Episode 1: FLOURISH Foundations and On-Farm Trials with Jason Bishop
Jason Bishop stands in front of Living Heritage Farms.
About the episode:
Jodi and Ryan sit down with Jason Bishop from Living Heritage Farms in Edwall, WA, to discuss the foundations of the FLOURISH project, as well as results from the first year of on farm trials. Jason, Ryan, and Jodi discuss how the FLOURISH project all got started and its purpose, the background and changes to agriculture in the region in the last 100 years, the challenges of integrating cover crops and livestock in the Inland Pacific Northwest region, as well as farmers’ ambitious goals to solve those challenges. FLOURISH is a farmer-led conservation innovation project, with the goal to support the widespread adoption of soil health practices by integrating cover crops and livestock into farming operations. The ambitious purpose of FLOURISH is to not only regenerate our soils, but also regenerate our rural communities by creating opportunities for younger generations to return to productive, sustainable farms.
About the podcast:
Welcome to the FLOURISH Podcast, where we at the Palouse Conservation District interview farmers, ranchers, and researchers on topics related to conservation agriculture. FLOURISH, also known as Farmers Leading Our United Revolution in Soil Health, is a farmer-led conservation innovation project to support the widespread adoption of soil health practices by integrating cover crops and livestock into farming operations in the Inland Pacific Northwest. The ambitious purpose of FLOURISH is to not only regenerate our soils, but also our rural communities by creating opportunities for younger generations to return to productive, sustainable farms. On this podcast, we bring you updates from on-farm trials, research, findings, and advice from farmers.
The views and opinions expressed on the FLOURISH Podcast are those of the guests and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Palouse Conservation District or the USDA Conservation Innovation Grants program. Any content provided by our Guests are of their opinion and are not intended to malign any religion, ethnic group, club, organization, company, individual, or anyone or anything.
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Introduction (00:10)
Hello and welcome to the FLOURISH Podcast, where we at the Palouse Conservation District interview farmers, ranchers, and researchers on topics related to conservation agriculture. FLOURISH, also known as Farmers Leading our United Revolution In Soil Health is a farmer led conservation innovation project to support the widespread adoption of soil health practices by integrating cover crops and livestock into farming operations. The ambitious purpose of FLOURISH is to not only regenerate our soils, but also our rural communities by creating opportunities for younger generations to return to productive, sustainable farms. On this podcast, we bring you updates from on-Farm Trials, research, findings, and advice from farmers.
Ryan (01:04)
Hello, I'm Ryan Boylan, the host of the FLOURISH Podcast. I'm here today with Jodi Prout.
Jodi (01:09)
Hi everyone.
Ryan (01:10)
She's our co-host and Jason Bishop, who's a farmer at Living Heritage Farms in Edwall, Washington.
Jason (01:17)
Hello. Glad to be here.
Ryan (01:18)
Yeah, thanks for joining us today, Jason. Would you mind just talking a little bit about your farming operation?
Jason (01:25)
Sure. I am fairly new to this farming operation. I grew up on this farm and it was, uh, in 2016 that we left the west side of the state and then came to the farm. And so, I mean my wife Jill, and our four kids, at the time, it was only three. We just wanted to have a different experience for our kids growing up then in their childhood. And so, it's not many children that get to experience growing up on a farm, and we thought we'd like to, to provide that for them. We sold our house and moved over here and, the rest is now history.
Ryan (02:08)
That's great.
Jason (02:09)
So yeah, the farm ground is all dry land. We farm 1500 acres, about 13 inches of rain. We're kind of on the border of annual cropping and a three-year rotational program. So, we're experimenting with doing annual cropping, and we're doing okay. We had a tough year in the drought year, but it's working out so far.
Ryan (02:37)
So, what would be your typical crop rotation then?
Jason (02:40)
Typical crop rotation would've probably been winter wheat, spring wheat back when I was in high school, would've been barley and then followed by fallow, and then back to winter wheat.
Ryan (02:55)
We're really excited you're here because, the FLOURISH program, was one of your brain children.
