. So using documentary along with Scripture to really get in deep into the weeds, so to speak, about what does that mean? This mandate of God putting his garden. Yeah. What does this mean to be in partnership with God in creation? Yeah. And so it's written for, urban, suburban, rural.
01;22;01;18 - 01;22;33;19
Unknown
It's written for those on the farm, off the farm. And it's, it's to be a trigger of conversation and connection. And in fact, today we had here in Knoxville, we had a, our first of its kind luncheon is called us Soil Stewards. And we showed this. And in the audience was a landowner absentee landowner. And she came by invitation and she say I really want my my renter, my tenant to move toward more regenerative agriculture.
01;22;33;20 - 01;23;01;00
Unknown
Yeah, but he doesn't want to. Yeah. In fact, when I suggested he got mad at me. And so she's looking for ideas and she had gone to a variety of other venues to learn more. What happened? She walked away with a farmer from the Knoxville area who has really very good, I understand managing regenerative agriculture. And so they're going to get together and talk along with the, landowner, her son, who's going to inherit the farm someday.
01;23;01;00 - 01;23;25;00
Unknown
Yeah. And the tenant. That's awesome. So they're going to have this conversation. It wasn't just somebody coming from somewhere else. Yeah, but these are people in your backyard, right, who really have become the technical advisors. And so the hope is that this is going to trigger that conversation. I mean, I mean, the dream is this this is a soil stewards will become oak on the road.
01;23;25;02 - 01;23;54;03
Unknown
So you can have these meetings in churches all over the upper Midwest having people, having farmers, people who are influencers in their culture, having clergy type, having all sorts of people come together, watch documentaries. And what does this say to us as a community. Yeah. What does it say to us as a church to say to me as an individual, how do I make some decisions and have a sense of support and community around that decision to move forward with this?
01;23;54;04 - 01;24;20;00
Unknown
Yeah. I think one thing that's interesting, and the Pacoima story, you talked to Sean and how his neighbors reacted. You talk about the prairie that looks like it's chaotic, full of weeds. Well, he was accused for several years of having weedy fields. Yeah. But guess what. People have seen the results. And now one of those neighbors who was so critical has come to him and says, oh by the way, how do you do this?
01;24;20;02 - 01;24;45;15
Unknown
Yeah, but the farmers wasn't so many. Like the five commits I've had. I've had the honor of many, a lot of farmers who've been resilient and patient, trusted God, trusted their families, and they tell the same story. And he neighbors were critical. But now the neighbors are saying, well, maybe there's some science road with some some husbandry along with some art to all of this.
01;24;45;17 - 01;25;02;08
Unknown
And maybe I need to take a closer. Yeah, yeah. That's awesome. That's a great conversation starter and a great even in the case of this, ABC land landowner, which I give her a lot of credit that a lot of us are probably, you know, like, don't ever do that to somebody. But we were talking the other day.
01;25;02;09 - 01;25;19;02
Unknown
I told Nicholas I had to do a, go get a physical. I haven't had a physical for, like, two years. I just had it today, you know? It was bad, Nicholas. I mean, the doctor just read all over the place. Oh, no, I don't ruin it because said something funny. You you were like, well, what happened? Your doctor.
01;25;19;02 - 01;25;37;12
Unknown
See, you're the Little Debbie aisle at the grocery store and say you need to schedule a physical, which just so funny. But anyways, that is what not. It is not to it. But, can actually eat you. You real healthy. You're pretty good about it. I mean, he loves ice cream, but you love ice cream, so we.
01;25;37;13 - 01;26;10;28
Unknown
Yeah, but, and lemon flavored things. But, my. So what what we talked about was, like. We laughed at that. Nick made a funny joke at my expense, but we were like, you know, it probably should work that way. You know, like when when our doctor sees us out in public. And if we are very unhealthy and if we're in the Little Debbie aisle and, and, you know, we're we're waiting for bills.
01;26;10;28 - 01;26;35;03
Unknown
As an old coworker, I would refer to it as, your doctor should probably be like, hey, we've talked about this. Don't do this to yourself, man. Or your doctor sees you out smoking cigarets. Hey, we talked about this. This is bad for your you know, you can get lung cancer, man or whatever, right. And and the same thing is true for so many other things, right?
01;26;35;03 - 01;26;52;19
Unknown
Our mechanic should come to us, be like, hey, look, you keep bringing us your vehicle and you, you know, your vehicle burns oil. Why don't you just check your oil and add a little bit before we get here? And we have all this damage done to your engine? My point at this time, it's so we're so polite. Yeah.
01;26;52;19 - 01;27;17;23
Unknown
That we don't. Midwest. Nice. Yeah. We don't save our each other from the peril that we see each other in. Right. Well, and there's like this view of like, like how rude of you to intrude on my life. Like, we all don't have to live with each other. You know what I mean? Like like how terrible of you to poke in and and, I mean, but that's what that that's what that landowner did.
01;27;17;23 - 01;27;35;11
Unknown
She did the hard thing, which is go to lieutenant and be like, hey, look, I know I'm a pain in your neck right now, but you're also on my ground, and I want my ground cared for. And this way, I got to be reasonable, right? Your doctor doesn't. Doesn't? Yeah. Send you over to what's that guy's name on my 600 pound life doctor?
01;27;35;13 - 01;27;55;07
Unknown
But, but, well, and maybe it means that the tenant has to spend more money, so maybe the the rent go landlord has to go to. Yeah, exactly. So some. Yeah. It's okay to make a little less money. And the other part is, is to get her lenders. Yeah. Talking about this. Yeah. Oh yeah. Because you need the lender to buy into it as well.
01;27;55;07 - 01;28;16;00
Unknown
Right. Well and that that gets tough because if, if I can make more money on the land, the lenders can lend you more money to buy that land because the quote unquote value goes up, right, because the CSR rating goes up. And if you're able to fully maximize it, if you fully maximize that, that 100 acres, you'll be able to make $1,200 per acre.
01;28;16;07 - 01;28;31;18
Unknown
What if I don't want to fall in that? What if I just want to? What if I just want to make $800 an acre? Well, then the farmer down the road, he's going to pay us 1200, and we're incentivized because we get paid a percentage right on based on how much that you, are not not loan ag lenders.
01;28;31;18 - 01;28;54;08
Unknown
They don't get paid, like, as, like a sales person, but the bank gets paid based on a interest rate, right? Which goes up if you borrow more money. And it's a whole complicated system of the federal government than borrow money from the anyway. But the point is, they get more money and the community gets more money. If you fully extract the dollars out of that plant.
01;28;54;10 - 01;29;19;07
Unknown
But the reality is we're seeing right now, if people follow this regenerative soil health model, is we're not chasing yield, we're chasing profitability. Right. So is that is that the highest yield. It's how do we make the most profit. You know. And we're seeing that they can reduce input cost. Yeah. And there's a remarkable reduction in fuel cost of 25 to 50% chemical use.
01;29;19;10 - 01;29;45;27
Unknown
All of that. Is there. I have a story about there's a guy named Torrie Wilson in Paulina, Iowa. Tori is a university grad, smart man. He's a deep man of faith. In fact, I was writing a side by side tour his farm here about three weeks ago. And I mean, this guy, I mean, he put me to shame with with being able to talk scripture and talk about how this is informing his life.
01;29;46;00 - 01;30;14;08
Unknown
But he talked about growing 200 bushel corn with no outside inputs, other than his his tillage method, the use of cover crops, the use of animal manures. But also he's making there's something called Johnson soil compost. And using a compost tea that he poured in for a think about that. So now we're maybe 200 bushels. Well it's not but the, the most of the highest yield in the township.
01;30;14;15 - 01;30;39;06
Unknown
Right. But maybe he made the most money per acre. Yeah. So this, that becomes a new breaking for us right. You know we have yield competitions. Maybe we should have profit competition. Yeah. Maybe that would change our outlook. Yeah. Interesting. The only focusing on the yield or the, the I it's mental laziness. And I was guilty of this when I started at Hoxie.
01;30;39;08 - 01;31;01;29
Unknown
I'd always ask Nick, what's the wholesale value on this species? What's the wholesale? And that's like all I would, all I would focus on. And yes, that's part of it. Just like yield is part of your profitability. However understanding like yeah Kent that species might be worth a lot of money, but you get a good harvest on it like one out of three years and you walk it every year five times.
01;31;02;06 - 01;31;22;07
Unknown
And it's very hard to market, you know. Right. There's a lot of other factors. And so what it took was me obviously having getting some more understanding. So that's part of it too. But then just being willing to not just say, oh no, it's worth this amount. I'm gonna to focus on that to like, no, what didn't Nicholas do he in fact, he created a whole spreadsheet for me and went through field by field.
01;31;22;07 - 01;31;46;23
Unknown
This is what we net per acre. And once he did that for me, like, opened my eyes to like, man, it's not just about what is the per pound price on this on this species. It's about how many times just get out there mowing in between rows, you know, spot spraying, hoeing, shoveling. How long does it take to clean the seed?
01;31;46;25 - 01;32;16;11
Unknown
All of those things factor into the profitability of those acres. And so that takes mental effort. Yeah. To to get to there. And I think I think that's part of it as well. I'm going to go on a little spiel here, but fun fact anybody know besides the church, if you combine the Catholic, and the, Orthodox and Protestant churches, they're the largest organization or, or organization country, whatever in the world ever.
