Announcer: Speaker is Bill Nielsen.
Bill is from Minden, Nebraska farm operator there,
And Bill is gonna visit with us on how cover crops
work on my farm.
Now Jodie I want you to come down, Jodie Sadoff,
you and I are going to stand up here,
and we're gettin' Bill on the phone.
And the reason we're gettin' Bill on the phone,
he had a very bad experience.
He was on the back of a flat-bed
truck and he had a broken round bail
and he was pitchin' the hay off to the cows,
and he went to step down and he thought
he was gonna be steppin' on steel
and instead he stepped on air.
And he went flyin' off the truck,
and he really banged up his knee
and had surgery yesterday.
So, Bill's gonna join us today by phone,
we're gonna forward his slides
and he's gonna tell us his story.
The reason I asked Jodie to come forward
is Jodie's from Minden and works closely with Bill,
and is very knowledgeable about his operation.
So if Bill --
If Jodie want's to ad-lib somethin' that'd work
and Mark, you've got another microphone
there I'll capture there from ya and give it to Jodie.
Bill are you there?
Bill: Yes I am.
Announcer: Well good morning sir,
I hope you're feeling better!
Bill: Oh yeah, decent.
Announcer: Okay, can you count to three Bill?
(scattered laughter) Bill: One, two, three!
Announcer: There we go, alright.
So we're on the title slide.
Cover crops for one farmers perspective,
So please share with us some information
about your farming operation and we'll
move the slides forward as you indicate.
Bill: Okay, thank you!
Hi guys, yeah, sorry but stuff happens.
This picture is just kind of a typical
what it would look like toward frost.
Next one, I like the picture of that disc.
You notice there's no tracks backing up
to hook onto that tractor, that disc this year.
So my operation, south central Nebraska,
is never till and I say that because
so many guys are bastardizing the word no-till.
They say "Yeah I no-till my corn into my beans."
and then they work the bejaybers
out of their corn ground to put somethin' else in.
No, this is --
Don't do that, just never till.
We started 11 years ago, we were
on ridges, gravity irrigation.
As we could convert to pivots,
it went to no-till also.
Next.
Cover crop cocktail, whole bunches.
Nine, ten, twelve different things.
We started about nine years ago
and as it gets to bean pivots,
we can do more and more.
Generally the cover crop goes on after the beans,
or during or after seed corn production.
Next.
Right there's my drill, I love that drill.
This is not a commercial, that's the most tillage
my fields will ever see is a 10 inch no-till drill.
Next.
That's seed production from 2014.
It was flown on right after the male rows were destroyed.
And it grew -- that's how it grew after harvest.
The trucks and tractors and everything
had driven through there and it just bounced right back.
We did not pasture this cause that
was not our priority at the time
but, oh man, that would make some great pasture for cows.
They would last on there for a long time.
Then it goes into soy beans the next year.
Next.
A typical field going into harvest.
There's really not enough cover there to pasture,
but you can see that there's no way
the wind is gonna get at that.
Next.
We do run cows, we run them on our commercial corn
which does not get a cover crop on there.
This is a pivot that we're gonna be talking about
a drain that runs through there after a while.
Whatever Dan Gillespie just told you,
he's right one hundred percent because a lot
of what he says is what I did down through this drain.
Next.
Oops, wrong one on my side.
Okay, this is what I plant 15" beans into on seed,
you can see the male row there has been destroyed.
This was taken out, the end of spring.
It was a really mild winter.
Normally all of those brassica's
and everything will not make it
through the winter but they did.
And you can see there that the grasses are dying,
it's had several things sprayed on it.
Next.
If you're gonna do this one, be very very careful.
I planted 15" beans into this,
and then I terminated it, but oh man,
you are taking a chance.
To get it, you've got to get rid of it
before it even gets a flag leaf.
Over there towards the pivot you can see
a few tire tracks, this has been sprayed,
and then I came in here and it hasn't
even started to die yet.
So it was sprayed probably yesterday,
and all planted on this day.
Next.
This is 15 inch beans, seven and a half inch,
each side of the old corn row.
This'll be field corn that has been pastured.
That's kinda what it looks like.
During harvest, this has not had any wind blowing on it yet.
Next.
This one had wind blowing on it.
This is from this year.
It's 15 inch rows planted in the cover crop residue,
and just about the time it was droppin' leaves
and leaving the green stage going into harvest,
we had 40 to 60 mile-an-hour winds for four days.
But what I noticed was, everybody had a friend
to lean on, nothin' went flat on the ground.
15 inch rows, some corn stalks and some rye cover there.
Next.
Kind of a tangled up picture, but ya see there,
on the very bottom of the picture you see
a little bit of rye that the beans have been
able to lean on and you don't see anything
clear down against the ground.
In the next one, that'll be what
it looked like right behind the combine.
It's gone through the chopper.
You can see some of last years
corn row there that got cut off.
From where I took my picture just
a little bit to the upper left,
there's a little place that I dug a hole,
just kicked the stuff off the side,
so that is probably an inch deep residue.
Next one.
That's the same spot right after it was drilled.
So like I say, that's the most tillage it'll ever see,
and it has really moved some soil.
The next one.
Same caution again if you're gonna plant corn
into somethin' like all of that--
How tall this is, don't let it get ahead of you.
Don't let it get past flag leaf.
Once it heads into reproduction,
after it leaves growth stage it is a bear to kill.