Jason (03:05)
Yeah, I guess you could say. Well, I was listening to a bunch of podcasts about regenerative agriculture and then I don't know how I came across it, but I saw the opportunity that USDA was putting on their website for, on-farm trials. I'm like, hey, I'm a farm. I'm a farmer. I could do a trial. And so, I walked into my conservation district office with this hare-brained idea that I was gonna write a grant, having no experience writing grants at all. And I didn't really even know what I was getting into. But Kristen Balco was there at the time, and she was very gracious and entertaining the idea, and she kind of gave me some resources of what I could do to write it. I don't know if they really expected me to actually finish writing it and actually submitting it. But we put it all together and, we got it off like the hour before the deadline and submitted that first year in 2019.
Jason (04:02)
And it, at the time, it was a very small program. It was just my farm. So, we wanted to implement the soil health management protocols and do that to the fullest extent, including integration of livestock. That was really the priority. And I wanted to do that in a way that would demonstrate for the region that, hey, this could work, you know, and then have that shared. 'Cause I really believe that it would work. And so, the first year we submitted it was very small, just my farm. The second year, I think Lincoln County and Palouse County got in touch with each other and it got much larger. I think it went to three states at that point. And there were many, many farmers involved. And then we weren't awarded that year. And then, the third-year submission, it apparently was just right. So, I kind of like think it's like Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Too small, too big, just right.
Ryan (05:05):
And so, um, for those of you that don't know what the FLOURISH Project is all about, it stands for Farmers Leading Our United Revolution In Soil Health. And that was an acronym that Jason actually came up with.
Jason (05:16):
It was very late at night.
Ryan (05:20):
That was great. Yeah, and currently there's 27 farms participating in Idaho, Washington, and Oregon. The goals of the program were to promote the adoption of regenerative agricultural practices. And that included, four potential practices. Cover cropping in place of fallow, cover crops interceded with commodity grains, and then integrating cattle into both of those. And we just finished our first year of seeding, which is really exciting.
Jason (05:54):
Yeah.
Ryan (05:56):
And then, uh, what we're trying to do is we're gonna collect soil health data, economic data, and do some sociological surveys, and share that, all that information with the public through a bunch of outreach and education materials. So that could be this podcast, field tours, and we're gonna have an annual cropping symposium where we'll talk about what we've learned and haven't learned or are learning, I guess.
Jason (06:27):
Yeah. And I, I think it's great to have this opportunity, 'cause as a farmer, when you're trying these things, you sometimes feel like an island out there by the yourself, and you see it working in other areas of the nation, and you would like to think it would work in your area, but there's a lot of risk still involved. And so, I was really excited to be able to have this program be able to come alongside of me and de-risk some of this. 'Cause I still have obligations for my landlords.
Ryan (06:56):
Mm-Hmm.
Jason (06:57):
And, I, you know, pulling 30 acres out of the farm isn't that big a deal, but it takes a lot of time and effort that I wouldn't normally spend doing some of these trials.
Ryan (07:08):
Yeah, that's a good point. And I should also say that it's just 30-acre trials on most of the farms, and then we're comparing them to sort of like a business-as-usual crop rotation and doing the economics and soil health analysis on that stuff. So, we'll see what happens. I think hopefully we'll learn a lot. Do you think you could talk, I mean, since you grew up on the farm, could you talk a little bit about the history of agriculture in the region?
Jason (07:35):
Yeah. Well, maybe, maybe I'll talk specifically with my family as I'm aware of it. So, I'm the fifth-generation farmer. So, my great-great-grandfather came over from Germany and he, uh, eventually made his way over to Spokane. He's a carpenter. And a lot of the economy at that time was, um, it was agrarian. So, you were somehow tied to the land in some shape or another. And he for some reason ended up in Edwall and he started a creamery.
Jason (08:12):
And so, he was collecting milk from the farms. And I don't know what motivated him to do this, but they ended up buying a farm. This would've been shortly before World War I, because I know that his sons would've been drafted into the war, except be my great-grandfather. He ended up, going to University of Washington and getting his engineering degree. But he was like a few classes short, they needed, he was about ready to lose his exemption, and his mom did not want him to go over to Europe. So, she made him come back and work on the farm. 'Cause then you could continue that, uh, draft exemption, which was kind of interesting. But the practices back then, it's all horse drawn. The mechanization of agriculture hadn't really happened yet.
