I was
born and raised just a couple of miles straight west.
We have basically about 500 acres, give or take. We farm with my son-in-law
Tim Lehrke. And then Tim has got 320 acres and
we've been doing it all organically since the
year 2000. And then we've been working a lot here lately
with NRCS and we're expanding our operation to more cattle/
cow/ calf operation and it's been working out really great for us.
We're doing a lot of rotational grazing. The no-till that we're looking into, I
don't know, it just really makes sense. We are always aware as far as trying to
keep our costs down, and I think we can improve our soil and, in turn
make more money at what we're doing. It's been quite a unique year here for all of
us farmers this year, where we've had so much rain. We started
chopping out there as far as our corn silage. There were so many areas
where it was wet. We were getting stuck. We finally got to the point where we
just said we're just wrecking more than what we're,
you know, trying to accomplish. So we let it go, and now here it's, you
know the 8th of November and we're chopping corn.
But right now the ground is frozen up and then we're able to carry,
and get through all these wet spots. The ground
is extremely rough. It's hard on equipment, but we're just taking our time
and getting our corn chopped up. We're putting in a pile,
and then we're packing that pile the best we can, and then we'll try to put
some wheat straw that we'll put over the
top and kind of try to seal it that way so you know prevent that from spoiling. These right here are the sweet clover
bales, and we had a bunch of oats, and then
we had it under seeded with sweet clover the year before and then we come out and
cut that, and then bailed it up. Some of this here
we'll probably grind it up with oats hay and stuff. It makes a real good
hay. It's kind of coarse and stuff but we really
grind it up and that works out good. Then of course here's some of our second
cutting hay here. And then on the other end we got the
oats. We'll probably grind some of that too.
And then go out there to the pasture area and
putting it in these old tractor tires. The wagon there
drops it in to the tire, where that kind of keeps it
where the cattle are not stepping on it or whatnot.
And it seems like they can get access to it.
Works out real good. Sometimes, you know, we used to have the troughs and stuff.
For the young stock we got that, but we find that you get an area,
especially in the spring, where it's wet, and where you can move them around
otherwise it gets really wet and muddy and stuff. And with the tires
we can move them around to different parts of the pasture.
And then what we're trying to achieve here is to get the cows out there in
that pasture so you got the manure there instead of up
around the feed lot and stuff, where we got to drag
that manure out of there. In the summer the corn does so much
better and with, you know, a little better
fertility from the manure, because we don't use any fertilizer or
chemicals or anything. So it's a win-win for us. And then we
started with the black angus. And then we're
going with red angus now. And it's working out real good. We sure like the
red angus where they're more docile and easier to work with.
I don't know, just a good breed there that
works good for us guys. All together we got about
about 60 head of cows, and a couple of bulls, and and then the calves. We bought
Curt's farmhouse and farm 12 years ago.
We raised the calves up and sell them as feeders
The calves were getting corn silage and some haylage. And then we
would give them a little bit of ground feed, barley and oats.
We normally feed our young stock and our cows once a day.
Usually starting late in the fall, when they no longer can be on pasture,
and we have to start feeding them. We'll do it until
spring, till we get pasture. We just kind of got started in with the no-till
and cover crops. I suppose we've been doing it for about
four years and then, just the soil and everything. There's
such a difference there. Where we're getting into more of the
cover crops, and building of soil, and trying to get built organic matter.
And what a difference. I know especially with the cattle here. Now where we get
all the manure. And it's helped big time as far
as getting our fertility up there. This year now, we put in quite a bit of
rye. We planted this fall ,and we planted that
right into some barley stubble, and it got a good germination on
that, so we're looking forward to see how that
turns out next year here. And we've done quite a bit of rye in the past, and then
worked that in, and planted soybeans. And we had some pretty good luck with
that with the no-till aspect of it. This land is so subject to
erosion. Different times we work it up in the
spring, and if you get a heavy rain, it washes so bad.
And I just didn't want that at all anymore. So we've
pretty much put this all into pasture and alfalfa.
We'll come in here and take first cutting hay off of it.