And if you leave it this long,
up there in the red, wind and rain could
really cause you problem cause you can't
get back in there to kill it.
Next one.
This will be seed production that was killed early.
Monsanto won't let you plant anything
into a green cover so this got tilled and planted.
This will be, this picture is coming back to
do the split plant and put the male rows in there.
Big caution here is the hair-pinning,
if it's damp in the morning so you gotta watch out.
And never ever, any trash whippers or anything,
you just let as much of that stuff stand as you can
and let it just, let the double-disc
opener slice right through it.
Next.
Okay, so, that's my operation.
Why cover crops?
Next one is my first reason why I
first started doing no-till and cover crops
was water infiltration.
This is from '07, corn field...
this farm has...
had a history of, just, little pockets.
Every time it rains, somethins' gonna drown out.
This was what I was trying to get away from.
Trying to get some sort of water infiltration.
The next one --
Don't drag it the wrong way!
Another picture of it on Memorial Day.
You can see that it's trying to drown corn out.
Maximum slope on this farm is about point one percent,
and that does not mean that it
is sloping toward a drain, it's just
got a little bit of slope draining
toward a low spot.
So if you can get water to soak in
where it lands, it's not gonna do this.
Next.
Same basic field just west of there,
this was all enrich-till.
You can see a little bit of a whoopie there
where the planter fell off of the ridge.
This was before we were doin'
any no-till and cover crops and what a mess.
It comes off the top of the hill, it'll erode.
Right there at the bottom of the hill it silts out.
Water keeps goin' until it finds a low spot,
can't get to the end down there where the green is,
where the water should be runnin' off.
So get it to soak in where it lands,
point one percent to nine percent slope, it's not fun.
Next one.
Somethin' like this.
This is probably a one percent slope here,
October 10, it'll be goin' into frost.
Lookin' like this you got 30" row beans
goin crossways on old corn stalks.
No wind, no water erosion, if a drop
falls and decides to run, it's only gonna run
a quarter or half an inch before
it finds a place to soak in.
Next.
Basically the same field, March 18 of '11.
This is in the Spring comin'--
Let it grow for a while.
We will maybe, on this, if there
is a weed pressure could come in here
and spray out the broad-leaves,
the brassicas, you know, put down our first residual,
but not a new round up to let this,
the grass part of this keep on
growin' for a little while longer.
Next.
Our next reason, erosion control.
This is the farm I was showing you earlier.
We're standing here on a little bit of a flat spot,
you look towards the top of the picture
you can see the break where it
goes down over the hills.
There's a creek that runs down through that.
Next.
Ah, this one.
We had a really wonderful looking guest row
right there above where it says five quarters.
As you follow that guest row up
towards those two cows, that's the drain.
Do you see it kinda goes up?
It's fairly flat drain down through there.
That used to be about, oh I'd say,
about three feet wide and two feet deep.
But once we started doin' this,
the five quarters above this, their silt
would come runnin' down through this and I'd stop it.
And it's just, slowly over time, silted that in
to where I've not got a nice flat drain.
So five quarters run through this.
Right there above where it's white,
you can see there's a pivot track runnin' through there.
Next.
April 28 to 30, we had eight inches of rain
that came runnin' down through this.
This was where that very very tall cover crop was standing,
it was dead at the time, but it just laid down.
The water ran over it, it caught whatever silt was in there,
and only let the clear clean drinkable
water run out the other end.
Next.
Okay so it kept raining.
May 16 to 21 we got another six-and-a-half
inches of rain came down through here.
Next.
July 17 - 18 four-and-a-quarter inches
of rain came down through this.
And there's just no erosion on that.
It just, you came through there with
the combine at harvest, there was just perfectly good corn.
It had totally protected the young plants there
when that April rain came through.
It might not even had been up for that April rain,
but it certainly was in May.
Next.
I like that picture too.
I don't need to use that much anymore.
It gets used for a couple hours to
do something every year or so,
and that'll also be there when my disc gets used.
The disc will get greased and the tires checked.
Smooth up what I did with the scraper
and plant somethin' on top of it.
And that's when those two pieces
of equipment will get used.
Well obviously --
And that is not triazine or anything
resistant amaranth growin' there.
That's just a fire weed.
Next.
Here is my latest reason, and no that is not my field.
The tri's or the palmer amaranths,
the resistant stuff, it is just a bear.
And you do everything you can.
Cover crops are a big part of doing that
and the no-till, the herbicide resistance.
Next.
If you don't plant somethin' there, Mother Nature will.
This is a whoops.
You can see that this had been
wheat stubble with somethin' planted in it.
Later there where the drill didn't
get put in the ground quick enough
Mother Nature let somethin' else grow there.
If this cover crop had not been planted there,
you can imagine the whole field
would have been whatever that stuff is.
And you look clear up, a little bit above this one,
up towards those trees on the top
of the picture there's another spot.
It'll be another place where the
drill didn't get in the ground quick enough.
So, yeah, you've just got to plant
somethin' in there to keep these weeds from growin'.
Next.
This is a picture thanks to Ray Ward.
This is his farm.
You look at that, that is just
a gorgeous, beautiful picture.
How are weeds ever going to grow through that?
The only reason the wheat --
the beans are growing there is cause
they had a nice sharp double-disc opener
to put 'em down in there and let 'em come up in that slot.