01;32;16;17 - 01;32;37;11
Unknown
Do you know what the second largest is? And then after the second, it's not even close. And a percentage of the world it is Facebook or Meta. The the Roman Empire wasn't as big. The, what you call it, the Britain Empire was it wasn't as big. Like there's never been anything close to as big as Facebook besides the church.
01;32;37;15 - 01;32;59;27
Unknown
And how many followers did Alexander the Great have? Yeah, there was just too many, honestly. But, Alex was there for a good time. That. A long time ago. Yes, sir. He was. Oh, man. I like I have a hard time listening to that guy's history. He's, like, hard to, like, be around, like, such an incredible talent and just such.
01;32;59;28 - 01;33;22;01
Unknown
Yeah, horrible, horrible things. So. But so one of the things that they give Mark Zuckerberg credit for is one, he controls his own company. That's pretty rare. The founders do. But the big thing is over and over and over and over and over again. He says to his shareholders, you will make less money now so that we are still alive in 20 years, all the time.
01;33;22;08 - 01;33;49;02
Unknown
The greatest business, Costco, which by Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger, who are two of the best business, what study was the of our of the last hundred years? They said Costco is the greatest, right? And Costco says we will make very a very small amount of money and we will be around forever. Right. And I feel like farming should have a similar like, I want to give up some of today so that I know there's going to be a tomorrow.
01;33;49;07 - 01;34;09;16
Unknown
And the thing is, we don't have to give up 50% of your profit for today. I mean, we're talking like 10% difference, you know, on, on, on some of these things that would that would be a big enough difference for longevity. So anyway, my funny Facebook, I think it's a good I think it's a good comparison. Okay. We're at the end of our time here.
01;34;09;18 - 01;34;31;16
Unknown
Thank you so much for joining us. This was good. Wait, I got a question. Nicholas. Oh. No, I got another question. Okay, okay, okay. I'm pretty familiar with the New Testament. There's a lot of commandments in there that we're told the mandate, and many of them are repeated. Many, many times. I'm not familiar with one that says spend a lot of resources and time talking about conservation.
01;34;31;18 - 01;34;56;01
Unknown
Why do you do this? There is a command to love God with all of your heart and mind, and to love your neighbor as yourself. To me, that is part of conservation ethics. If we truly believe that God has created all that, we see his creation and we're called attendant so that it was good, we said it was good, but we tend the garden.
01;34;56;04 - 01;35;21;20
Unknown
We honor God by doing so. We care for our neighbor, whether it's to feed our neighbor, whether it guarantees our neighbor has clean air, clean water, clean soil, not just in our network and our neighborhood, but downstream, so that those who are downstream have the same. It's this sense of this dream of of abundance, this right, this promise of abundance that all of us will share in that.
01;35;21;26 - 01;35;46;21
Unknown
Yeah. And you can't remove creation from that abundance and that promise of abundance. That's really good. Can I just the other day we're having a great conversation about, Jesus was only wearing one thing when he was on the cross paying for our sins, and it was thorns on his head. If you go all the way back to the beginning that that mandate, it's perfectness is, hey, tend this garden.
01;35;46;26 - 01;36;16;27
Unknown
And then a more fallen after the fall of man says, you're going to deal with thistles and you're going to pull that. And there's this representation of, of nature thorns. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Thorns. Yeah. Thanks. And you're going to deal with this? Yes I do. This is, but, the Canada Thistle shall always be there. But but yeah, the hydra of the prairie, there's this there's this redemption.
01;36;17;00 - 01;36;37;23
Unknown
Just as the image or imagery of their of the fall. And, and farmers working the land for a long time. Then there's this imagery on the cross of a redemption pack, and then God says, like, you're going to collaborate with me in this redemption of the earth. But it does feel like there hasn't been a lot of redeeming for the past couple thousand years.
01;36;37;23 - 01;37;12;15
Unknown
There's been more specifically with the Earth, you know, with, how we've treated it. And I, I find that fascinating. You know, the where where is nature in the in the overarching story of the Bible? Where does where does the earth fall in there? But, man, yeah, we really appreciate your time. Well, you got to ask your other question now, I think, Tim, were you about to say something I'm sorry, you can say is, encourage people if they want to listen to some stories of of farmers, producers, ranchers that are really doing some remarkable things in areas of soil health which are of a culture based upon their faith.
01;37;12;18 - 01;37;33;19
Unknown
We have what's called the faith and cultural webinars that are every year of the month, check out our website, to check that out. Also, we have a newsletter called regenerate, which again, we tell stories. So we are telling the story of people that are doing the thing. Yeah. And and part of that thing is how their faith informs how they manage their properties.
01;37;33;22 - 01;37;57;11
Unknown
Yeah. Yeah. Great great things and creation care.org right is the website. Yes. God of creation carried out org. Yeah Tim I've I've really I've learned a lot I've really enjoyed picking your brain on this. It's something dear to canonize. Ha. And the Venn diagram the overlap is fairly small. It's kind of sad because I love my conservationists and I love my my fellow Christians and and I would love for the overlap to be larger.
01;37;57;17 - 01;38;15;13
Unknown
We all do. Yeah, yeah. All right. So if you could change one thing about the world with the snap of a finger, what would you change? It doesn't have to be conservation related or why I think we should eat more ice cream. But, you know, I can make that. I think if we ate more ice cream, be more peace.
01;38;15;13 - 01;38;37;14
Unknown
I can with the surrounding eat ice cream. How could I be mad at everybody? I'd be in a coma. Go eat more ice cream. Where do we go? That's a fantastic answer. Yeah. Maybe my favorite all time. And we're going to do something about that right now. Man, everyone, thank you so much for listening. We really, really appreciate it.
01;38;37;14 - 01;38;55;21
Unknown
And just like Tim is doing, he's really like he's really targeting the heart of people and connecting the heart not only with their religion and their spirituality, but also the heart of nature in the outdoors. And it's harder to separate those two things, and we'd like to think and then we'd like to proclaim. But, we appreciate Tim.
01;38;55;21 - 01;39;21;04
Unknown
And just like him, you all know conservation happens one mind at a time. I'm Erin Van Wyck, I'm a farmer. And welcome to the Prairie Farm podcast. Nick, what what annoys you about me the most? What's like what's up? What's something what's something that I do that just that just makes you want to slap me? I don't think about things in terms of lunch break most of the time because I'm in here, like at a desk.
01;39;21;04 - 01;39;45;11
Unknown
Yeah. And, can will come in. Warren in a good mood. All right, everybody, we're going to zip in and Nestle and I'm like, oh, I'm in the middle of editing. And it's actually really hard to get in the flow of editing, don't you worry about, oh, God, that's all you do every time. Oh, come on, you know, you want to, the thing is, he does want to.
01;39;45;17 - 01;40;02;28
Unknown
It. And if Riley goes, then I usually go. Every once in a while. We say no. And you've never seen a satyr puppy. What's it like if you have a sweaty, nasty sock from the locker room? What the frick. And you could have slapped me with it at one point. What would have been at that time? Like you could have just like.
01;40;03;03 - 01;40;09;28
Unknown
Like you were that mad at me or that annoyed with me.
01;40;10;00 - 01;40;30;22
Unknown
I don't know, I, I'm sure I probably at some point when we're out of trade show where we're both like, haven't gotten enough sleep and we're just like, run for that. Each other's our, you know, we got to do it a little bit. On our way back from Pheasant Fest this year. I don't even remember. We were we were talking about the, the impending recession.
01;40;30;25 - 01;40;59;08
Unknown
And and Nick was just like, let the world burn for what he was. He was he was all worked up and I was getting worked up at him. And we were both like, what was I worked up about? We just had different opinions on, on, on the issue of, like, how do we get how do we get out of the federal debt and how to and and, yeah, Kent wants to sell all of our.
01;40;59;10 - 01;41;22;21
Unknown
He thinks that's the best way to go. And that's not a good. It's not a good. Look, man. I know that was that that was that was unfair of, you know, can doesn't think that I'm a I'm a strong proponent of, if you have a lot of comfort, usually you've got to experience some pain to correct it.
01;41;22;26 - 01;41;31;28
Unknown
And he and that night he it wasn't some pain. It was like, look, people don't need fingernails, okay?
01;41;32;00 - 01;41;48;11
Unknown
I just like, you know, you're like, man, I've just been working so hard. I'm like, yeah, but only compared to humans the last 60 years, you know what I mean? Is, like, Nick spilled a lot of ice today to Kent. Kent worried. He's like, oh, no, he's not out to go. Nick world I need, I got I never told the story.
01;41;48;14 - 01;42;04;19
Unknown
No, I mean it was just it was just like I spilled ice all over your wife got mad at you. I've never heard of your wife getting mad at you. Really? Oh, I say that like she's mad at me all the time. I'm trying to think of the last time she was exactly. Okay. Here is when my. Here's when my wife will get him.
01;42;04;19 - 01;42;25;02
Unknown
This is like. This'll do it. We're going on a walk. She's telling me about her great time she had with a friend. And, next door on, like, 20 minutes going on, like, 20 minutes. Great conversation she's having with a friend. And then she asks a question and I go, wait, what were we talking about? Oh, I don't know.
