 Would you guys introduce yourselves? You go first. So we're the camera family, Riley, Jimmy, Carly, Caitlin, and Kimball. Perfect. Near Piedmont, South Dakota. I'd like to understand, and our watchers and viewers would like to know too, is there a specific priority order that things fall in when you think of the ranch's resources? First, of course, we do family. That's always most important. You want to make sure everything's all right in between, because that's where you stack up all the other priorities. That's where the foundation is. And the next would probably be the land and the grass go hand in hand. And then probably our cattle and then our equipment. So I think... Tell me the story of how and if you recall when you recognized that this operation needed to do something to deal with the impacts of drought. Sure. So we come off the 16-17 drought. And that spring of 17, we were down to our last two bales. And we were plum grazed out. We had no options. And we finally went to grass, and it finally, the rains came. But it was a frightening situation. And I couldn't find any hay just to get us through. There just wasn't any. And I had been noticing in the years leading up to that how our cattle were grazing on the summer grass. We were 10 acres per pair. And that's the standard of wisdom around this country. And we were leaving grass. They were completely overgrazing the draws and the low spots. And they were leaving the hilltops. And I had estimated that there was 40% of that range land that wasn't getting utilized. And the rest of it was overutilized. And that had to be fixed. Because just fixing that could have got us through those bad years. And so that began my education to dig in deep, to try to figure out what we can do. We were a continuous summer grazing. So we were a two-pasture deal through the summer. And now it's taken us a while to get there and get our fence and our water to where we were in better shape. But last summer we were at 13 paddocks. And we're hopefully can double that maybe this year. And so what we've achieved by that is we're getting uniform distribution of grazing across the entire summer pasture. As well as extending the rest period for all these grasses. And it's really making a difference. And last year on some of it we experimented. We went pretty high density on it to try to break up some of those oxidized grasses and get them to utilize it. So we're really looking forward to see how that shifts up this year for the summer. But by doing that we're able to control our grazing better rather than having those cattle walk back and forth across that pasture and walk that grass off. And so we were actually able to leave grass last year. And that's what got us through last year too was grazing part of the old grass from the year before when that looks into our drought plan. So that was the turning point for us that we needed to get this deal figured out. And then we were able to buy out my folks and we more than doubled our cowherd again. And I knew that we're in a semi-arid land, western South Dakota, and drought's going to come. We went through two years of record precipitation and there was hay everywhere. And I think a lot of us maybe took it for granted. That was when our drought plan started, when the heavy rains were falling. Because I knew this deal was going to turn around. And we've been trying to prepare for three years for this. And by utilizing the forages that we grew on this place and not relying on hay, getting our stalking rate correct, that got us through. We didn't have to find hay last year. We still have hay left over next year. So I feel pretty confident that we can a little help from other nature. We can make it through without having to drastically de-stalk. Once we got that forage plan in, your stress level went down a lot. So that also helped us out a lot too. You had indicated that even with a 40% reduction in production or rain. I guess I should say you said it as rain last season in 2021 that you were able to manage through. Could you shine a little more light on that? A year ago when I was doing my grazing planning a year ago, so the February of 21, I knew we were deficient. It stopped raining that June before that. Most of our summer pastures didn't catch a rain all summer and nothing in the fall. I knew we were short and it was starting to concern me. And I was seeking out and I was able to find some extra pasture early like in February and secure that in case it got bad. That really helped to get some hairs out and took some pressure off. And again, we didn't keep any heifer calves last year. I knew we just didn't have the resources to keep them. I wasn't going to buy to get yearlings through. I've fed enough yearlings. I know what it costs and it's very expensive. The lease I had, I don't have for this year. So we know we're going to be short and I've already secured corn stalk grazing for the bulk of the cows for next winter. Regardless of if it does rain or doesn't, I think it's going to be a wise choice for us to get off here and keep as much cover on these pastures as we can. We're just trying to prepare ourselves better for when it does rain that we'll have. We're not hitting these grasses too hard that they'll still recover and grow. I mean, we're thinking, trying to think long term and try not to take short term form cuts, I guess, and just sweep through. And in that part of it is we would like to be fully stocked when the markets peak. And so we want to be prepared for that high point in the market and we want to capitalize on that as much as we can. And if we graze out here and then we have to sell out. And so if we have options that are financially viable, we're going to do it and it's different, but it's a plan. And as the drought, you know, I mean, we just miss this moisture and it's nice to not be out waiting in snow right now, but it'd be nice to have this. We desperately need this