So water's not gonna run off of there,
it's gonna soak in, yeah, beautiful picture.
Do that.
Next.
Okay, how do cows fit into this?
We really do like running cows, we do not own any.
These cows come up to us from Kansas right after harvest.
They're goin' home next week to have calves,
so we'll just run them to eat corn stalks and so forth.
These are -- Another thing we do,
the youngest cows we get will be third calf.
They don't send us any first or second calf heifers.
We've had problems in the past with competition,
so these are older cows, no calves no bulls.
Next.
Here's where we've got a little bit
that I wanna talk about this area.
You need to see where the hay is,
the cows are standing as you look over
toward the right of that, there's a thinner area.
The corn's not as thick there.
You look around behind 'em there's
an area that's not thick.
ya look to the right of them or
the left of them, it's not so thick.
This was a really bad spot we're gonna talk this but...
Our first reason for doing cows was
eat half the residue and get rid of the grain.
Next picture.
You bring ruminant bacteria and fungus into the soil.
Next.
The deep hoof prints, guys are always worried about that.
What if it rains?
We had deep deep hoof prints.
I love those deep deep hoof prints
especially on dry land.
You think about the, what are they,
the four inch diameter by four inches deep,
standin' there when it rains in July?
That, yeah, what more could you ask for
than to have a spot for the water
to go in and sit and soak in.
So yeah, hoof prints are great.
Next.
You can help fix organic matter problem areas,
that's what we're doin' right here.
We talked about it a little bit more.
Next.
You gotta use your imagination.
You can use cows to do lots of things
other than just eat corn stalks and grain.
Next.
You got some CRP type hay that the deer
just had a hay day with that stuff.
Probably about a week or two after we put it up.
They tore all in that wrap off of this.
It's good hay, you can still grind it and feed it,
but we found another use for it.
Next.
Same spot, same cows.
This area before I bought the ground
about 20 years ago, they leveled this for gravity.
There's still a five foot cut,
and in that cut they found some sand down in the bottom.
It started out bein' about 1.2 acres,
and again you can see off there to the right
how the corn's thinner there, but this is
no longer a 1.2 acre bad spot.
When we run cows, first or a couple days after
we put 'em in there we'll just put a couple
of those big round bails in here,
let 'em play with it, let 'em eat it,
let 'em stomp it into the ground,
it becomes their loafing area.
Next picture.
So, right there they are, you can
see how coarse that hay is.
They're usin' it as a loafing area.
This probably by now has had four bails on it,
two right here where the cows are standing,
and two more later, about a week later
or a couple days later where I
was standing to take this.
Next picture.
That's after three weeks.
And that's what I'm havin' those cows do.
They just, they do a wonderful job of fertilizing.
So, you can see even out there around the edges
on the right, they have done a little bit less
where there wasn't as much hay to stand and loaf in,
but that 1.2 acres is now down to an eighth of an acre.
So yeah, we are getting organic matter,
we're getting water infiltration.
It used to be, you'd go through there
and spray your herbicide and nothin' will grow
because your herbicide kills whatever
you put there, and now we're getting organic matter.
Next.
You talk to guys about runnin' cows,
first thing they will say is "I don't
"want them out there when it freezes,
"or when it is rainy because they're
"gonna leave hoof prints."
Okay, we've covered that, hoof prints are a good thing.
"I hate to haul water!"
Hey, I hate to haul water also.
Take a look at this well, we do not haul water.
If we don't have a hydrant close to it,
this is what we will do, turn the gear head around,
that engine is a four-cylinder that's off
of a booster pump, it runs off of propane.
Bring a propane bottle, ya see
back there, by the gear head.
And the flow meter, out there this happens
to be a lower republican, where we are metered.
We got permission to do this for cows,
and then we'll put it back in again.
A small engine like that runs pretty well
full-throttle in order to spin it
fast enough to pump some water.
The engine will get up to speed,
you don't have near the milky oil
that you do on a big engine,
and you're using a thousand dollar
engine instead of a ten thousand dollar engine.
And just, move this from field to field.
From what this looks like right now
until it is moved to the next one, we'll take one out.
Including building the fence and moving the tanks,
turning on the gear head, everything.
So right there's one hour.
Next.
Okay, ha!
I'm an old teacher, I gave you an assignment.
Your assignment for this spring --
Next.
Learn what of this will work on your operation.
Next.
Experiment, but experiment please on a small area.
Don't experiment big.
Next.
Try no-till if you're not already doin' it on one field.
You might have a neighbor that can plant it for you.
You can figure out how to do it with your equipment,
but try no-till on one field.
Next.
Cover crops, again small, try it on 40 acres.
It might get away from you next spring
because you've got a pretty steep learning curve,
so try it on somethin' small and go from there.
Next.
Cows, we don't like groups anything smaller than 200.
We usually run between 275 and 300 in a group,
but again, and I consider 100 to 200 small,
you don't want to start big, and for heaven sakes,
don't start with feeder calves.
They love the other side of the fence
no matter where they are, in or out,
they wanna be on the other side.
They might go under it, they might go over it,
they might go through it, yeah, old cows
to start with with somebody that already
knows somethin' about cows if you don't.
100 or 200 to start with and then go from there.
Next.
Okay, where to experiment.
There are definitely places not to.
Next.
Not by the highway, I did that.
By Highway 10 where everybody travels
across the road from the landlords house.