And we kind of pasture their at Tim's. Then we rotate them all through
here. And we rotated them. Some of these places
were like three different times this year that they've been on there. And
the big thing is where it's out of ways, so it doesn't
get the manure out here, we know as far as when they're spreading.
So here now in the pasture, and then we get the manure where we want it.
So that has really helped us a lot. Then we got
going with the paddock system, and then moving these cattle.
This year we did it with a mob grazing. And Tim pretty much did all that, where
he got in all the rye grass, and radishes, and you name it.
And it's just where you run a hot wire down and
split the field. The biggest thing is where they got
access to water. And some of that where they overlap each other. But
what we found out there is where you give that pasture a rest
and we come back and run them through there two or three times after that then,
where it's just lush good grass, and we got the fresh
water there available for them. It's just so
much more production out of that. That has really
been a life-saving thing there for us where the cattle can stay out there in
the pasture area. They're not up around the buildings
where it brings the flies and stuff in. You get all the manure out there
where you want it. We worked with the NRCS. They brought out
a couple of different guys that
specialized in grazing. And then to set up and design the most
effective way to put these water tanks in. And then the line fence and the cross
fences and stuff there to get them in and out
of there at one time. And when we were going into
it I thought oh my gosh that's going to be a hassle
to move these cattle on that kind of a three/four times in a week.
And we found out there now, once these cows get this figured out,
just open the gate and get out of the way, because they're going to move.
They know the routine. They're smarter than we are.
On our cover crop that we planted for rotational grazing, it was
an intensive grazing system, so we use red clover, sweet clover, some rye. Where
we set up with some poly wire, and we set up paddocks, and move the cows.
We just keep moving a wire every day, and made a water tank to move
to each paddock every day, so as we moved them we'd move the water tank.
There were many paddocks. It was a total of 30 acres.
Usually we try to leave about a third to a half uneaten.
And they trample some of it in the ground so that
it covers the ground and protects it. It catches snow
and then next year we wanted to no-till the corn into
where we had our cover crop, the cattle this year, for silage.
We've been working with the NRCS, started, I suppose, about five/six
years ago. You know, they're good guys to work for.
And we worked with Ed there, mainly. They've helped us out a lot. We were with
our cows, where we installed fences, four barbed wire
fence around our perimeters. The big thing with
these, when you got a good perimeter fence like
that, where you can sleep a lot better at night,
where you don't have your cattle going out there to the neighbors or
whatever. And just good peace of mind. We worked in a
in the past with the NRCS for a fencing and
watering system on part of my land just north of the grove.
And it was through an EQIP program. NRCS was great to work
work with. The one iI put in was a shallow buried
water line. We hook it to our well. And then it
has two water tanks on mine, and then there's two water tanks on
Curts, and they're all hooked together and we
hook that up in the spring. We have different paddocks
hooked up to different tanks so then we can move the cattle around and they have
water without going back to the farm yard for water. This here is one of our stock tanks.
And we're set up with a hydrant and then this
line was put in about eight feet deep. Then we got a hydrant here, one to the
north, another one over here to the north and
east. They really work out beautiful. In the fall we
drain the tanks when it gets to the point where
that shallow buried water line is going to start to freeze. In the winter time
our cows are moved closer to the farm yard where we have
Richie water for them to access water. I started out farming organically
in a system that was set up for a lot of tillage, and we're
trying to go more and more into a no-till system
where we can reduce the tillage to try and cut down on
expensive fuel and equipment costs. The reason why
we went organic is we're very concerned with the
environment. So many times where you think of organic, we have different
opinions on it, but if it's done and done right, you know,
it'll work out just fine. We've been 100 organic since about the year 2000.
The weeds just went crazy the first couple years.
And then where we finally kind of work through that and realize what the
do's and don'ts are. Get the the plant planted and
till it the same day and stuff, so they are both on the same playing field, where the plant will germinate at the same time as the weeds,
you know. And what a difference. Where farming is fun again.
The biggest thing is all these input costs and everything that we had and
we were farming conventionally. My gosh, you know, time you got done what
was left for you there there was very little and you did
all the work. Here we don't have any chemicals or
fertilizer, you know, pesticides, that are in our area.