01;42;25;02 - 01;42;49;23
Unknown
Something about her. She just doesn't like that. That I wasn't paying attention, man. You know? Yeah. Don't don't say it that way. You just say, wait, what was that last part? Oh, you say you don't say. What were we talking about? My my friend, my friend is a pro at not paying attention. And then he'll, you know, you can kind of, like, vaguely remember he'll pull out like a few words he heard you say and then be like, I'm so sorry.
01;42;49;23 - 01;43;10;10
Unknown
I'm a little lost, but you were just saying. And then I'll say, fill in the blank. Basically trying to say, hey, could you read describe what you're saying in a different way, like you've been paying attention to that at all. Give that person's initials. I just wanted no no no no no no, you don't have to tell me if it's the first name or the last name.
01;43;10;10 - 01;43;29;25
Unknown
Just one. No. No, sir. Are you talking about your wife again? No no, no no no no, my my wife is like, so even keeled, you know, like she is the opposite of me at almost everything. Yeah, well, that's why I was surprised she got mad at you over spilled ice. You must have really been screwing around. Well, no.
01;43;29;25 - 01;43;48;29
Unknown
What? It. What? So that's actually something. When we're in a work flow. Danielle is so chill or. No. Sorry. I am so chill. And Danielle's not. Danielle's an artist. And if the drinks don't come out exactly how her artist brain thinks, they should come out, you know, and there's no flow. So she does grump at me a little bit there, and then I grump back.
01;43;49;01 - 01;44;01;06
Unknown
But today it was just like, there's nationals, Knoxville Nationals in town. There's like a long line. I spilled a bunch of ice. And so she was just like, I have a bumbling fool of us.
01;44;01;08 - 01;44;20;29
Unknown
Oh, man. You know, it would really be an interesting question. When are the not time? It'll be times. Plural. Riley has wanted to slap both of us, but the nasty was the only sweaty sock for the locker room. Oh, dude. That's real. He's the only person in Hawksley that knows how to focus at all. Yeah, like at. Oh so.
01;44;21;02 - 01;44;43;10
Unknown
Oh, man. Poor guy. But we are, we are joined here today, both of us not unable to focus by someone who hopefully is able to focus and has better kind of a neighbor of sorts. Yeah. I mean, there's. Yeah, a local. Yes, local farmer, a thinker, in fact, I want to tell my favorite Aaron story.
01;44;43;12 - 01;45;00;07
Unknown
So one is, when I met you, this was like, probably, what, two and a half years ago or something like that. Yep, yep. Two years ago, Aaron came to pick up some seed from us, and, we had this new field of big blue stem growing over here just by the office, and it looked nasty, like it needed most.
01;45;00;13 - 01;45;24;27
Unknown
It was the first year. It was good. Yeah. So there was no big blue stem to be seed. Yeah, just average straight weeds. It was a joke. There's no amaranth on Florida or there's no Paul wherever it. Yeah. Man. Yikes. Oh, yeah. And, so it's like wild lettuce growing in there might have been some, all natural, Bob Marley special growing out there.
01;45;25;00 - 01;45;44;10
Unknown
There was there is, there is all sorts of stuff. Velvet Land and air just covers. But he like, walks out to his vehicle and you can tell it was just, like, bothering him so much. He comes back, he's like, so what's grown over there? And and we had like, oh, you see, it's a new planting and, and and all that.
01;45;44;10 - 01;46;14;06
Unknown
But that was, that was my fear. Said something though, he said something like, yeah man, that looks real rough out there. Yeah. Just like so. Yeah. We laughed our butts off after he, said that, but but yeah, we're joined by Aaron Van Wyck, a local farmer, somebody who's, doing things differently and also doing things conventionally. And, I think you have a lot of great perspective on, on farming and also, I think that's what's important is you're a young guy.
01;46;14;06 - 01;46;36;09
Unknown
Are you even 30 yet? I just turned 30 about two weeks ago. All right. Happy birthday. Right, Riley turns 30. Oh, really? Yeah. Yep, yep. So we're, the three amigos are getting together tonight because I just turned 36. Yesterday. And, so Nick has to, you know, celebrate our birthday for us. I do need to celebrate their birthday.
01;46;36;09 - 01;46;56;11
Unknown
We are buying them pizza with coupons. I've been collect these for a year. He's got a couple of this, like, random cooler with all these icy drinks, and he, like, what's with all the ice? Yeah, this ice looks really brown. It's kind of gritty. Grape juice. The coffee grounds. Yeah. But but, yeah. You're a young guy who's farming.
01;46;56;11 - 01;47;21;03
Unknown
You have your own operation that you're doing, which is very uncommon. And, you're doing well with it, though, and, and then you also, did you grow up on an organic farm? Were you doing that most of the time growing up, or was that something your dad transitioned into? My dad has been organic for about 30 years, so I guess I'm 30 for as long as I can remember.
01;47;21;05 - 01;47;53;19
Unknown
He's had organic acres. Oh, wow. Why? Something different. Profits were better. He wasn't a fan of the chemical use. This would have been shortly after Roundup Ready soybeans. And I guess he just want to do something different. So he got into the organic side of things pretty early and just always stuck with it. It's been good years and bad years, but you just stuck through it all these years and rode it up and down and I guess he just really enjoys it too.
01;47;53;20 - 01;48;15;03
Unknown
It's the other thing. Yeah. So so just fiscally, obviously there's way more aspects to it than but everyone thinks about like, how can you make that work money wise just fiscally if, let's say in an alternate universe, your dad decided, hey, I'm going to stick with conventional and start using chemicals, I'm going to keep going in that direction.
01;48;15;05 - 01;48;35;04
Unknown
Who do you think would have turned out wealthier or doing better monetarily? Oh, that's a good question. That is a very good question. You know, I don't know if there's a correct answer to that or a right answer, a wrong answer, because there are so many other things that go into, you know, what equipment you're using if you're buying new equipment, used equipment.
01;48;35;06 - 01;48;58;09
Unknown
But I'll say on the organic side of things, your input costs can be drastically less. And your what you're a sell your crop for can be higher. So you have the potential to do very well. But if you have a crop failure because you don't have the chemicals to help support your yield, you know, you might do really bad a year.
01;48;58;11 - 01;49;24;03
Unknown
So what what ruins a yield? Is it more like a, fungus or, insect infestation? Or is it weed pressure? Weed pressure? Really? For us, anyway, it's always weed pressure. If you planted the wrong time and you can't get ahead of the weeds, your best option might be to start over. If it rains for two weeks straight, you're in defense mode, you know?
01;49;24;08 - 01;49;47;16
Unknown
So is this a pretty challenging year for him because of the rain, this has been a little bit of a challenge. It's we've had much worse year. How do you battle the weeds? The key is hit it early and hit it often with, tillage, rotary hoes, cultivators. Some people have tine feeders or weeds for late in the season.
01;49;47;16 - 01;50;06;07
Unknown
The catch escapes some of yours. You're gonna have really nice looking crops, and you're gonna think this is really easy. As you do more in other years, you're gonna have a complete disaster and wonder why you're still doing it. Interesting. So. So, average being yield here in Iowa has kind of been 60 ish. Crazy good acres are 80.
01;50;06;13 - 01;50;26;17
Unknown
What, are you guys getting on organic? If we can keep the weeds nice clean fields, we usually get 50 or 60. Oh, wow. Wow. If we're gonna get weed pressure, we can easily get down into the 20s. Wow. So. So I guess I'm not understanding if you're tilling when that rip up. The beans are so a real cultivator.
01;50;26;17 - 01;50;53;23
Unknown
If you're in plant on 30 inch rows, which is what we plant on, you're going to cultivate 20in between the rows. So you're going to have ten inches that you're not running any tillage through. So you don't disturb the roots. At that point, your best tool is to run a cultivator through there. You're in disturbed that 20in in the center, and you're going to throw soil into that ten inch row width and hopefully bury any weeds in between.
01;50;53;28 - 01;51;16;25
Unknown
Interesting. But when it's really wet like year, like this year and you can't even get into the field, you don't have any options at that point. You just let the weeds come up the weed year and come up and year and get out there as soon as you can. Some guys have not a sprayer, but a propane burner, so it sprays propane out between the rows and it's got a igniter on it.
01;51;16;25 - 01;51;38;23
Unknown
So you're shooting out flames. So you're burning the weeds and you can get out there a little earlier in the wet because you don't need to disturb the soil. You're just yeah, flaming the weeds off. But, it's more expensive. Have you seen those, like, lasers? Well, those eye lasers. I think we even talked about it in a really early episode of Coffee Time, where they like, they you don't even drive them.
01;51;38;23 - 01;51;57;04
Unknown
They go down the rows themselves, and they kind of recognize what's a weed, and they zap it real strong with a laser. Yeah. You think that'll ever hit the farm? You know, farming community? I don't think the, justification for it isn't going. It's corn and soybeans. Okay. I know they use them in vegetable production. High value crops.
01;51;57;06 - 01;52;26;04
Unknown
You know, those are, I think, $1 million or more machine. Wow. And then you have to pay someone $100,000 a year to keep, you know, you're as you're seeing this because, I mean, and I think I've talked about this before on the podcast, there's a threat, I think, to, the organic farming world, the small farm world, which is getting into the equipment arms race that really got rid of small farms in the first place.