That was just not pretty, not pretty at all.
So don't do it by the highway.
Next.
How about the middle of a section
on a minimum maintenance road where
you've got a neighbor that you like
and he likes you, he won't tell on you.
You're gonna do somethin' there that you're not proud of.
Next.
You also don't want to have it
next to a loud-mouthed neighbor,
somebody who loves to tell everybody
about how you fail, don't put it close to him.
Next.
You are going to make mistakes.
It just, it's just a fact of life.
When you start somethin' new,
you're gonna mess up something.
Whether it's the planter, the seeding rate, your timing.
The easiest thing to do is mess up so,
you will make mistakes.
Next.
Learn from your mistakes.
They're gonna be expensive, hopefully not
real expensive if you do somethin' small, make changes.
Next.
Try it again, make some changes,
try it again, make changes, try it again and off you go.
Next, we're done.
The end, it's not the end, it's just a new beginning.
Thank you very much.
(applause)
Announcer: Well I hope you could --
I hope you could hear that Bill,
nice applause for your presentation.
We have time for a few questions,
I'm gonna take the first one.
In your seed corn fields where
you're planting cover crops,
what species are you planting?
Bill: Jodie can answer that better,
but that's a cocktail of everything.
You guys that have seed, if they're
gonna salt the corn out, most everything
can handle the salt.
Do not put sunflowers in the mix.
You even say the word salt to sunflower
and it dies so, yeah, you can have
brassica's, legumes, all of the different
rye, wheat, all that stuff.
Announcer: And when do you usually --
When are you usually able to seed
your cover crops in your seed corn field?
Bill: The best time is, well,
if there is no weed pressure at all
that you have to come in there
with Status or somethin' to clean up,
the best time I would like to try
is right before they destroy the males.
To have all of that shaken off of the males
and covered with all of that residue,
but invariably with the resistant weeds
I have to go in there after the males
are destroyed you can then use different
chemicals and spray that, wait your two weeks,
and then fly it on.
And if you can't fly it on then the day
they are in there harvesting it,
you wanna be in there with a drill.
And normally mine gets picked
somewhere around till September 11 to 15.
Announcer: Okay, a question from the audience.
Go ahead.
Man: Okay, my question is grazing
cattle and rye or cover crop, have you had
any experience with it especially possibly --
You made affirm or a comment that the cows
go home beginning spring but in specifically on rye,
right before planting soy beans,
kinda like first of the year, kinda into May?
Bill: No, spring grazing we have not done.
It'll be they will go in there in the fall.
You saw in that picture off of the grass,
cause they were growin'.
You wanna get those pastured off
before they dry and turn into potato chips,
and then let 'em eat all of the --
They, they love the turnips.
They will smell terrible, oh they smell awful,
but they love the turnips and the radishes
but no we have not done any spring grazing on that.
Announcer: Bill, question on your --
the cattle part of your operation.
Do you have any feeling for how significant it is
in terms of the overall profitability,
sustainability of your farming operation since,
and I ask this question cause we have
a lot of corn, soy bean growers in the audience
who do not have cattle in their operation?
And it sounds like you maybe have included in that more so
once you started in the cover crop business.
Bill: No, we started this oh I think we've
been doin' cows for oh about 30 years I would guess.
Like my one slide said, our main reason was
to get rid of half of the residue.
It is so much easier to plant or drill
with all or half of that residue gone,
half of it stomped into the ground.
You just go in there and plant.
There's not near the volunteer to worry about,
we still end up in beans, have to spray
for the volunteer corn but very little of it.
Just kernels here and there but, yeah.
I just, I absolutely love runnin' cows
and if you can get 'em to leave the manure in the fields,
not behind a tree line, not behind a well house,
you know, the pivot point everywhere
they congregate when the wind blows.
Make 'em congregate on a sandy spot, on a clay knoll,
somewhere that you can get 'em to --
Once they start using that as a loafing area,
that's where they're gonna go instead of behind the trees.
Announcer: Okay, one more question.
Anyone have another question for Bill?
Okay, if not thank you very much Bill,
let's give him another round of applause.
Thank you and good luck on your recovery,
and we'll be visiting with you down the road.
Thanks Bill.
Bill: Thank you much.
Announcer: Our next speaker is Lee Briese.
And Lee is an independent crop consultant,
and uh, he's a crop consultant in Edgeley, North Dakota.
Anyway, but the real neat thing is,
Lee is the 2016 international certified
crop advisor of the year award recipient.
Let's give Lee a nice hand for all of that work cause,
(applause)
being a crop advisors not an easy job, you know.
He has to work with clientele like myself, okay.
And anyway, he's going to share with us
why he encourages his customers,
and those customers are growers like yourself,
to use cover crops in your farming operation.
Welcome Lee.
Lee: Alright, thank you.
Hopefully you can hear me alright
and the beard's not in the way.
I have the beard because this is a soiled spot,
and doesn't grow any crops so I grow down here.
Figure I'd put my efforts in the right place, okay.
Some things I have learned today already,
North Dakota and Nebraska really
aren't that different which is kinda cool.
I've known little bit about that,
other than the rain you guys talk
about dry land and I kinda laugh.
I'm in an area, we get 15 inches of rain and that's it.
That's our season, and we're growin' a lot of cover crops.
One thing I do wanna let you know,
and this is just to differentiate
me from other folks, I'm a CCA.
