Doing what it takes to build soil health

Breitkreutzes up their game with covers and grazing

Redwood Falls, Minnesota — Most cash grain growers in the Upper Midwest run big equipment across thousands of acres of GMO corn and soybeans and maybe — just maybe — feed out some of those crops to feedlot cattle or confinement hogs. Often it doesn’t get much more complex than that.

Things aren’t quite that simple at Stoney Creek Farm. Over the past 20 years, Grant and Dawn Breitkreutz have converted a conventional crops and cattle farm into a multi-faceted enterprise that is one part experiment, two parts flexibility, and several parts complex. Continue reading “Doing what it takes to build soil health”

November 1, 2017April 18, 2020

For love of trees

A Wisconsin dairyman sees advantages to planting them in his pastures

By Dylan Paris

Platteville, Wisconsin — Don Austin just likes trees.

Over the past 30 years the veteran dairy grazier has planted hundreds of them along property boundaries and interior fences, next to cattle lanes and in the midst of pastures.

Oaks and elms, cottonwoods and weeping willows, apples and apricots, walnuts and hazelnuts — Don has planted all of these and more during a grazing career that dates back to 1987. “Weed” trees volunteering along fence lines are allowed to grow if Don feels they’re serving a purpose. Continue reading “For love of trees”

April 1, 2017April 18, 2020

Book review: The Art and Science of Grazing

By Joel McNair

Seldom do I write reviews of books that have to do with grazing. Too many espouse particular points of view that apply only to a certain subset of grass-based farmers. Others are fluffy tomes that aim to affirm readers’ beliefs of what’s right and wrong. More than a few are written mainly with the idea of selling products and services. Too many are full of hype about some purported new revolution in grazing-related management.
Sarah Flack’s The Art and Science of Grazing (Chelsea Green Publishing) avoids all of the above. In this book, Sarah, a grass farmer and well-respected grazing consultant, offers perhaps the best all-around grazing manual since Bill Murphy’s Greener Pastures on Your Side of the Fence, first published about 30 years ago. Probably this is not a coincidence, as Sarah once studied under the University of Vermont grass master. Continue reading “Book review: The Art and Science of Grazing”

January 1, 2017April 18, 2020

Can we really regenerate our soils?

This grazing and cover crop system is producing some impressive numbers

By Gabe Brown
Phone calls, emails and even a few old-fashioned letters — all say the same thing. As I travel presenting at conferences and workshops, the statement comes up repeatedly.

If only I had a dollar for the number of times I had people tell me, “Gabe, you just don’t understand that our soils are not like yours.” I have learned to listen patiently (OK, sometimes not so patiently) as these people tell me all the reasons my soils are productive, and theirs are not. Continue reading “Can we really regenerate our soils?”

January 1, 2017July 12, 2022

Pigs stack well with our grassfed beef

By Aaron and Melissa Miller

We’ve been raising pigs on pasture for the past 12 years. Our beef customers were asking about pork, and we decided it was a good candidate to round out our meat selection at the various markets we serve.

Pigs have become a profit center for us because we’re able to fill our delivery truck and sales trailer with a broader range of products when we go to market, making the days more profitable. Stacking pork atop our core grassfed beef business adds value without adding too much in the way of expense, including labor.

December 1, 2016July 12, 2022

A problem of distribution

Soil and yield testing showed shocking shortfalls in the back halves of paddocks

By Daniel Olson

So, I was sitting in my sister’s living room, admiring the newly purchased aerial photograph of their property. Their place is next to ours, so the main farm is also in the picture. You could clearly see the chicken tractors across the road, the junk pile we hide behind the barn, and the new building project.

But what really stood out were the different shades of green within our paddocks. As I looked closer, I could see that the darkest grass was always closest to the paddock gates, and it consistently lightened in direct proportion to the distance from those gates.

I shouldn’t have been surprised, and I guess I always knew that our highest productivity was toward the front of our paddocks. I decided to do some research this