Jason (09:10):
And that, process of going from neighbors with, you know, 200 acres, a family could survive on 250 acres at the time, and they would work together, share equipment. A threshing machine would come into the area and they would go from farm to farm, threshing everybody's wheat. They'd sack it up, put it on the wagons, get into town, it goes on the train, and into Spokane where it gets milled. That radically changed as you came up to World War II. And you really saw the mechanization of tractors. My grandpa was telling me how there were programs to trade mules in for tractors. People were kind of tired of shoveling horse manure around and dealing with that. So, there was really an appeal to do that. But what happened then to our rural economies is all the labor associated with the pre mechanized agriculture, it starts to free up a lot of labor. And so, the populations, like when you look at Lincoln County, you'll actually see the population is less today than it was a hundred years ago, which is pretty amazing.
Ryan (10:34):
Yeah.
Jason (10:35):
So, World War II, of course, making bombs, the Haber Bosch process allowed fertilizer to be made very cheaply. And so, the green revolution happened, and that allowed farmers to mechanize and then to use inputs to double their fertility. You went from 15 to 20 bushels per acre to 40 and 60. And from there, a lot of the practices such as rotations with leguminous crops like sweet clover and peas, that's all part of the past now, because you could provide your inputs with these synthetic chemicals. And then, as you kind of move through history, you have choices you make as a farmer. Like my grandpa did. I think he started farming probably in the early 1950s, and he had the choice during his life. Do I, buy a bigger tractor or do I find another hired man? Because if you're gonna take on more ground, you have to make these choices. And it made sense to him at the time just to get a bigger tractor.
So over time, we just see the rural economies shrinking and shrinking. And you get to the point now where, like in Edwall, when I was growing up, there was probably in the city center, the town hall, if you will, you would see maybe 40 or 50 families. And now you probably around 10 or 12, as people retire, they move. And parents encourage their kids to go to a four-year university, go to the city, make some money. That's what my parents encouraged us to do. So, it's been interesting watching Edwall, a town that used to have a thriving, I mean, it wasn't thriving, I guess, but it had a gas station, it had a grocery store, it had a hardware store, an automotive repair, a little restaurant. None of those are left. The agrochemical facility's still there and the elevator and a school. But, beyond that it's just kind of dried up because there are not people here anymore.
So, yeah. I really like what you're mentioning where FLOURISH is not just intended into regenerating, our soils, but regenerating our communities. 'Cause I, I really think that's important to add value to back to our farms where whether that be jobs or, for those kids that wanna stay on the farm, how can they integrate their families, their future families into the family farm? And that's what I'm really excited about.
Ryan (13:38):
So, can I go back to something you said earlier? About the legumes and the sweet clovers that were really important.
Jason (13:44):
Yeah.
Ryan (13:45):
I saw this, it was at an NRCS office, when I first started my job. This was like seven years ago. And there were these big photos of cattle grazing sweet clover in like the 1940s maybe.
Jason (13:57):
Yeah.
Ryan (13:58):
But it seems like everybody wants to move back in that direction. Or like all the folks that are participating in the project. So, I guess maybe one of my questions like this was the grant was your idea. And was what was the motivation for that?
Jason (14:17):
I wanted to prove out these ideas that we've seemed to separate ourselves from over time. Like my farm's name is “Living Heritage”. The idea was that there's, there's a heritage, there's like a history. And I wanted to bring that back to life and, and to show that that worked. And so that's why my wife and I named our farm what we did.
But, sweet clover's an amazing plant.
Ryan (14:45):
Yeah, it is.
Jason (14:47):
I did a trial one year. This is, this is all off, there's no grants for this. I'm just experimenting.
Ryan (14:53):
Yeah.
Jason (14:54):
I companion Crop Sweet Clover with, uh, I think it was just a spring wheat and that it was, it was really cool 'cause that sweet clover would just simmer below the heads down in the understory. And I was able to combine that off the top. And I thought, oh, that's neat. That's great. Well, the next year I came back, it's a biennial plant.
Ryan (15:17):
Yeah.
Jason (15:18):
My sweet clover is a monster. I mean, this sweet clover was probably, in April/May time period, it was probably already up two feet. Then by the time I went back to check it in late May memorial time period, it was probably four feet. And then I was like, oh, I was getting worried, like, what am I gonna do with this? And I should have swathed it and hayed it. Got it out of there. At that time, I didn't, I let it go. And by the time middle of June, it was probably eight feet tall.
Ryan (15:50):
Yeah. That's amazing. Yeah.
Jason (15:51):
Just a buzzing humming amazing mass of biomass.
Ryan (15:57):
Yeah. That's cool.