01;52;26;04 - 01;52;48;19
Unknown
You know, like when we were at PFI, you know, there were some of that. I sat in on a presentation where they were advertising a some, some, you know, tillage piece of equipment that some guy had invented or something for organic farmers. And I remember, like, I think the cheapest model for the thing was like, you know, of course it was way down.
01;52;48;23 - 01;53;29;10
Unknown
I was like 55 grand or something like that. And then, you know, or you can get this big, you know, whatever it is that only runs for 120, you know, it's like, this is the exact thing that just happened to all of your grandparents here, which is why you're all here at PFI, trying to learn how to be a small farmer and make it work, you know, and so what I think will happen with something like that, Nicholas, is which may actually be kind of good too, is if organic farming could be made to where you could have a giant organic farm and use have the, the, the funds to buy that kind of,
01;53;29;12 - 01;54;00;14
Unknown
equipment and therefore making more like, organic food available at lower prices for the consumer. You know, then people make it easier for people to eat healthier. I think that could maybe be the cause. That's that's where any autonomous equipment is going to be implemented, right? Is, is people who own huge, vast areas and are it farmers and not, you know, sweaty, you know, under the collar farmers.
01;54;00;14 - 01;54;22;16
Unknown
You know, it's it's I think that's where that stuff will get implemented the most would be my guess the well, it's two different issues, right? I mean, some people we're at five because they don't like the overall system. And some people are PFI because they don't like the health of the chemicals. And some of that other stuff. So if if you're not worried about the, culture of small farms, right.
01;54;22;17 - 01;54;42;29
Unknown
Yeah. Then you just want to avoid the chemicals and yeah, maybe it is a good product to have, you know, but, either way, it is kind of an efficiency thing. Those, those larger, machines. But I don't know, I don't. So, yeah, I guess I, I get there does seem to be a couple of different issues.
01;54;42;29 - 01;55;07;01
Unknown
You know, we talked on the Prairie Farm. We talked a lot about ecological things. And then and it is related. But there's like a big culture piece where all the small towns are dying and the things consolidate cities, small towns leave to where the bigger city is and bigger cities get bigger and and wealth consolidates from, you know, from across the board, few and and power consolidates and the government and you know what I mean?
01;55;07;01 - 01;55;29;07
Unknown
Like they just that's just how, anthropology is working. I was just I was just talking about this last night with my my grandparents. My grandmother told me that this hospital system my wife used to work in, in the Quad Cities was just purchased by mercy out of Des Moines. I mean, they were huge. Huge. They were one of the sponsors for Iowa football.
01;55;29;07 - 01;55;49;10
Unknown
And they just got bought by it by. Yeah. Iowa hospitals. There's a race between Mercy and Des Moines and University of Iowa to buy, the hospitals. Yeah. It was it was Genesis Health Systems in, in the Quad Cities and and, so I don't know, maybe it maybe it didn't happen or not, but that's what I heard.
01;55;49;10 - 01;56;07;11
Unknown
And it was just interesting, like thinking about thinking through that. How many other hospitals have been purchased, hospital systems and just the consolidation in the medical field. And then I start talking with my grandpa about, hey, what tractor manufacturers were still around when you're in high school? I mean, he listed like all of them, you know, like, yeah, these were all around still.
01;56;07;17 - 01;56;29;17
Unknown
Yeah. And so just since the 1950s, I think he graduated in 55 since that time, I mean, we're down to just a handful of of tractor manufacturers left. So consolidation definitely to prove your point does happen all the time. Yeah. But anyway so so the the big machinery I mean so you guys are having to go in and between the rows of beans.
01;56;29;19 - 01;56;47;08
Unknown
I mean that is some finessing tractor driving. You got to be within inches of where you need to be. Yeah it can be stressful. It can be long days. A lot of guys have went to Autosteer Systems to help with that. We don't have that, but a lot of guys have. This is just a money thing. You don't want to dish out the cash for it.
01;56;47;13 - 01;57;06;02
Unknown
It's a yes. It's an upfront cost. You have to have the acres to spread it out over. You have to have the desire to want to go that way. My dad still likes to drive his tractor. He enjoys it. He's not interested in that. So he's not going to do it as a possibility for me someday.
01;57;06;02 - 01;57;25;29
Unknown
Maybe. But you have to, you know, you have to know your different styles of implements. Whether you're going to use a rotary hoe or you're use a rear mount cultivator or a front mount cultivator. What different shovels or teeth you're going to have on the bottom of it to move dirt? You know, there's a lot of different tools out there.
01;57;26;06 - 01;58;03;24
Unknown
Yeah. Or you could have cut away blades or you could turn them around and push it into the row or Hiller's on. It's just like, you know, conventional farming. You got different chemicals, you got different elevators. You got some for when the corn's really little and you put shields on and you got others for when you're corn's knee high and you're going through it for the last time, you know, it just takes a lot of time, you know, a lot of learning to get good at the art form of cultivating what's the what are the best days of organic farming?
01;58;03;26 - 01;58;27;09
Unknown
The best days. Organic farming is probably run the combine through it a clean, good yielding field and knowing you had a very successful year and everything went right, it's also really enjoyable to be out there looking at your crop. And if you're running a six year old cultivator, you're looking at every six rows in your field several times.
01;58;27;17 - 01;58;52;22
Unknown
So you are out there field scouting every single plant almost, so you can find those trouble spots that don't yield. They have weed problems. Maybe they're a wet spot or a dry cleaning job. And so, you know, you know your farm really well. That's interesting. Do you guys, walk beans like, the old days or you get a, you know, the kids?
01;58;52;22 - 01;59;13;01
Unknown
Yeah. They're the the farmer in the farmers life, and they got the bean hooks and they're out there. I mean, is that still part of it, too? There's sometimes I think it should be laborers, obviously. You know, the problem. There's parts of the country where there's a lot of organic farmers. You can find walking crews that will walk your being field or corn field for that matter.
01;59;13;04 - 01;59;29;05
Unknown
And, you know, I don't know what the cost is, but the more weed you have, the higher the cost. Yeah, we never do that. Sometimes we'll walk out there and pull weeds. You know, if it's not too bad, we might go out, try to clean up some stuff. But ultimately, no, we don't do that. Yeah. Interesting. So how many?
01;59;29;07 - 01;59;53;16
Unknown
How many? I guess this year's an anomaly, but the last four years have kind of been an anomaly, too, because they've been exceptionally dry. How many times a year are you guys cultivating? Let's say an acre of soil, organic soybeans? Well, you know what? Let's just start at the beginning. We're going to have a clean field. So we're going to run this destroy.
01;59;53;16 - 02;00;10;02
Unknown
It may be early in the spring, get all the residue broke up. Then we'll probably run a field cultivator through it once or twice. And then we're going to immediately follow that up with a planter. So we're going to hopefully have everything completely dead. And then we're going to put the seed in the ground hours after everything's dead.
02;00;10;02 - 02;00;31;20
Unknown
So hopefully we're going oh wow. So hopefully we have our soybeans up before anything else. And then they can kind of start shading a little bit. Yes. And then depending on timing of your year you might run a rotary hoe right across it. Two days after you plant. And that'll buy you two more days of a clean field.
02;00;31;23 - 02;00;51;06
Unknown
And then once you're being start to emerge, you got to be really careful on your timing because you don't want to break off their their neck. And kill them. Yeah. You're start over. But so hopefully you're probably get one called a blind cultivation pass where nothing has emerged yet as germinated but still far enough under the soil.
02;00;51;13 - 02;01;11;00
Unknown
You're not going to bother it. So that's past one. And then after it's emerged hopefully you can get a couple of days to a week. You'll come back and rotate it again right as it's put on its leaves, because you can run that rotary hoe and you can hit those bean plants and it might bend them over, but they're going to spring back up.
02;01;11;03 - 02;01;30;07
Unknown
And then doing that, you're going to poke out any little weeds that are just starting to germinate, throw them up on the surface and then the sun to dry them out. Have you, have you done anything with, roller crimpers at all in that phase when they're real young plants? As far as, like, terminating a cover crop.
02;01;30;10 - 02;01;46;15
Unknown
Well, or I've, I've heard some people suggest you could even do that with if you had some weed pressure early on in your beans or young enough. But I suppose if you're planning so quickly after you've cleared the field, it's it probably doesn't work. We've never, never tried anything like that. Do you do the cover crops? We do.
02;01;46;16 - 02;02;07;07
Unknown
We always cover crop almost every acre. With what? A lot of cereal. Rye. It's our normal year to year. Do you just grow it yourselves? Yeah, we grow it ourselves. That's cool. Or oats. What? You usually we do an oats cover crop. If we didn't put anything on in the fall first, as soon as we can get out there, we'll plant oats.
02;02;07;10 - 02;02;28;27
Unknown
And they might grow for four weeks. They might grow for 6 or 7 weeks, and then we'll terminate that oak crop, and then we'll plant our soybeans into that you mowed or crumpet or what do you do? Either a desk or a field cultivator. Okay. Depending on how far along it gets. Yeah. So with how much you guys are tilling and disk, are you ever worried about like your soil loss?