I'm an independent crop advisor and I don't sell products.
I just want you to know that, I'm not here to
sell you a product, I'm not getting paid here.
I'm hopin' to get some lunch out of the deal,
so that's about what I expect to get outta the deal.
Then being from North Dakota in Nathans talk,
he was talkin' about three crops in two years
and shortening his corn to 105 day,
I think that'll take a year and a half to
get that done in North Dakota.
A lot of 85 to 90 day, 96 days pushin' it.
Justin's talk about all the pests,
that sounds like job security.
I like that, that's good.
And then with Dan and Bill, amazing stuff
that you guys are doing, a lot of cool stuff.
My job is to work with growers,
I've been a crop consultant for 20 years.
Right away when I started, we started
with some guys that are no-till.
We've been doing some cover crop plane for
about ten years in my neighborhood
and those guys are cream of crop type of stuff.
They've really gotten there, but I want you to
remember what both of them have said.
They said they started no-tilling ten to 15 years ago.
And they've been doing cover crops for about ten years.
Now keep that in mind.
You don't become an expert in two years, okay?
And Bill said it really well at the end.
You've gotta practice, you're gonna make mistakes,
you're gonna have problems.
My job as a crop consultant is to kinda help
coach growers get into this, this is what I see.
There are problems along the way.
Now, it's like talking'about the Olympics.
I love watching the Olympics, and some
of those folks are really good.
But if you take a gold medal snow boarder
and you put ice-skates on 'em
and you throw em on a rink you think
they're gonna win a gold medal?
Probably not, they're gonna have to practice.
So you folks are experts at what you doing,
and what you've been doing and how to do it,
but you're going to have to learn new ways
to do these things, so keep that in mind.
You're not gonna get to gold
medal level in a couple of years.
Okay, now if I don't get through my slides
before you guys get hungry, that's fine.
I don't really care.
(scattered laughter)
So my thing is, you know, this whole idea.
Soil health, wind, water, weeds,
all of that's been talked about today.
I'm not against soil health, I love the idea of soil health,
but I actually think it's a really hard goal to have.
I think there are a lot easier goals to have
that will help you get the soil health
and it just kinda happens if
you're taking care of your land.
That's the definition, I'm not gonna read through it.
How I address this is, we look for what
particular problems are in our field.
What's goin' on, what's goin' wrong,
where are our opportunities to do better?
In this field there's two different crops,
by the way, fields don't have to be square,
just in case you didn't know that.
These are two different soil types,
and you can see this is a very different
soil type comin' across here, this grower,
he stopped here cause it was a little wet.
We planted different crops.
That was a really good idea, okay?
This is very sandy, this is really good ground,
we put corn and soybeans over here,
we put field peas over here because they're early.
They get off, they don't need the rain
and we don't get any rain in July either, okay?
That's our problem, you put soybeans on this
we end up with six bushel soybeans
cause we don't get any rain in August.
We put field peas on there, we got 60 bushel field peas.
Doesn't take long to do the math, okay?
This is Earth Day 2015.
This is my no-till growers field,
this is the neighbors field.
It was prevent and plant, he got a nice check,
he started doin' tillage, this is an old fence line,
and this is new movement of soil.
This picture should be in black and white
and it should be almost a hundred years old, right?
This still happens, this continues to happen
it happens all the time.
Not only did we get his sand, we didn't get any clay, right?
Clay moved, but we didn't get it.
We got all this sand, and right along here
this was up to 16 inches deep.
That's a yard stick, I just stuck it in the sand,
it just stood there by itself, okay?
We also inherited lamb's quarter, pig weed and nightshade,
cause they're small enough to float
and we found out later where they drew,
how far these floated, it was over
a hundred meters into that field.
This was this summer in North Dakota,
now I told you I work on a lot of no-till,
we're about 50 percent no till.
We had sustained winds over 30
miles-an-hour for four days, this is no-till area,
this is no-till soy beans in a neighborhood,
I couldn't see across the road, okay?
This is still happening, your no till is not enough.
Your guys before, today, said it really well.
I'm just, got a little evidence that
the same thing is true in North Dakota.
(laughs)
A lot of people talk about erosion.
This is your old prairie line here,
and this is what's left of the
soil that this guy's farming.
That's the wrong color by the way,
there's still a little black in here.
This is yellow, that's the sea layer of soil,
and if you took soil spots, that's basically bedrock.
Not a really good place to plant crops.
And a lot of people think that this is,
you know, where our erosion is at.
Took a hundred years to get there.
Well hopefully those two pictures before
showed you that it doesn't take that long,
and it continuing to happen.
This field's been no-tilled for many years,
but it's goin' the wrong way.
So these are the problems I want to address.
These are the things I want to take on.
Here's my no-till soybeans.
I think it's been covered really well.
We had a seven inch rainfall event, there ya go.
This field's been no-tilled for 20 years.
No-till's not enough.
You want some more?
I've got hundreds of 'em, I don't have
a lot of good pictures to be quite honest with ya.
We got a interstate right here, this is my growers.
This is about half mile away from his yard.
This goes way out into it, this water's
about eight inches deep and it sits there for three weeks.
The interstate makes a really good dam,
and they get a little pissy if
you go out there with a ditcher, so, one of those things.
(laughs)
Today I didn't see a lot of this,
I did see some of it, we call this snirt up north.