Jason (15:58):
So then, then you had to figure out what you're gonna do with it. I ended up combining some of it for seed.
Ryan (16:02):
Oh, Cool.
Jason (16:03):
And I tried haying it. My swather did not like that. And there's, apparently there's a mold that can develop on the leaves of sweet clover.
Ryan (16:15):
Oh?
Jason (16:15):
That is the same compound in Coumadin, so it's a blood thinner. So, if you're sweet clover hay gets wet and you feed it to cattle, they could bleed out and die apparently.
Ryan (16:28):
That's crazy.
Jason (16:29):
Yeah. I didn't know that.
Ryan (16:30):
Yeah. Me neither.
Jason (16:31):
Just word of caution.
Jodi (16:32):
Yeah. Absolutely.
Jason (16:33):
At least, at least research it.
Jodi (16:35):
That's all that knowledge that doesn't get passed down through the generations.
Jason (16:42):
You know, we call what we do conventional ag, but really, it's very unconventional.
Ryan (16:51):
Yeah.
Jason (16:51):
I mean, the way we've done it for centuries prior, that's conventional. This is a little bit novel right now, what we're doing.
Ryan (17:00):
Yeah. Another thing that you mentioned earlier was one of the reasons that you're excited is so you can talk to other farmers about and learn from each other.
Jason (17:08):
Yeah.
Ryan (17:08):
Yes. And most of the people that I talk to, everybody wants to figure out how to integrate cover crops here in like the Palouse region in general. But it's been so hard. Could you talk about maybe a few of those challenges?
Jason (17:22):
There’s a few challenges I see. One, they are viewed as stealing moisture. And because we’re dryland farmers, any amount of rain is a precious resource. I forget the equivalents. I think WSU’s done a study on this, but, one inch of rain equates to five bushels of wheat or something like that. So, right out the gate you're looking at a crop that is going to be pulling moisture from the soil in lieu of a crop that you could potentially put there and make cash crop off it.
So that leads me to my second point is cover crops, you aren't paid for them, there's no return. Between the water usage which would affect the following crop and between the lack of money you receive when you have it in the ground, I think that that's a lot of red flags for farmers right out the gate. So, the thing I wanted to show is that maybe there is a way you can make some money off the crop, and that was by utilizing it for cattle grazing. And that's why I think the livestock integration piece is really important.
Then I was really happy to see the FLOURISH grant put some sensors in to kind of look at the water usage and see how it compares to the business as usual adjacent.
Ryan (18:54):
Yeah. And this year, like the first year, we only put sensors in the cover crop field. So typically, we're just seeing the water go away in the soil. But then, lesson learned, next year we're gonna put several in those business-as-usual type fields too, so we can compare the two. Which would be cool to see.
Jason (19:09):
Yeah, I think you're gonna see it go down in both of them. It’d be interesting to compare a fallow field. That's another, you know, historical point of interest to me is that the concept of fallow specifically the dirt mulch fallow is the idea that you can take a rod weeder through the field in the summer and cut off the capillary action of that moisture wicking up into the atmosphere, and creating that duff, that dirt mulch on the surface, and then later come in with your deep drills and then drop that seed right on that moist soil and get it to grow.
That was one of the, you know, when the no-till concepts came out, people didn't think that it would work because you didn't have that dust mulch to stop that transpiration, but it seems to be working. What if there was a way to prove that plants can shield the soil too, a living a green mulch, protect the moisture that we have in the soil. Then also maintain soil structure and keep those roots bringing in sunlight and converting it into sugars for the succeeding plants and all the soil biology.
That's what, that's what we all want to trial and hope maybe we can convert some of these fallow acres into carbon sinking acres that grow biomass.
Ryan (20:51):
Yeah. I guess we'll see, yeah.
Jason (20:54):
And that, yeah. That's an open-ended question. Is this really gonna work.
Ryan (20:58):
Yeah. Yeah. And like, maybe one of the million-dollar questions. I mean, it seems like in Washington state in general, there's been a lot of talk recently about cap and trade and carbon sequestration.
Jason (21:14):
Yeah. Uh, there's, what's the Washington state, small farms?
Ryan (21:22):
Oh, Sustainable farms and fields.