moisture, but like I keep telling him he's got a plan for next winter for the cows. He's got our calves marketed, they got a home. And so there's a lot of what is in between, but we have some those plans in place and that can kind of help ease the burden as until we can get, you know, corn stocks, which can help with our stress level. And I'd also say don't be afraid to change plans because I know through it all we've changed a lot of plans. And if we would stay on that route, then it wouldn't have been as profitable or we want to gain so much off of it, but we hope we have a plan. It sounds like you're a bit unique in that late winter time frame, or even talking about that upcoming growing season. Do you see that as a risk or is that just... No, it is a risk that, yeah, you're laying that money out there, but I think by knowing what you've got, knowing you need something and the earlier you look for it before everybody else's, maybe you can grab it. That's how we got our leases. It's supply and demand. I mean, we can either sit there and let it be used against us or we can use it for us. And you can look into the long-term forecast quite a ways in advance and see what's happening. And you can look into the markets. I mean, yeah, there's black swan events and things that happen that aren't known, but there's a lot of things that just happen. And you can look out and see that. And so by, you know, we can manage our risks by looking farther in advance and taking advantage of the supply and demand. But again, it comes back to giving us peace and emotionally and financially, which is good. Because then when you have to make changes in the middle of your plan, it's not as so desperate. You're not desperate. And you can sleep a little better at night knowing that, you know, yeah, I guess if we have to use things or if we end up using things a little harder this summer, we know that my next winter, you know, we're going to be off of here. And so, you know, it's not always ideal. Every choice and decision we make isn't ideal. But, you know, we just try to manage it. And by making those choices long-term helps with that. Maybe I'm looking at them. But I wondered if you might be able to tell me what you see as some of the lasting values or benefits of having grazing plans that you revisit, absorb and adapt, as well as that drought slash disaster slash contingency plan as conditions change. I think it adds a lot of assurance as we go on through disaster years or drought years or years where we might not have opportunities that we had the year before. I think it definitely helps us get the big picture of our ranch and what we're doing. And definitely in the good years helps us to be grateful. We just made that decision to be more proactive instead of reacting about what we're doing and just having plans in place that we can work into. And when these happen, we have trigger dates, you know, we probably better start working on this and start thinking about this. And it just takes a lot of the guesswork and the stress and the not knowing out. Yeah, reducing the stress is probably the biggest thing for us. Because once you get this stress off, everything falls into place. Yeah, in quality life, we enjoy our family and our kids. You know, we do work hard. I believe kids with work ethic and skill are going to rule the world because they are few and getting fewer. But we like to play too. And so enjoying our kids and being able to enjoy our family and hopefully leave this land better for them. They're the seventh generation on my husband's side and they're the sixth generation on my side to be in agriculture. And whether or not they pursue that, it's their life, it's their choice, but it's still for the future. Yeah, it is for the kids and for us too. I mean, we love it too. We haven't talked too much about it. I just mentioned it just now, Riley, trigger dates. You want to share maybe what those are for this operation and there's a date on the calendar. Are you taking action on that day or are you making a decision? I guess I don't have for sure set dates. We just have, you know, by May, if we're not getting the moisture, we need to really seriously consider what we're doing. And in fall, far moisture is crucial for grass production the next year. And if we're not seeing that, maybe we better not buy those extra cows or we're not going to keep those yearlings. If we have a surplus, that's a different story. Outside of just personal reflection and observation in the field, were there any specific resources that you utilized to come to this new grazing plan? Sure. I reached out to you first, Tantz, through the local NRCS, URDC at the time, and got with Mitch, Faulkner then, and we started working on this over a period of a winter, fall in a winter and started digging deep into a forage inventory, resource inventory, and what we had and what we could work with. And I knew, you know, we built that initial stocking right on it. I knew to get this right, I was going to have to control my grazing better and increase my harvest efficiency around the amount of cows we were. It just, it was right there black and white on the paper that the plan I thought would work wasn't going to work until we made some drastic changes. And I went to South Dakota Grassland Coalition's grazing school and that helped putting a lot of into perspective for me and what we needed to do as well as branching for profit, another two-day school that I went to. Those were probably the key drivers to implement the changes we needed to. But what sent you to those were tough situations. Oh yeah. Financial, weather, you know, atlas, things that brought us to the end of ourselves and stress, you know, we just don't, there's things that you don't have to repeat in life. In agriculture, there's so much that is out of our control. But there's a lot of things that we can take better control of as producers and that's what we've