It's mostly dirt in your snow.
It is here, around here, I've seen it.
Your snow kinda melts a little too
fast for this to really show up.
This is in March up North Dakota.
And here's the other one.
Kochia is kinda my bane of existence.
This kochia in here is resistant to ALS,
glyphosate also clorpyralid, we're not
doing a very good job with Liberty.
We've been using Sulfentrazone for many years,
that's the next thing to fall off the wagon.
This is Captain Super-Weed in my neighborhood, okay?
And this is supposed to be soybeans.
Anybody wanna run a combine through that?
Yeah, okay.
Here is 14 days after a full dinger dicamba this year.
Here's waterhemp 14 days after a full dinger of Xtend.
That's not gonna save me.
Okay.
This is what I'm doin' with my growers.
Those are all of the problems I'm trying to address.
I'm getting soil health as a benefit folks,
I'm not down-playing that at all.
We're getting better nutrient cycling.
We're getting better emergence.
We're getting better organic matter.
We're getting a lot of cool things,
but I'm not trying to shoot for that.
We're going for the low hanging fruit.
And the growers that are doing this over time,
those experts that are eight, nine, 10 years in
are doing really cools things
that I'm not going to talk about.
If you wanna talk about 'em, you had
two experts up here who agree.
You can move to that level once you get to that level.
Once you've gained those skills where
you're ready to jump off a mountain with
a board strapped to your feet.
Then you can do some cool jumps,
but you gotta be able to do --
walk before you can run.
Identify your problem, identify your resources.
What do you have, what can you do?
Where can you move, what can you change?
And then here's some ways to put cover crops in.
We tripped on rye as a weed control.
I'm a little slow, I don't read
enough papers like Justin does, took me a while.
We actually planted this rye for solidity management,
the kochia grows here, rolls across the field this way
and you can see the difference.
That's pretty cool.
By the way, there were no herbicides applied there.
That was super awesome.
Oh and you can see a gopher running at 30 yards in there.
It didn't take a lot of rye to do this for us.
Now, I think you need to practice on your own farm
with your own weeds and your own system
to figure out how to do this, but that was pretty cool.
We started doing a lot of that.
This is where we're goin'.
We're planting our soybeans into the standing rye.
Just like these guys said, no problem.
I got a lot of heads hangin' on my rye,
but I'm not planting it real thick, okay?
That may be the difference, maybe we should be
planting thicker, I don't know.
There's a lot of ways to do this.
That's where it's at, my buddy's the farmer
standing here, here's his boots.
That's as thick as we go, that's on wheat
stubble we got a lot of residue.
We're getting kochia control,
we're getting erosion control,
we're getting infiltration, we're getting all those
wonderful things these guys were talkin' about
under six bucks worth of rye.
It's not the only cover crop,
but it's a good place to start.
There she is later on, you've seen pictures of this.
It's gorgeous, I love it, this is awesome weed control.
It's awesome.
Seven bucks and I'm getting months worth of residual.
You find yourself a chemical dealer who's
going to promise you that and you buy everything he's got.
Seven bucks for three months weed control.
Impossible.
I'm getting it with rye, I'm getting it on kochia,
I'm getting it on common ragweed,
I'm getting it on waterhemp.
Haven't seen palmer yet, but it's comin'.
And I'm trying to get ready.
This is later season, there is definitely
nutrient tie up in this.
My soybeans are yellow, I really don't care.
What's happened in my area, I think
the rainfall's part of it, Dan was talking about the
longer inner node, I actually see short inner nodes.
My soybeans tend to be about six or eight inches shorter
than right next to it where grower
had a very convenient skip, he was all worried about yield.
It was fine, it didn't matter they grow fine in here.
They do really well, I don't have kochia,
I don't have waterhemp, I don't have common ragweed.
We're using a little bit less herbicide.
I'm still using a lot of pre's, it looks great.
It's workin'.
Here's the weeds that we are gettin' control on.
Marestail too, the erosion.
We've had a lot of injury to corn.
I have different corn, I have a different growing season.
We don't wait for warm soil temps.
As soon as the ground's not frozen,
we're putting corn in the ground.
That's not a lie.
35 to 39 degrees, guys are plantin' corn.
Right, terrible idea, you're laughin' at me.
Yeah, you should be laughin' at me.
Yeah, but it does tend to warm up.
But when you have that much stress,
that cold, that wet add the rye in there,
I do think there's a allopathy.
I've seen insect problems, I want to get away from that.
We're not doin' corn into rye.
Not sayin' you shouldn't, practice on your own farm.
Learn how to do it.
The other thing, we got nailed this year.
With drought.
My fifteen inches or rain this year turned into nine.
We were wetted planting, so everything looked good.
Moisture was good, planting was good,
we're like, we're glad we got the rye out there,
we're plantin' four days you guys.
Had a guys that didn't --
It never rained after that, like, for forty days.
No appreciable rain, that hurt a lot.
So I had some growers get hurt.
Again, it was one outta ten years.
That was kinda the same thing we saw.
One outta ten years they got hurt.
They're mad, they wanna change a little bit
but we're not throwin' away.
In my drier, sandier, lighter stuff
where I don't wanna have rye,
I'm doin' different cover crops.
Don't talk about cover crops like
you talk about corn or soybeans, that's one species.
We have a whole meeting on corn for three days, right?