Jason (21:24):
Yeah, that program. Everybody's looking at this. And, you see cover crops being done well in the Midwest. I see the concepts and I see value in it. The opportunities they have is that they have rains that come in the summer. Where the drought here, we didn't get rain from April until almost October. And so how are you supposed to establish a cover crop, and then see it thrive, and then be able to plant a cash crop in the fall? It's just not gonna happen. So, there's unique challenges we have with this Mediterranean climate that we are in.
Ryan (22:10):
Yeah. Definitely. We actually had a couple participants, or like some of the producers that are working with us further west, they just couldn't get a cover crop in. They didn't think it would be a good idea, which it's totally fine, and maybe one of the other good things about the program is that it's a little more flexible than some of the other, like, traditional cost share programs put forward through NRCS.
Jason (22:35):
Yeah, not as rigid. Yeah, it’s not just like a one size fits all shoe that everybody has to put on. I appreciate that in this grant.
Ryan (22:44):
Yeah.
Jason (22:44):
I approached Tami the other day, you know, with this idea of like, I want to hit this 30 acres as hard as I can. My goals for this ground is to keep a living root in the soil as much as I can and try to just relay cropping. So, we seeded the spring and I'm gonna put peas and triticale in this fall. And then, if that goes well, then I might try doing some summer annuals this next summer in ‘24 and just keep cycling plants through here. I'm gonna try to inoculate the soil with as much biology and fungus as I can.
Ryan (23:30):
Yeah. So, another thing, this is building off of what you're saying. Do you expect that you'll get any fertility benefits, by stimulating the biological communities in the soil?
Jason (23:45):
I think I just need to get the soil cycling again. I'm not sure how much it's gonna take, I don't know. I view my soil as a medium at the moment, and in order to make the soil function, I have to provide an input. So, whether that's nitrogen, phosphorus, uh, sulfur, it requires these things, because I don't think the plant's able to, I mean, when you do a soil test, you see it's there, but why can't the plant utilize it? I think biology is that piece that will make these elements available to the plant. And so, if I could get the soil back to its natural rhythm and cycling and not treat it as a petri dish medium that I'm just adding things in, it's like a giant lab. If I could get it to naturally do its function, then I'm hoping and praying that this is gonna actually kickstart itself off and I won't require as many inputs as I've had in the past.
Ryan (24:52):
Yeah, that's cool.
Jason (24:53):
Which would help pencil it out, uh, at the end of the day.
Ryan (24:57):
Yeah, so there's like two pieces. If you can get the nutrient cycling and then bringing cattle back in.
Jason (25:06):
Yeah. So, we, we did cattle this summer with FLOURISH. We had them on there for over three weeks, I think almost four weeks. And there were 40 animals on 30 acres, and they gained 1.9 pounds per day. I think that's where we're at, which isn't fabulous. There's, there's some challenges we have in bringing cattle from rangeland or pasture ground and bringing them on to cover crops, it’s a totally different diet. So, there's gonna be some adjustment they have there in their first week or two as their rumen adjusts. They might not be utilizing the feed as efficiently as they would be if they had been on it for a longer period of time. And then when they move back off the cover crop and they go back to where they're at, they're gonna have to readjust their rumen again. So, I think if we could keep the cows on the cover crop for a longer period of time, I think we might see some more gain.
Ryan (26:11):
One of my favorite things is ask sort of dumb questions. I do it all the time. It is literally my favorite part of my job. What’s a good rate of gain per day? Do you know?
Jason (26:25):
I think two is okay. I think you want see like four? If you're in a feedlot, I think it's up in the fours. So, we weren't quite there. Um, but I think these were replacement heifers. They weren't stockers, so that might make a difference too.
Oh, we only did three paddocks. And I wondered if we grazed them tighter. We also grazed them later. You know, it's crazy. These plants, you look at them one week and they're just simmering, and the next week you go out there after some heat and man, they could be just taking off. And so, I think we got on the grazing a little bit behind and I think we could have tightened up. So, if we had smaller paddocks and might've squeezed another week out of it. But, yeah, I think there's opportunities to improve on it this next year.
Ryan (27:28):
And so, the cattle that was grazing your cover crop, are they your cows, or no?
Jason (27:33):
I worked with a neighbor, Jake Maurer, and he brought his cattle on. He has a great corral system that expands. It folds itself out, so he set up his corral there. Then we put, uh, two wire, hot wire all the way around. And we divided it into thirds with a single hot wire, and the cattle did fine. They respected it and stayed on the cover crop. We were fortunately close to a faucet so, with a lot of hose, we were able to get the water across the road through a culvert and then up to the corral. So, I think that worked out well. Um, yeah, so he, he, he ran the cows, he watches them, they're his cows. He's right next to his house. It worked out really well for me. I didn’t have to bring my cows over.