chose to try to do is to take control of the things that we can control to minimize the stress because, you know, that's not the hardest part about being an egg. It's the most wearing part and so that drove him to seek different ways. So we built that initial stocking rate with the resources we had and that was built, we had a lot of excess forage that year. And, you know, we had the option of just turn the cattle out or we had the option to really utilize what we were given in the good years. And so she was nine months pregnant with our third daughter and I just had to say that if we're going to do this, we got to do it now or whatever. And so we started straying in our first polywire and building paddocks for the cows and she's out there pregnant and helping me in the way we went. So, you know, initially we were around 250 cows and we were giving them five acres a day. So, and we started that in November. Jim Garrish says that if you're going to try something like this, it's best to do it with a dry cow because it's pretty tough to screw that up. So we did and we moved polywire all winter long. We had some pastures that had an excess of 4,500 pounds per acre and the utilization we were able to get over that was incredible. And in doing that, we hardly had to feed and those cows were doing just fine. And, you know, we used to say, well, what about snow and the weather? We had 80 inches of snow that winter off and on. It would come heavy and we'd have it around and it would melt but we were diligent with what we did and we kept on with the plan. And we got through that year with 400 cows and I think we fed 250 bales of hay. So we were able to use that surplus forage in an efficient manner and it saved that hay for now when we needed it. Because that was my deal was, you know, we're going to need this. We put up a record amount of hay. We're going to need that down the road. So let's be wise in how we use it. Use the resources that God gave us with moisture we had and let's plan for this drought that's going to come. It might be next year, it might be three years from now, but we know it's going to come. You know, we were just counting up the other day. In the last 20 years, we've had really six good years above average forage and the rest have seemed like been tough. So we're kind of, we look at this in a different way that, you know, we've probably better be stocked for the dry years and, you know, the better years than we can do whatever we need and bring pairs in. We've done that. We've kept yearlings. You know, we started this two years ago when it started getting dry and we got rid of our yearlings early. So now we're going to need that forage for our cows to keep the cow herd. And that next year we, well, we didn't keep heifers for two years. We just bought a few cows, keep our numbers up, because I didn't want to allocate those resources to a yearling herd that would end up taking away from the cow herd, which is crucial to our cash flow to get through. And so we don't have any heifers right now. We just made that decision. We've cut our stocking right down by about 25% to prepare for this to get through because I knew, you know, if we had to buy a $300 hay it would break us really fast. And I, you see, we've been backed into that corner where we've been out of forage and we just decided we're not doing that anymore. The amount of stress that we have to go through at that time is more than we want to live with. So we just, we try to plan, plan as best as we can. But when you come up with your grazing plan, you calculate how much forage that, you know, we have, and how long it's going to get us through, that gives us that confidence that we are headed down the path that we want to be headed down, because, you know, there's not a lot of people around here that are stringing polywire and grazing their cows in the winter. And so to have this plan on paper and have it calculated right, because it is, it's crazy when everybody's feeding hay. And you do, you kind of feel sorry for your cows. I was the one who kind of felt sorry for them and it makes me feel good. I used to make me feel good to go roll out a bale of hay and it made me feel like I was doing something good for my cows. But when he has the grazing plan, I'll calculate it on paper and he can confidently say, well, this is, they're getting what the nutrition they need. And you can, you can implement your program and have confidence in that in spite of, you know, what, what you've done in the past and how you feel. Because, but in the long run we, our cattle are happier grazing. They are much happier because they get to move to fresh pasture. They're not standing on, you know, laying on soiled ground and their grazers by nature and that's what they want to go do. So yesterday we were checking cows and those cows wanted to move. But they were so full dad told us, dad told me if we went and rolled out a bale, they wouldn't eat it because they had so much there already for them. They get more out of that than normal bale. Do you want to talk about how we did our forage inventory last September? Yeah, so we went out to all of our pastures. We kind of went to a spot that kind of had an average of all of our grass. We went to multiple pastures, the pasture that we were most concerned about or hadn't already been on. We used the ring and then we cut it and put it in the bag and then clipped it, yeah, and waited, made sure to dry it out and then we did also do that with our cover crop. And with all that information together we had the assurance that we were going to make it through, at least for now, but yeah. And we made it through the winter. With grass to spare? With grass to spare and we're calving on last year's grass. It will be April what, 13th today I think. And cows will start calving here in a week or 10 days. So we still have old grass to use up. The green isn't coming very hard. But we know, we know, we