And soybeans for three days, you talk about
all the little delicate intricacies.
And we talk about cover crops like it's corn.
It's not even close, they're completely different animals.
And this is why people say "Well, how is it even
"possible to put cover crops, and use up water,
"and cover crops to maintain water, that's impossible."
Cause we're talkin' about 60 species.
Ya pick different ones for different things, okay?
This is what what I'm doin', I'm doin' frost kill stuff.
That's where I'm trying to build organic matter.
We got a lot of drills left, thank God.
We're doin' a lot of seven-and-a-half inch rows,
but we're also doin some 15 inch splits here, you'll see.
We're doin' the different seed sizes.
You mix rye and turnips and radishes together
the seed size isn't very close, okay?
A lot of the time it's easier to put
the larger seed in the front tank
smaller seeds in the back tank.
You can do this with your planters for sure.
Okay, your Nebraska Extension is
a goldmine of information for you folks.
Take advantage of it, defend it in times of poor budgets.
Seriously, this is really a model.
When we were looking at our North Dakota
state extension service, we call Nebraska for help.
How do you keep it, how do you maintain it?
What are you doin' there?
We've got a robust system as well.
Defend your system, you've got a lot of experts.
Midwest Cover Crops Council is
another good place to go and if you're
interested in videos and you like cool stuff,
NDSU soil health has really got some very good stuff.
Two and three minute videos, you can
watch 'em all in a round, turn around
turn on the next video watch it in the next round.
These are really good things that
cover lots of topics and Dr. Abbey Wick
does a phenomenal job, okay?
If you're not following her on twitter, you better be.
That's what I'm gonna say.
Use what you know about crops and weeds
and herbicides and tillage and farming,
this is just plants, it's a different plant.
Yeah, you've gotta learn a few
new tricks but they're still plants.
You know how to farm, you know how to do this stuff.
You know it, use what you know.
And experiment on your farm, and I like that.
There's mine, two or 20 acres not two or 2,000.
Do it small, learn, don't jump off a mountain.
Jump off a little mole hill, if you fall down
you've twisted your ankle, you didn't
hit a tree and die, okay, that can happen.
I use the botanical classification,
I'll get to that in a little bit, you know this stuff.
There's a cross reference cover crop chart.
If you go NDSU soil health and you go
towards the bottom, there's a cross reference on there.
What it does, is it tells you who's related to whom, okay.
It tells you if it's brassica species,
it tells you if they're a key to poaceae
and all that fun nerd stuff, okay.
So you can look these up, and you can cross reference them.
So what does that do?
If you wanna plant a radish, you can use that
information to find out it's related
to canola and mustard species and you can
look in your Nebraska weed guide and you can see
what herbicides have a 30 month rotation restriction
to canola, it's probably not a good idea, okay?
Or they have really excellent control
of those weed species, it's probably not a good idea.
But you'll also find places like dicamba
just sucks on brassica.
So if you're going to use that in your system,
you can probably brassica cover crops in there, okay?
This will help you, I have about 60 of them on there.
There it is, this is how it goes.
Got the crop, got the weed, that kinda thing.
It's set for North Dakota cause that's where I work.
But corn and soybean are on there, okay.
The other one that I think you should Google,
cover crop chart called the periodic table,
cover crop periodic table, it has a bunch of 'em listed.
It talks about their growth cycle,
their water usage and how their plant architecture works.
It'll help you pick some plants to put in and play with.
Now, we've got a few growers up there,
really good guy, this is Terry Weilander.
We started with our worst ground.
And that's what I would tell you to start with.
You poor producing ground, we have a lot of
salinity issues because of our low rainfall,
but also that those places that drowned out,
the places that wash out.
Take on your poor ground that's
not giving you the return anyways
so your risk of loss is lower.
You're not taking your 250 bushel acre corn.
You're taking 100 bushel acre corn
so your risk is low, start there.
But he learned that hey, if this is helping
my poor ground so much, what about the rest of it?
This is where, I think, your goals change.
I think this is where you need to get to a
little bit more of an expert level before you
start doing this stuff, again practice on your low ground.
Now, this is my five food groups concept.
Tryin' to keep things simple.
It's a balanced diet kind of idea for building soil health.
This is not new, this is just the way that I say it.
Cool season broadleaves, cool season grasses,
warm season broadleaves, warm season grasses and a legume.
I think if you get those in in two years,
you got her covered.
People are gonna argue with me, say you gotta
have them every year, you gotta have 'em all the time.
That's great, that's fine, I don't
need to eat broccoli every day, okay.
But it's good for me and I know that.
But I don't need to eat it every day.
So what are your goals, do you wanna be
an olympian champion cover cropper
or do you just wanna get a little better?
Do you wanna be a little healthier?
Not everybody wants to be at that level.
That's fine, but I want you to
reduce your erosion, I want you to do a better job.
Part of that is getting a balanced diet out there, okay?
This is, kind of, I don't think there's any
award for the greatest cover cropper in the world,
I don't think there's any awards for
super soil health, the more you work towards it,
the more it's gonna pay you back,
the more you take care of that land it's gonna pay you back.
I think once you get goin' on this,
I think you're gonna shoot for it,
but I'm not gonna shoot for an Olympic gold medal.
I wanna lose a couple of pounds
and that's where we're going to call it, okay?
If I get there that's a success.