02;02;29;00 - 02;02;53;04
Unknown
Yes, that's a concern. And the difference, I guess, of why we're okay with doing it is we're not farming from fence defense or road to road, and we're not farming right down along the creek. If we have a steep hill, it's in grass. We have waterways. So if we row, cultivate and we get a heavy rain, we're going to lose some dirt.
02;02;53;06 - 02;03;15;15
Unknown
But if you go out there, that dirt might make it 15, 20ft and then it stops. You know, it's not going into the road ditch. It's not going down the creek, do you? Because you guys have come pick up CRP seed before. What do you guys use that for? Seed down problem areas? Steep hills, awkward shapes.
02;03;15;17 - 02;03;34;09
Unknown
You know, where we're farming? You might have a creek or a river or a tree line. And if you're cultivating, you like to have straight rows. It's hard to go around a curve. You got to be really careful not to rip out your crop as you go around the curve. That's a good point. Yeah, it'd be terrible if you have pointed rows.
02;03;34;09 - 02;03;55;05
Unknown
I never thought of that before. That's a really good point. Like, that's also probably why fence row to fence row farming started to become a bigger thing in recent years because of the advent of all the different chemicals where you could plant, you could contour or plant because you weren't running a field cultivator through it anymore. You were just going to spray it, you know?
02;03;55;05 - 02;04;23;10
Unknown
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I never thought it. That's a great interesting I mean, yeah. I wonder who like, like if you're really altruistic and a little, I don't know, forgive me everyone for saying this, but a little unreasonable. Hey, we've got too many chemicals, and we've got a carbon problem, so we need to. Not till anymore. And, I mean, it really is, like, gotta pick one or the other, or you gotta have millions of dollars to put into zapping your field on,
02;04;23;13 - 02;04;51;01
Unknown
But you were saying we were taught Aaron and I were talking before this, that if the zappers they come in so late that the bean yield is basically already set, because you got to wait till the weeds high enough over the soybeans. And I've seen them used before, the zappers, but I don't know, I guess you, I guess you really have to pick one or the other or, and, and this is a viable option as well.
02;04;51;01 - 02;05;14;14
Unknown
We've got a you're going to get half the bean yield literally, or a third of the bean yield. And so you have to be okay with 2 to 3 times higher, priced goods. You know. So someone coming in. Yep. Hey. Hello. How are we doing? Are you on the air? On the air? We. Yeah. Sorry, dude. Shoot me a call.
02;05;14;14 - 02;05;18;03
Unknown
I'll get back to you.
02;05;18;06 - 02;05;38;12
Unknown
I don't remember, it looks very familiar. Yeah, I think he was with that on the. No, he wasn't one of those guys. He wasn't. Okay, cool. Nick, we'll have to edit here. Let's do a long silence.
02;05;38;14 - 02;05;43;07
Unknown
Nick may resume.
02;05;43;09 - 02;06;06;14
Unknown
Yeah. So I don't know if, we should get a recording sign. Yeah, I thought about that a while ago. I don't know, looks so familiar that I don't. I don't know what a good, you know, solution to all the, you know, keys and haws that people have about it, but I don't know. Do you like your dad's been doing it since you were born.
02;06;06;14 - 02;06;30;08
Unknown
Do you like doing organic farming? I like the challenge of it. If I had to choose today whether I'd continue with it if he quit, I can say I probably would. At this point. I don't know if I would continue at the scale he does. I might change up a little bit to fit more of what works for me, but I think I would continue at this point just for the challenge.
02;06;30;10 - 02;06;49;10
Unknown
And you do like cattle as well, right? Yep. You have cows too. We cow calf and we feed some out and we do some conventional farming as well with chemicals. So kind of do a little bit of everything and they used to be a challenge at times a year where everything overlaps. Oh I'm sure. But I enjoy the challenge.
02;06;49;10 - 02;07;17;08
Unknown
I like farming and that's part of farming. So yeah I like that. Yeah. So, so with your cow calf operation, are you able to recoup some of the, the lost earning potential on some of those highly routable acres that you're, seeding down into, native grasses or whatever else? So, yes, I, yes, a part of organic farming goes hand in hand with livestock.
02;07;17;11 - 02;07;37;06
Unknown
If you have a field disaster and you have a fence around it, you turn some cows out and clean it up and you get some of your money back. A lot of our odd shaped farms are hillsides that are just farm straight. We'll put them into, grass or alfalfa and we can feed that to livestock.
02;07;37;09 - 02;08;03;00
Unknown
If you don't have livestock, then that's not really an affordable option to count on. You know, selling hay every year. Yeah. Some years you might do really well and others might be a bust. But if you have that option to feed your cows or a neighbor's cows, you know, you can take your field. That's maybe a triangle cut off a couple corners here and there, make them into a hay crop and then have a nice straight field to grow crop on.
02;08;03;04 - 02;08;34;22
Unknown
Man, that is that is just some really smart advice. There. So because I was thinking here, man, if someone's listening in and they're wanting to do like some maybe smaller scale organic farming. No, I have cows too. I don't know if I have space. Well, work with your neighbor and and see if they could, if they because I'm sure they're, they're happy to get some, some free food for their, their, their stock if they needed it and, and really that kind of harkens back to the days of small farming where you knew your neighbors as well.
02;08;34;22 - 02;09;06;10
Unknown
And you and honestly, that's been one of the most, I don't I don't think encouraging quite covers it. I think it's just like heartwarming or like, you know, stirs up gratitude is, you know, we lost Carol here recently, and the neighbors around us have just been so helpful and different stuff. Yeah. And, you know, you just get that that a little taste of the old days, you know, when, when there was more of that that went on.
02;09;06;12 - 02;09;28;01
Unknown
So I think that's that's a great piece of advice that you have there. Okay. So you got through the phase of getting those young plants up and cultivating a bunch. What about like, let's say early July? Are you still doing a lot of weed management at that point? Yes. We'll probably plant in the May 1st two weeks of June.
02;09;28;03 - 02;09;47;16
Unknown
That way is shortened your season up to control those weeds. And so starting to fight weeds back in the second week of May. Yeah. We just extended that weed free zone to the second week of June. Now we have from it seems like so smart, like, it's just such, I don't know, old school, like, know how.
02;09;47;16 - 02;10;07;23
Unknown
Here. I'm loving this. So. So now you go from mid June to mid July to mid August. Mid September, you know you have three months there where you're controlling the weeds. Yep. And really just the first six weeks. And if you plant June 10th it might be 90 degrees out. Hopefully you have some moisture. Those beans will be up in 4 or 5 days.
02;10;07;25 - 02;10;28;07
Unknown
Wow. If you plant the first 1st of May and it's a little cold, it could take them two weeks. Now your weeds are ahead of you. Yeah, you're cool season weeds, cool season grasses are up and going if we plant mid-June or first to June, which would be about ideal. Hopefully some of those cool season weeds are kind of slowed down.
02;10;28;09 - 02;10;46;24
Unknown
We've had a chance to kill them with a fuel cultivator. I mean, do the whole field as simple, fast, and now we're ahead of the weeds. So once they get to be 4 or 5in tall, probably going can go a little faster. The elevator hopefully, if we've done well, everything's pretty clean. The weeds or less an inch tall.
02;10;46;27 - 02;11;05;14
Unknown
Really easy to run the cultivator through there and rip them out. And if, if it goes well we'll come back 2 or 3 weeks later and do it again. And hopefully by that time they're getting close to canopy and we have 2.5ft tall beings and two inch tall weeds. And they're just going to shoot them right out.
02;11;05;21 - 02;11;24;26
Unknown
Wow man this is this just like it's it's just such like using common sense to solve your problems. I mean, did did your dad, did he have to learn all this the hard way, or was he was was he able to, like, go to some classes or something when he first was getting started? Like, is that planting date thing just seems like learning.
02;11;24;29 - 02;11;42;09
Unknown
He'd have to learn that the hard way. So my dad would start growing up. He would have been doing this when he was a kid. Oh, so he would have had this knowledge from when he grew up. You doing it? Sure. And then they kind of got away from it for a while before he got back into it, when he was considered now organic farming.
02;11;42;11 - 02;12;00;16
Unknown
Here you can you see that was conventional farming wisdom back then. Okay, that makes sense. But he he's talked to, you know, being an organic for so long he's been, practical farmers. Yeah. You know, talking to others, doing it and seeing how they're doing it. And a lot of the learnings all been, oh, what kind of cultivator do I need?
02;12;00;16 - 02;12;21;21
Unknown
You know, what kind of shovels do I want on this cultivator? Okay. I need different shovels for a little bitty corn or little beans then I want when I have two foot tall corner beans, it's just little things like that. But if you're getting into organic farming, you might just go buy a cultivator and just think, I got a cultivator, you know, and I'm good.
02;12;21;24 - 02;12;43;01
Unknown
Once you get to doing it, you might realize, well, these weeds that I have might dictate that I want this kind of cultivator or that kind of cultivator, and it might be very slight differences, but it could be the world of difference in your weed control. Sure. And you just have to learn that by doing it. I feel like you want a job.
02;12;43;03 - 02;13;03;08
Unknown
So you're wanting to come over here at all and work and that that is I mean, that's that's how dad would talk about, you know, the fields. And he I keep saying, I keep thinking how much how big of a smile Carol would have you sitting here listening to this. Oh, yeah. Well. And oh, man, this is going to be harsh, but I was talking to a gentleman on the phone the other day.