We're very unique where, you know, we're isolated. We don't have
that exposure to, you know, any farm chemicals. Farming
organically is is somewhat challenging or can be but
I enjoy doing it because it requires you to
come up with a solution to a problem that's a little different.
But I like it in the fact that your input costs
are lower. You're not buying chemical. You're not buying a lot of
inputs, fertilizer, and pesticides. I think I have gotten better
at organic farming over the last 18 years, but
on the other hand, there's always a year where you have
a failure. Most years you have a crop or some crops that do really good, and
there's always something that you wished you would have
done different, or you have a crop that didn't do very well. But I like
farming organically because I don't like being around or handling
pesticides, and herbicides, and chemicals. And also the economics of it, of not
spending the money for the extra product. My input costs are
lower being organic. I would recommend other people
should try organic. They should probably best if they did it in
phases. or a little bit at a time. Don't jump in all at once.
The first couple years. It was definitely a learning curve there was,
we had weed pressure and weed problem. We had to learn how to run run a row crop
cultivator. And how important it was for timing for
controlling weeds. One of the biggest things, if you can see
weeds germinating, and see them when you drove by, you knew
it was too late. It seemed like though, over time after
doing it, it got better Farming organically it seems like to me
that crop rotation made a big difference in
weed pressure. Rotated different crops and using some cover crops seemed to
help, as far as weed pressure.
My yields are, I guess on average, I would honestly say they're a little lower
than than the conventional farmer. But with the cattle, some of the crops
too that I raise are for feed for the cattle. This year
was a tough year in the fact of the weather and as well as
it was hard to get the crop off the field this fall. But whether you
were organic or conventional in this area,
everybody had that same problem. Working with my father-in-law has been
fun. He does a lot of the field work for us, and
he has a lot of ideas how to do certain things. It works out good
between the both of us working together. We've been married now for just about 50
years. And Angie is married to Tim, and we have
five children. We had all the kids here a couple weeks ago.
We took some family pictures. So we got a big family here
with all the grand kids. I've been so fortunate there.
This year we had the calf and he was born, and we had to pull the calf,
and right away something's wrong here He just, he's born blind, the poor little guy.
We had quite a time for him to get him started there, nursing and whatnot. But
Tim, he's got the patience of job and he kept working with him, and at one point
we had him out with the regular cows, and then he was going through the hot wire
and stuff there. We had quite a time, and he'd short out the fence.
So then we just brought him and his mother up in the feedlot
up there. And they spent the summer up there. And now where you go out there and
you holler Batman or stuff. And he's right out there and gonna run up, and
walks around with his head up in the air, Because I suppose he's
relying off it's just sound and everything. But
done very well. He's gained as good as the other ones if not a little bit
better maybe. I like farming. I like being around
cattle, livestock. I like being on the field and cutting
hay. And I guess if anybody else is interested in
farming organically, I guess best thing I can tell them is that, you know, to
ask questions. Go to field days. There's definitely
information out there on how to get started
farming organically. I would recommend other people to
work with NRCS. I think they have a lot of good ideas, as far as
no-till, and cover crop, and rotational grazing, and
putting animals on the land. I think those are good ways to improve your soil.
And the NRCS is a good place, a
good resource. And they help me out a lot. One of the most
important things farming this way organically,
and going with the no-till is farming is fun again, where you're not
worrying about trying to pay all these expenses, you know you
don't have to have 10,000 acres or whatever. You can
operate on a smaller scale where you can you can make a profit. And then we can
get more family farms established there. I would love to encourage people to take
a a good look at this there. You know, we as
farmers, we run such a small margin of profit here any
way that where we can be a little more effective,
especially with the no-till. I think that's something that's really
a thing that's, take a good look at it and
try it. And it takes a while for that to kind of
get your organic matter built up. But once you get this going.
We were on a field day here last year and that was through
NRCS, got to tour these farms, go through it, and they showed what the
yield were on them. And I think that's the key there is to
educate yourself or to get out and see what's available.