So that's kind of my, watch out
for this concept of moron, okay?
I think that's in my notes or nimrod either way.
The whole thing of this moron idea
is that the more you put on, the better it is.
And you'll hear that with fertilizer,
you'll hear that with herbicides,
you'll hear that with cover crops,
you'll hear that with everything.
I think there's another definition for the word moron,
be careful with that, be careful with that.
I'm not sayin' that, there's no sweet spot right?
There's too much, there's not enough,
and then there's a sweet spot right in the middle.
And your farm's different than
your farm's different than your farm.
Your goals are different.
Where you wanna be and how you
wanna get there are different.
And your skill set's different.
Do it to your advantage, that's what I have for you.
Oh, and this is on a road trip to Missouri,
this is the windiest road I've ever been on.
Have you ever been to North Dakota?
The roads are square, like, I mean square.
The only reason they move is cause
the county shifts a little bit.
That's the curve, so we drive to Jamestown,
it's 45 miles away, my wife calls me she's at the curve.
I know exactly where she's at.
(laughter)
So if you've got any questions or whatever,
I'll be here, I love to answer questions.
Hit me up, I'm gettin' better at
helpin' people start this system.
I'm gettin' better at helping mid-level guys move forward.
And I'm takin' notes on these guys
that have been doin' it for long years.
Thank you.
(applause)
Announcer: Thank you Lee.
Question or two, question or two for Lee?
Lee: I smell food, yeah.
(audience member speaks from a distance)
Oh the, yeah, this one?
It's on --
Announcer: It's on the sheet that's in your --
Lee: I think it's in your packet but make sure.
Announcer: Yup, it's a white sheet of paper,
single sheet of paper and he has all the links on there.
Lee: I think so, I might have added this one later,
but if you can't find it just
Google NDSU herbicides and cover crops.
Cause that's too much, right --
and they're gonna post these slides so then --
Announcer: It's, it's on here.
It says, way at the bottom...
Excuse me, let me,
I'm sorry for grabbing your -- (Lee laughing)
Plan for a family cross reference --
Lee: There you go, that's the one.
Announcer: That's the one, it's on here.
Lee: That's the one.
Announcer: Bottom of the sheet.
Lee: And use that with your local weed guide.
And you can make a lot of inferences,
but understand, we're talking about cousins.
So you could be wrong, you could get,
you could get the wrong sister, okay.
Things can go wrong with this so use it at your own risk,
but it's at least a starting point.
Announcer: Other questions?
Lee: I think they're smellin' food Keith, but...
Keith: Yup, thank you again Lee.
Lee: Dan had one.
(applause)
Dan: One quick question, I see the same thing
as you do with the surreal ride and the weed suppression.
So I'm out there with a load of
herbicide for the post spray.
And I'm spraying along and only like,
five percent of the ground I cover
needs a herbicide application.
Lee: Yeah. Dan: What do you do?
Lee: What do ya do?
How ballsy are ya, that's the question.
Dan: (laughing) Well...
Lee: So, cause there's an on off button right?
And we've been talkin' about this,
we're doin' more variable rate rye than we have before.
And that has to do with my rainfall.
So I have really really gone.
I don't want 60 pounds of rye on my hilltop.
That's a terrible idea, I want 30 pounds on the edge,
I want 60 to 70 pounds in the low spots
where I might drowned out and I want
nothin' on the hilltops.
We started doing variable rate rye
while we're topdressing our corn.
We're seeding the rye, corn this big.
And I only get 15 inches of rain.
We're doin' just fine, okay, but
that herbicide thing, I'm starting to make
variable rate herbicide maps for these growers.
Nobody's quite brave enough to do 'em yet.
But we're makin 'em and we're lookin at 'em
and what he's doin' is he's running 'em
on the screen behind the sprayer, right.
And I got one young guy who's
probably just, just dumb enough to do this, okay.
And, and so, so right now I've got six
to eight maps made for him, he's running
'em in the background of the sprayer
and he could just go over to variable rate,
just with one button, we haven't quite done it yet.
Yeah, I think you could.
Dan: (muffled) I see the applicability,
cause I've got a 60 foot boom, thousand gallon --
I see the applicability in that because I've,
on my small farm, 400 acres, I have a 60 foot boom,
thousand gallon tank pull-tight
and I put herbicide on probably 140 acres
that I didn't need to, so that weed seeker type thing,
I could easily hire somebody to
do that for me and save money.
Lee: Yeah. Dan: Easily.
Lee: The weed seeker, I don't think, is quite there.
Expense wise, I mean, we're talkin'
about buying the space shuttle
right now as far as price goes.
And I think it'll work, but the maps I'm building
aren't off of satellite maps, they're not off of
variable rate, various maps.
They come from here, I go across my fields every week.
I cover 60,000 acres every seven days, okay.
In my twenty years I've been over 1.3 million acres, okay.
And so, we are, we are getting an
intimate knowledge with these fields.
And I'm using lot of stuff to make points.
My phone is probably the easiest
way to make points right now, okay.
I'll make a point, I'll bring that
back to my computer, I'll build map.
I never ever trust a precision map
that the computer tells me what's goin on.
The precision maps are always about
what me and the farmer know what's goin on.
We tell the computer what we want it to do,
not the other way around, and I think
that's a really important concept.
Keith: Thank you again Lee,
appreciate it very much, very interesting.
Thank you.
(applause)