02;13;03;08 - 02;13;22;19
Unknown
You know you are. And he said, he said, well, like a lot of farmers don't have to visit their fields anymore, you know. And when they do, they say, oh, there's too many weeds, or I got a little bit of fungus, or I got this, and they can make a phone call and and be done with it, you know, or they're doing themselves, you know, they're spray in the fields or whatever.
02;13;22;19 - 02;13;39;08
Unknown
And, and but you're having to pay close attention. You're visiting those fields every day. And I know, like, I mean, it's mostly during harvest season, especially when things start getting. But that every day you'd be like, yep, I was out this morning checking the fields and and then he would wake me up for school, you know, at 630 just every day.
02;13;39;08 - 02;14;04;08
Unknown
He was he was out there, checking the fields. I'm curious. When things overlap. You said that is very difficult. What is what are the worst we got about, like, what are the best days? What are the worst days in organic farming? The worst day is probably showing up. And the June 1st of July is, pretty much too late to replant.
02;14;04;10 - 02;14;26;07
Unknown
It's been wet. You have grass that's pretty well bigger than your crop you're trying to grow. And you have to try to clean it up, or throw in the towel on it. And that throwing in the towel, that means letting the cows out on the field. Maybe let the cows out. Or maybe you might try to disc it down and replant soybeans really late in the year.
02;14;26;07 - 02;14;45;20
Unknown
If you have the moisture to do it. That can be really frustrating. Is there like a short. Well, I guess maybe. Could you? I mean, the weather would have to cooperate, but maybe could you do a, late summer, early fall oats planting maybe, and, and get an oak crop off of it or, we would probably just go do like, a cover crop option at that point, okay.
02;14;45;23 - 02;15;05;25
Unknown
And maybe start using it or growing your seed stock for next year's cover crop. Right. Okay. So so the conventional wisdom on farming is that it's one out of five years. You got an absolute banger year one out of five years you have a terrible year. And the other three are basically average. You know we can moan and groan but they're basically average.
02;15;05;27 - 02;15;27;14
Unknown
Is that similar to organic that you found and what prospective markets work for yield. Great question. Well, however, you would define a good or bad year, which I imagine is a combination of markets yield and how much work you're going. I would say every year there can be good and every year, you can have a field that looks beautiful, perfect.
02;15;27;16 - 02;15;48;07
Unknown
You can almost think that, wow, somebody must have sprayed that. It looks so good. And you might have a field down the road. You did everything the same. It just the weed pressures, the soil. Something was different and it just looks terrible. And it's not consistent. Which fields are bad? In which fields are good? You learned over time that this field has a foxtail problem.
02;15;48;09 - 02;16;09;05
Unknown
This field has a large sheeted broadleaf problem. And you tell, you know, maybe where there is a pig lot at one time or, you know, cows or whatever. Yeah. Or there might be a fence line here. And they farm these fields differently. You notice that sort or stuff? Yeah. But it just takes a lot of time of learning your fields.
02;16;09;05 - 02;16;30;28
Unknown
All right. You can snap your fingers, get rid of one weed. Which one of you get to talk about this all the time. You know, you and he hate weed. If I'm organic farming, probably me. Like foxtail. Okay, if I'm going to be conventional, probably water hemp. Yeah, they're probably the two hardest to control. Yeah. And both and perspective operations.
02;16;31;01 - 02;16;51;17
Unknown
Yeah. Yeah man. Foxtail. Yeah. That stuff sucks, man. So, I want to ask how organic. Well, maybe I will just ask it now, but I don't want to. I also want to get, like, some information on, like, the paperwork side, manic farming because that you hear about it all the time. We can't do the field paperwork here and he about the size he gets.
02;16;51;17 - 02;17;01;14
Unknown
So I agree it's those are his worst days though. It's the field maps. Riley.
02;17;01;16 - 02;17;42;17
Unknown
We have this joke. You know, it was still a year where I would think, like, like this piece of paperwork come across my desk, like, oh, I don't want to do this patent anyway. Yeah, yeah. And there's certainly patents patent. There's like a real sharp emphasis on the A part, but, no, the I gotta think that the attention to detail and, the just for lack of better term street smarts of organic farming that you school of hard knocks and and the common sense solutions, the creativity that has to impact how you farm as a conventional farmer, too, right?
02;17;42;20 - 02;18;11;04
Unknown
When you're when you are using chemical. Do you see, like what, what skills translate over. Well, weed control, both both forms a weed control. You need to get after them early. I farm a lot of non-GMO soybeans, so roundup is on option. You know, two four does not be an option. Over the top. I have the old school chemicals, and you have to get the weeds when they're small if you want it to kill out.
02;18;11;05 - 02;18;31;26
Unknown
So. So even your conventional stuff you're doing, you're not doing roundup ready. That's right. Wow. So what are you using there like basic grain and stuff? So if I have a grasses to cluster them. Okay, I'll take out grass. Classic. I'll, let's come back with maybe, Stonewall Safin or Fleck star over the top, try to get water hemp.
02;18;31;28 - 02;18;51;23
Unknown
But even that's a challenge you you have to get them on their small. They might still germinate after you sprayed it. And that was kind of your one shot at it. So I'm putting down residual chemical upfront. And work on that end. Hopefully get weed control and stay ahead of it, you know, before their problem.
02;18;51;26 - 02;19;12;17
Unknown
And I guess I don't understand why would if you're going to farm conventionally, why not just go all the way and get the roundup ready? Soybeans. I like a challenge. I guess, because you don't get paid more for those soybeans. Those are just normal market priced, right? There can be a premium for okay, doing non-GMO crops.
02;19;12;19 - 02;19;36;24
Unknown
Oh, okay. Non-GMO, but not organic. Okay. If you're willing to look for it. And, you know, do a little extra homework and a little extra work to maybe find the market for it. There is a premium out there for those sort of things. Interesting. Do you do your homework? I talk to a lot of people and I look around and okay, yeah, you know, any bit of money you can make on top and farming is yeah, needed.
02;19;36;27 - 02;19;58;18
Unknown
I think people there's guys this is a financial lesson if you're in, in farming I have asked many, many ag bankers. These are bankers who work just with farmers almost exclusively. And, I always, if I have a chance to chat with them, whether I'm at the grocery store or I'm in the bank, what farmers make it and what farmers don't.
02;19;58;20 - 02;20;16;24
Unknown
And there's a list of things the, the, but one of them that always makes it on is to say they don't throw away money. What does that mean? They, they don't say, it's only 300 bucks, you know, because you do that several times throughout a year, all of a sudden that's $3,000. That year, over ten years, that's $30,000.
02;20;16;24 - 02;20;35;18
Unknown
That's a that's a new that's a used tractor. That's a nice used tractor that you can buy. That is, that is a, or that's just a mechanic. Bill. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. You know that the but it happens. People like one Z, two Z themselves to death in farming. You know, where they go. I don't want to put the extra effort in.
02;20;35;18 - 02;20;55;00
Unknown
I'm only going to make 2200 more dollars now. Now, what I'm not a fan of is just scrapping away any money that you can. You don't want to do that. But if the money's on the table and it's a manageable amount of work away, that is how you make it. So if you're starting on a small farm, you don't have the option to 1 or 2 Z.
02;20;55;01 - 02;21;17;14
Unknown
I just want to be really clear. You gotta you gotta make sure that you're being careful with with your, your budget. And I, we just don't talk about it enough. And people aren't they don't hear it hard enough. If you if you are just starting and farming and you don't own 500 acres, but you're just getting started, you're running someone's land or you've got a mortgage, you will not make it 1Z2 zing your budget away.
02;21;17;14 - 02;21;33;21
Unknown
I promise you, you won't make it. I've seen a lot of farmers. I've talked to a lot of farmers about their pals and talk to a lot of bankers. Just trust me. Don't try it. Just go after it. Even if that means you have to do less acres to start because you're, because you don't have the workload.
02;21;33;21 - 02;21;59;24
Unknown
It's better to have fewer acres and to make each of those fiscally work to start with and then keep it going. Anyway, I that was my side rant. I think it's a good point. So, the non-GMO stuff, how are those yields comparing to Roundup Ready? Two four? Do you ready? Or even, organic?
02;21;59;26 - 02;22;25;04
Unknown
It depends on the genetics. What I'm growing is a food grade soybean. Okay. So these are made into food, and this is an older, older genetics. So they've not been enhanced. We're going for quality. So higher protein, better for processing. And there's a yield drag on them. You're not going to grow 80 bushel soybeans of these.
02;22;25;06 - 02;22;45;27
Unknown
But you might grow 55 or maybe you might hit 60. It could be down to the 40s. But that's why there's a premium on them. It's to make up for that yield drag. You could grow different genetics. And I've seen them make 80 to 90 bushels is non-GMO. But they're going for high yield maybe not high protein.