Ryan (28:33):
That's good. Yeah. And I guess maybe it's worth mentioning, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, but I maybe when during that green revolution, a lot of the fencing started getting taken out? Or was it after that?
Jason (28:46):
I think it was Earl Butz does that name sound right? I think he was the USDA, um, who's the top dog? There’s a name for it.
Jodi (29:00):
Conservationist?
Jason (29:03):
Who’s the guy underneath The President? He's like the secretary of…
Jodi (29:07)
Agriculture.
Jason (29:09):
Yeah, Earl Butz was the Secretary of Agriculture, and I think he was the one that, that wanted farmers to farm fence row to fence row and take all the fences out. I think that was in the late sixties, early seventies, 'cause I remember watching a video. Wow, you're really tapping my brain here.
Ryan (29:33):
Sorry. It's like a history test.
Jason (29:37):
It’s Expo ‘74. Right. Spokane.
Ryan (29:39):
Spokane, yeah. Big year for Spokane.
Jason (29:41):
There was a guy, he's a poet agronomist, and his name is…
Jodi (29:49):
Wendell Berry.
Jason (29:50):
Wendell Berry. Thank you. Thank you, Wendell Berry. Wendell Berry came to Spokane and was talking about the impacts of this kind of agriculture that Earl Butz was, I think it was Earl Butz.
Ryan (30:06):
We Can fact check it.
Jason (30:07):
Yeah, please fact check it. I don't want to accuse the wrong person of, of that style of agriculture. And it's a great little lecture that he gives. I think it's on YouTube. I’ve watched it before. It was very interesting.
Ryan (30:22):
Yeah, that’s awesome. So, the reason I was bringing that up is because now if folks want to integrate cattle back into their cropping systems, it's hard because there aren't fences.
Jason (30:32):
We ripped all the fences out.
Ryan (30:32):
Yeah.
Jason (30:33):
You know, in fact, my dad, when he first came to the farm to help my grandpa in the late seventies, early eighties, that was some of his early jobs were to take fences out. I still see like corner posts and piles of barbed wire laying around. That I knew there was a fence there. But it's like this whole cycle of coming back to where we started. I even see it in our farmhouse. My grandpa made all these updates in the sixties. He dropped the ceilings that were 10 foot, it's a craftsman home. And he dropped them down to, whatever the standard is. So that was kind of a fad. And then now my wife would be like, hey, let's bring it back to the way it was originally. I feel like I'm undoing everything My grandpa did all his life.
Ryan (31:20):
That's really funny. And then I guess the other thing worth mentioning is that most people don't have experience with cattle at all.
Jason (31:31):
Yeah. I mean, we've really segregated the industry. My family specialized in growing wheat. There's families that specialize in growing beef, so there's families that do dairy. And so, we really had these silos and we don't often talk to each other to see, maybe we shouldn't be putting cattle into a small area and feeding them out, maybe there's an opportunity to put them onto acres, crop ground. Instead of trying to manage their waste in a feed lot where it’s a detriment, why don't we put the waste on a field where it's a benefit? So, I think there's these cool opportunities where we can break down some of these silos and collaborate with other agriculture industries.
Ryan (32:24):
Yeah, it's been really interesting talking to all the other folks that have been participating and the arrangements that they have with whatever grazing. So last Friday I was out on a field and that farmer had 800 goats grazing.
Jason (32:38):
Oh, nice.
Ryan (32:39):
Yeah. Like a lot. It was a very large area. Bigger than the 30 acres, so there's a lot of different ways that people are going about or trying to do it.
Jason (32:50):
Yeah. I mean, I've had a few other thoughts about grazing, because we got on it late, we wind rowed these paths to where the fences were gonna be set, because there's a challenge with dry soil and trying to get a hot wire to work. The plants will just suck all the voltage out. So, we wind rowed it. But my rancher made the observation that where we had those windrows, the cattle ate the windrows. And then I'm looking at it now and there's more green-up in those areas where the, where the windrows were at.
Ryan (33:31):
Interesting.