02;22;46;02 - 02;23;07;15
Unknown
Then I'm going for some interesting. So you're like selling it as tofu or something like that. Yeah. Some of this might get made into tofu. Eat a mommy. Isn't that that? But I think that's one of the beans. Yeah, it's still in the pot. Dude, I had a funny story of a family member who didn't know that edamame wasn't supposed to be,
02;23;07;17 - 02;23;25;12
Unknown
You weren't supposed to eat the whole thing. You're just supposed to pop out the little beans, right? A little piece inside. Oh, I've seen it done both ways. Like, if they're tender enough, people will eat the pods. Now, if you let them get too old and they're, like hairy, like, if you're going to a sushi, right? I don't eat the pot anyway.
02;23;25;19 - 02;23;52;10
Unknown
All right. So, I want to go back to your cattle operation. Do you do any natives with your cattle? Intentionally? No. Okay. We've never planted native seeding. Everything we have is pretty much cool season. We have some timber and trees that probably have natives in them. And I've seen a lot of natives. I know you have, because you've sent me pictures of them before.
02;23;52;13 - 02;24;16;07
Unknown
But as far as intentionally doing it, you know, and trying to rotate through for that time of year, it's not something we've messed with. I'd like to. Yeah, but it's a new thing. Interesting. So what do you do in the summer slump? Sorghum, Sudan, warm season grasses? If it gets warm enough for my feed hay to help carry them through.
02;24;16;07 - 02;24;35;19
Unknown
You know, the hot time of year. Sure. Interesting. Try to rotate pastures and not let them eat it to the ground. Are these cattle or do you bale? You know, do you bale any of your stocks? We bale very few corn stocks. Some people do like all of their corn starch. They'll bale them up. But is that actually helpful or useful?
02;24;35;22 - 02;24;54;28
Unknown
Depends what you're doing. Somebody else will use it strictly for bedding. Other guys will mix it into a feed to try to keep up the ration. Oh interesting. We don't we don't do a feed. We just use it for bedding. Sure. Interesting. Why do you. What. So why won't you use it for feed. Well it's more expensive to get set up to do that.
02;24;55;00 - 02;25;09;28
Unknown
You know, if you're going to feed corn stocks you need to bring in somebody to grind those bales up. And then you need a mixer wagon, and then you need a tractor on that mixer wagon to drive down the row a feed bunks or dump it on top of us. No. And now you have to make silage with it.
02;25;10;00 - 02;25;28;20
Unknown
You know, have quality feed. Yeah. Make it portable or something else. Add some protein to it. You know, the corn stalks are just a filler. Yeah. You know, trying to just fill their gut up so they're not eating that expensive feed. Yeah, it's just crackers. It's just crackers. You know, kid, I was in college. I bought a box of crackers.
02;25;28;20 - 02;25;58;07
Unknown
That was dinner for. Oh, I know saltines. Yeah. No, no, no Ritz crackers. Well, man, I thought you knew how to survive all of your Ritz crackers would never box the saltines. I mean, how tough are you, man? So. So the cattle aren't. They're not organic. But when you're, working with them. Oh, here's a question I had from earlier.
02;25;58;10 - 02;26;20;22
Unknown
Beans. They're legume. Right, right. So you can't just have your cattle out there for long periods of time, right? Right. And we're not going to turn cattle out on a field of soybeans, you know? Okay, if it's that bad that it's a complete disaster, the amount of soybeans out there is probably, okay. Very few, you know, it's going to be probably mostly foxtail at that point.
02;26;20;25 - 02;26;58;26
Unknown
Yeah. They like foxtail if it's if it's leafy, leafy and green. Yes. Interesting. I'm learning so much saddlery. So, Well, I'm learning a lot from this conversation. It's just this is really interesting. Okay. The paperwork side of of organic, if you're certified organic, that's like the most amount of paperwork, right? Right. Yep. But there's also, I guess what would it be, non certified organic where you're, growing you're growing things in an organic way, but you're maybe not getting that label put on your stuff.
02;26;58;29 - 02;27;24;00
Unknown
Do you guys go through all the hoops to get the certified organic label? Yeah, we have a certified organic label on corn and soybeans and oats. Wow. You have to get the premium for that. What are some of the let's say we have conventional soybean acres here. We use them to, cycle our fields. Let's say Nicholas was came in one day.
02;27;24;00 - 02;27;55;06
Unknown
He's like, can't we're going to start growing organic. Whatever they're, can we just all of a sudden. Okay, 2025, we didn't have organic soybeans. 2026 we're going to have organic soybeans, and we're going to get certified. I'm guessing you can't just do that. No, it doesn't work that way. You need three years of zero prohibited, either chemicals or fertilizers on those acres.
02;27;55;08 - 02;28;21;18
Unknown
So three years from when you last applied to when you harvest. Okay. So if you want to have certified organic acres and you've sprayed every acre you have this year, you're looking at two full years of transitional acres. And then that third year, you should be able to certify those acres based on when your last application was, you know, if you're gonna make that three year mark before you harvest.
02;28;21;21 - 02;28;41;00
Unknown
So, so but like, what if I had big bluestem for two years and we didn't spray it, we harvest it, didn't spray it, and then we did beans the third year. You think we could do that? So under that scenario, you should be able to be certified organic. But you'd have to have the you going to have the paperwork to show that those are chemical for your chemical free.
02;28;41;00 - 02;29;01;23
Unknown
And then you have to sign sign a paper that you're probably the worst part of your job is all that paperwork. I don't typically handle that much paperwork. I'm more of the hands on at this point. The operation, but I know it's a dreaded, dreaded part is sitting on the desk trying to get everything straight for when the certifier comes out.
02;29;01;26 - 02;29;20;14
Unknown
Look at everything and make sure everything's in order. So you do you deal with Iowa crop improvement. How do you deal with the certifier? We go through Osseo right now. Or. Oh, yeah. Crop improvement association. Interesting. So the,
02;29;20;17 - 02;29;44;13
Unknown
The years that you would be transitioning, you would have to be growing those in organic way, but without having the sale benefit of having the label. Who's buying that stuff? Depends on how hard you want to work at it. You know, if you want to grow corn and soybeans and you're going to transition, that's what you're choosing to use.
02;29;44;16 - 02;30;03;22
Unknown
You know, you're going to do all the extra work for organic for maybe no premium. If you can do your they just take it into the regular old elevator. And a lot of guys will you might be able to advertise, you know, and find somebody who wants to feed their animals. Sure. Organically raise, you know, organic methods.
02;30;03;24 - 02;30;25;21
Unknown
But it's not certified. You're not going to get top premium dollars for it. But you might be able find somebody who's willing to pay a little bit of a premium. But you have the paperwork that says this crop didn't get sprayed. Oh yeah. You're building that paperwork. You're building a tier three, right. So at this point you're more or less just saying, hey, I know you have some cows and you're a small operation.
02;30;25;23 - 02;30;57;19
Unknown
You would like to buy organic grain. Maybe it's not feasible for you to pay that premium. So you're and go for the next best thing and say these are transition acres. They were not sprayed this year. There was no synthetic fertilizer on it. I'm not certified organic cows. I just like the idea of having grain to feed my livestock that has not been sprayed or fertilized, and they might pay you, you know, a little bit of premium, to get that there's no paperwork involved with, you know, proving anything.
02;30;57;19 - 02;31;18;20
Unknown
It's just more of a less of a, hey, I prefer my grain to be this way. I'm not willing to pay the premium for organic certified, but this is kind of the next best thing. What about, your neighbors? So aren't there rules? If your farm's organic, what your neighbors can do with their farm? You're required to have a buffer strip.
02;31;18;22 - 02;31;41;13
Unknown
I think the minimum is 30ft. We typically have far exceed that most of the time. That way, if they spray right up to the fence, the idea is it's not going to drift over on you. It happens. It's not much you can, you know, do about as part of the field. Sure. As clean. But you're actually, you're, and probably wouldn't be the case because it breaks out your soybeans too.
02;31;41;13 - 02;31;59;19
Unknown
Because they're not they're not. Right. Yes. So what happened here? You gotta make a phone call and say I killed my soybeans or I don't. It's never fun. No fun. Time to deal with problem like that. You know, nobody wants to be at fault for something like that. It's just, oh, believe us, we know it's frustrating. Yeah. It's frustrating.
02;31;59;19 - 02;32;19;18
Unknown
Do you do you register for, like, the sensitive crop? Registry? Yep. Sensitive crops or should I think all of our fields are registered on that? Some fields will have honey bees on, you know. Oh, that does, put some hives out with you guys. I have a nephew. Oh, that has some hives. And he puts.
02;32;19;18 - 02;32;53;00
Unknown
I heard you on a few of our CRP farms. Have crp on them. Sure. So, you know that's supposed to be registered as well, but, you know, it's like anything, it's just hopefully everybody follows the rules and regulations. But, yeah, you know, sometimes things just happen or weather happens or whatever, and you just deal with it. Yeah, I can imagine there's some relational tension with the neighbors at times because, you know, you in a way become a hassle.
02;32;53;00 - 02;33;19;10
Unknown
Like, I got to be extra careful when I'm farming next, to Aaron, because if I drift him, he's his crops dead. So I gotta make sure the wind is absolutely perfect. Whereas if it's to Roundup Ready soybean fields next to each other, you drift to your neighbor, and he says, thank you for the extra weed control. And so I imagine there some of that like, like, tension.
02;33;19;10 - 02;33;44;21
Unknown
That's probably a reality of that. But also then probably like, you know, ups the organic farmers, they get that's where we get all the, the water hemp from because it's they don't spray it all out over there or whatever, you know, is, is that like a reality that organic farmers, you don't have to get too personal here because your neighbors might be listening, but is that is that a reality that organic farmers have to deal with?
02;33;44;24 - 02;34;02;12
Unknown
Absolutely. And there's a lot of people who think organic farming is, you know, absolutely terrible. Whether it's the right way of farming or it's better, I guess that's not my meat is for me to say. Sure. It's a different way of farming. And so what I kind of like to take their approaches. This is my side of the fence.
02;34;02;14 - 02;34;22;09
Unknown
I keep my row cultivator on my side of the fence. Keep your spray on your side of the fence. Yeah. If I inconvenience you with that, you know, I'm sorry, but I paid for. I paid for this ground, and this is my right to farm this way. So. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I just ask you to respect that.
02;34;22;09 - 02;34;48;05
Unknown
And we do everything we can to mitigate problems. You know, most people are planting mid-April. You know, first, to me, a lot of guys are wrapping up. We might not start soybeans until 1st of June. Yeah. And that's going to save us six weeks of potential spray drift. And instead of having to withstand maybe three sprayer passes hoping we don't get drift on, you might just be, you know, that one pass mid-June.
02;34;48;09 - 02;35;13;29
Unknown
Yeah. You know that's the same way with corn. If we're going to plant corn next to a conventional neighbor, we don't want to cross pollinate. So we're we're planting later and hopefully theirs is completely tasseled and pollinated before our starts because we don't want that pollination problem. And that is a great point. So we play defense as much as we can and, you know, do everything in our power to prevent any problem.
02;35;14;02 - 02;35;36;17
Unknown
But sometimes you just can't control it. Yeah. So along those lines you're saying you're not trying to say one way is the best way. One way is a wrong way. What if you had to say your favorite your favorite thing you get out of organic farmer farming? The thing that in your mind makes it worth it. What what would that be?
02;35;36;19 - 02;35;55;01
Unknown
Probably. Probably real cultivating. I mean, you're seeing you're seeing your hard work, right behind you. You can look forward and you can see those weeds in the row, and you can turn around and look at a clean field that makes it worthwhile. I mean that's fun. Yeah. You see your you see your efforts, you see all your efforts right there.
02;35;55;01 - 02;36;10;22
Unknown
If you're doing really good or really bad you can tell. Yeah. If you go out there with the sprayer it might take you ten days before you know that you did a really good job or a really bad job. You know, it's not that you get instant gratification. Run that row cultivator through the rows. Yeah. And that is fun.
02;36;10;22 - 02;36;33;04
Unknown
That's going to be therapy for Nick. We're going to get those all know to oh buffalo buffalo elevators. Oh man. Yeah that would be good for me. Been good for my soul. Well this has been fantastic. Aaron, thanks for joining us. I can tell whenever this is turned into a rapid fire type of, conversation and that whenever that happens, we're both learning a ton.
02;36;33;04 - 02;36;49;06
Unknown
Yeah, right. Well, but what about this one? So you might think that the best podcasts they hear are me and Kent laughing a bunch. Now, you know, the Nicola's having a great podcast. If I'm like, what about this? What about this. What about this? That's how you know I'm having a good time. Yeah. It's feeding something deep in my soul.
02;36;49;08 - 02;37;18;29
Unknown
Yeah. This was this was fantastic. To to wrap this up, if there is something that, if, if you wanted your audience to take one thing away from Aaron about could just be farming in general, maybe organic farming, non-GMO, whatever. What is it that maybe it's a little prediction you have for farming? Something you want to alert people to?
02;37;18;29 - 02;37;23;24
Unknown
Whatever. What what is something you want to leave our audience with?
02;37;23;27 - 02;37;46;03
Unknown
I think being a young guy in farming and you don't see very many and all you see is a statistics of three fourths of Iowa farm land is owned by people 65 and older, or the average farmer 65. It's kind of concerning that it's going that way. I wish more guys would get into farming. I hear, you know, the financial challenges of it.
02;37;46;05 - 02;38;12;08
Unknown
It doesn't have to be that way. I grew up on a farm, you know, we have land. I have access to it. I know coming from somebody born into it, you know, it might be easy to say, oh, this guy doesn't know he started into it, but I've clawed my way into my own operation. You know, I run older equipment, I run stuff, I can fix, stuff I can work on.
02;38;12;10 - 02;38;32;18
Unknown
I don't run to the bank whenever I see something. I'd like to have, you know, if I can do without it, I'll do without it. If I see a problem in my operation that I think really needs addressed, I might let it go two seasons before I decide to spend the money to address that. And Nick is just he's just so happy to hear this right now.
02;38;32;18 - 02;38;53;06
Unknown
This is this is yours. Yeah. That is that's how I feel about shoes. Yeah. New pairs of underwear. No, that that was so good. And I just once again, I thought, man, if Carol could hear this right now, he'd just be smiling, you know? That's it. You remind me a lot of how Carol did things, you know, with.
02;38;53;06 - 02;39;09;28
Unknown
With, he just found his own way. Don't be afraid to start small. You know, if you have a tablet, a tractor with no air, and a six row planter, you can grow the same corn as somebody with a 24 row. You can do with a lot less expense. You can put more money in your pocket and grow from there.
02;39;10;00 - 02;39;35;00
Unknown
You don't need to start out with the newest and the greatest everybody else has. You know who. The last person that gave that advice on our podcast was? Carol. No it's Riley. Oh yeah. Step aside. Said be okay being the guy on the block with the small tractor. Yeah, yeah. And do the best with what you can. What you have, you know, don't compare to what the neighbor has.
02;39;35;03 - 02;39;53;02
Unknown
You don't chase your tail working for that. You know. But also be prepared to work really hard. You know, it might be a lot of hours. Yeah, that you're putting into the farm and you might be working a part time job or a full time job as well, but you're working towards something and that's what you want to do.
02;39;53;03 - 02;40;12;02
Unknown
It's worth working towards that. Yeah. That's so good. Well, thank you, Erin, for joining us. Thank you to our listeners as well for tuning in. This was the final piece to a, project that that, Nicholas has been working on for quite some time. And, and, I hope you enjoyed the other conversations from Steve and Tim.
02;40;12;02 - 02;40;33;24
Unknown
That'll be a part of this, this conglomeration of people who are doing stuff for the land, I think, there's no doubt about it, your your farmland is well cared for, and, the people downstream of you are a little bit better off because of the the efforts that you and your dad have put in. And it sounds like even your dad's dad before it, before him.
02;40;33;27 - 02;40;57;11
Unknown
We're, we're doing and, that's quite a legacy to leave on the land. And, also, I think people like you, reminds me of Matt Hautala. You know, where, young guys who are just determined that they're going to farm and they are showing the way forward, and I think you're among those people. So. So, I just really appreciate you coming on.
02;40;57;13 - 02;41;18;26
Unknown
And, just like it's happened for for Aaron and his family, conservation happens one mind at a time. I wanted to ask you a little bit about the wildlife. Dang it. Aaron, we're gonna give you an intro real quick, so they'll just look at that camera and say, actually, can you patch it if I ask him about wildlife on his farm?
02;41;18;26 - 02;41;40;01
Unknown
Just so we have, like, a little. Sure. Then we'll just. So we'll do that real quick and then we'll do, your intro. So with, with the organic practices, have you noticed like a response from wildlife, do you have do you notice more insects. Do you notice a lot of like, say quail or pheasants or deer or turkeys?
02;41;40;03 - 02;42;05;25
Unknown
Okay. Yeah, I compare it to your conventionally farm. Yeah, yeah. Or maybe they're the same, I don't know, you know, a lot of our conventional organic farms are very similar. I don't know if it's organic. You know, the. No chemicals or fertilizers that makes the difference, but I think it's more just the we leave turn rows, we're turned around on a big grass strip, or we're leaving the side hills, you know, and there might just be grass all summer long there, and there's habitat there.
02;42;05;27 - 02;42;21;25
Unknown
So we're seeing deer all the time. You know, I might mow hay and I'll see all kinds of pheasants. My dad was born just a couple days ago, and he said, hey, by the way, I left that big patch over there. I saw a pheasant and a bunch of little chicks were hopping around in it. So I just just leave that.
02;42;21;27 - 02;42;40;01
Unknown
You know, I always enjoy talking to your dad. I just I always like him more every time I hear about it. Every time I go out, I'm seeing pheasants and deer, you know, and when I go into my fields that are conventional and there's not as much habitat around them, you're not seeing as much wildlife. But nature needs a place to.
02;42;40;03 - 02;43;36;00
Unknown
Yeah. And it's beautiful. And I've made a lot of friends. I guys that wanted to enjoy, you know, what we have. Yeah. And they're very appreciative of having that. And I'm glad to have it. And I'm glad to be able to get some enjoyment out of it. So it makes it worthwhile.

Hoksey Native Seeds

Ep. 280 Biofuel Energy, Evangelical Environmentalists, and an Organic Farmer

Podcast Transcript

Ep. 281 (Coffee Time): Recent Panel of Scientists Pinpoint Ag's Role in Water Quality in Iowa

Ep. 279 (Coffee Time) Plastic That Biodegrades in Hours and WE'RE HIRING!!