Jason (33:32):
What I think it did is it stopped that plant from going reproductive. And so the plant didn't have the opportunity to set a seed. So if you could stop the plant from setting a seed with a cow or with a swather, then it wants to come back and regrow. And so you get like a second opportunity. And so, I've, I've done that before up here where I've just wind rowed it. I didn't bale it, I just left it on the ground, had the cattle come in, they'll graze it off and then pull the cows off. And then the cover crop or grazing crop would regrow. And then I get a second feast off of it, a second salad bar.
Jodi (34:21):
So, thinking about cash crops and how to make that most profitable on the farm, what options have you guys explored to integrate that and make the farm more viable?
Jason (34:34):
There's, there's a really unique opportunity we have, because right now the, the buzzword in agriculture is regenerative. So, if there was a way, where we could implement these principles for soil health improvement and then associate that with a change in the nutritional quality of the food we produce, then I think there'd be an opportunity to market our product to a higher value. Right now, there's only one lever that a farmer can pull to get more money out of his field, and that's yield. There's, nothing else we can do to make the bottom line better in our books. If there was an opportunity to do these regenerative practices and be rewarded for them because people saw the value in regenerative food, then that would be really cool. I don't know if that exists yet, but I would really like to see that happen.
Ryan (35:46):
I have two more questions. One is another dumb one. How have you been deciding what cover crop you'll seed?
Jason (35:54):
Oh, okay. I think one major decision point is when do I want to plant and then what do I want the cover crop to do for me? So, if I want it to be for grazing, I'm gonna do more grasses in my mix. And if I want it to be for fixing nitrogen, I'm gonna do some more leguminous crops. And I also need to be aware there's gonna be seed that it just, it's just gonna happen. The plant's gonna set seed and that seed's gonna fall on the soil. And what am I gonna be putting in after the cover crop too? Because, I don't wanna get docked for any volunteer cover crop that shows up in my cash crop next year. But I think the biggest decision point is like, when am I seeding? If I'm seeding in the fall, it needs to over winter. Well, that's gonna be something like a winter pea. I'm doing triticale. I could probably pull off something like a turnip if I wanted to, although that would set seed next year and I don't know if I'd want to do that.
Then if I'm doing an early spring planting, I'm going to do something like beardless spring wheat if I want it to be grazed. I'm a firm believer in just sourcing seeds that you can find close by. It doesn't have to be some exotic plant from anywhere in the eastern side of the states or something. If whatever you can find that will grow in a different plant family. So, I like to do a brassica, a grass, and a legume, and try to have different root structures.
As you kind of go through those cool season plants, then you, then you would go into the warm seasons, which are your sunflowers, and your millets, and your sorghums. But those have issues too if you're grazing. You want to make sure that you don't graze them in the fall when it freezes because there's dangers of prussic acid poisoning. So yeah, there's so many variables.
Ryan (38:23):
I know. Just so hard.
Jason (38:27):
It's really tough.
Ryan (38:28):
Since you just finished the first year of trials, was there anything that surprised you, or you learned that you'd want to share with anyone listening?
Jason (38:37):
Yeah, it surprised me that I, I put a little canola in because I had some and it matured much quicker than I expected, than the oats. It was predominantly oats. Oats and millet I think were the majority of it. And the canola, it set seed, oh, probably late July. I was surprised because the cows were not interested at all. I think they ate the leaves off the lower portions, but they left the seed up top. And so after the cows had gone through there, I had sporadic canola plants scattered all over the field. And I was like, what am I gonna do with this? And so, I actually went in with a combine and pulled probably almost 2,000 pounds of canola, that's off the top after the cows had been through there. So that was kind of fun.
Ryan (39:37):
Yeah. That's great.
Jason (39:38):
That was unexpected.
Ryan (39:41):
Well, Jason, thank you so much for chatting with us today.
Jason (39:43):
Yeah. Thank you for, uh, doing this and getting, getting the word out. Yeah, we're excited to do these trials.
Ryan (39:51):
Yeah. And yeah, we'll be excited to hear what you learn. This was the first of eight FLOURISH podcasts. Uh, stay tuned for the next one.
Conclusion
This podcast was brought to you by the Palouse Conservation District. Funding is provided by USDA's Conservation Innovation Grants Program. To find out more information, check out the FLOURISH website at inwflourish.org. Thanks so much for listening, and keep an eye out for our next episode.
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