try to plan ahead of time how much forage we have so we don't run out. And having that assurance, because again there's an agriculture, there's so many things that are out of our control, but having that assurance and knowing that in a year like this when hay is so expensive, that we know we can still make our, you know, make our goal and not blow our budget. And that's, that gives us peace. So are your folks a little easier to get along with? No, they are. Yep. We're not rolling out bills every day. Almost $5.00 each. So do you expect your land, you've got a history of managing in this way to recover really quickly when favorable conditions return and we get rain? Personally, I don't think so. Our soil is currently so deprived of moisture. It's not used to having so much rain added into it. I don't think you take it as well. A lot of it would probably run off. I think any terrain would definitely green us up a lot. We would see a difference in that, but I think we would need a lot more steady conditions instead of one like three inch downpour to actually see changes. So what if, what if we do see a return to normal conditions this springtime, April, May and June are key months, most important for rainfall? Of course not. If we kind of get the ship right and we're following that normal path, do you think it would look good then? Yeah, probably as we go on, continue our soil, keeps getting used to it. If we've got enough litter on the ground. We'll rest in the pastures enough that we'll allow the grasses to come when the head starts to grow. And on these dry years, once you have the litter done down, it's helping our soils get more mellow. And as it comes down, it's going to soak it in more. So yeah, some cases, some cases, no, but kind of depends on where you are. So let's say it rains four inches in the next month. Things are going to change. They're going to start looking really good. And it'll be really tempting to just turn out and let the cows do what they do. Is that the best idea for every pasture? Well, even if you have a good year, you don't want to turn your cows out. Is there a minimum amount of surface protection or plant litter that you choose to leave behind? We've gone out to some of the least pasture and they don't graze throughout the spring when the Kentucky bluegrass is prominent and growing. We can tell that there's way too much litter there. Normally on our country and our specific land, that's out in St. Launch. But in our specific land, we like to leave quite a bit because we're arid and we want to get as much moisture as we can. And from so much erosion that's happened over the past hundreds of years, getting that litter down and then decomposing and adding that soil back on. But no, we don't really have a specific amount of litter. We want to get so every inch of ground is covered. But since we graze in the spring in specific pastures, we don't have a problem with too much. We just know that we like to get a good handful between our feet and know that we've got the ground covered all the time. We target our grazing at 35 to 40% utilization. So we know we're always leaving plenty of grass behind because we might need to mesh. And you can tell when you've added enough litter in a year like this and you dig down deep and you still have enough moisture in it. It's not powdering in your hands. So leaving behind that much grass isn't as common as maybe it could be across the country. Some might even call it wasted grass. What benefits do you see or leaving behind that kind of residue covered? Well, as I talked about, over time it decomposes adding top soil on top of your already existing soil. It catches rain better. It's not like a bomb exploding on the uncovered grass. It doesn't compact it. It's like an umbrella or a blanket and when it's cold or hot, leaves our soil cool. It doesn't kill off what soil microbes we already have there. Some people call it wasted grass, but how dare them? That's all I'm going to say. I drove by this weekend, this ranch, and I saw you out installing pipeline. It was cold and windy and I kind of felt sorry for you. But you're doing something, even amidst what looks to be probably a short grass year. You're preparing your infrastructure so that you have the ability to graze that pasture where stock dams have gone dry. So I want to know what role water development will play on this ranch? Well, they're pretty crucial. Typically we've relied on dam water for 100 years and we can't rely on that anymore. It's proved itself this year. Here we are. I was waiting. Maybe we'd catch some snow and get some runoff and part of this is to lease ground. And you hate to develop water on ground and go home, but I don't have a choice right now. So we went that route last year and we ran out of water on some of our summer pasture and I had a lot of water. But it was what we had to do to get through. And we just had decided here that we were just going to have to pay for some of this out of our pocket and get ahead of the pipeline and start expanding on it. Can't wait. And I partnered on a trencher and a way we went. And luckily we found some pipe and a trench and water line in March. One of the things we did was we've combined and we run the cows in one herd. So we're not necessarily running as much polywire as we were. We're still going to do quite a bit. But by running in one herd, we can give the pastures adequate grass and still get the harvest efficiency that we desire. But in doing that, then, we found out that all the previous pipeline infrastructure that we had is inadequate. And not many cows in one bunch, they drink a lot of water. And so we had to replace all our pump system here in the last week. And a lot of money on that to get enough pressure and flow. And then we have a storage tank trailer that we can take out on the hydrogen and drop tanks. And so then we got, you know, in the neighborhood of five or six thousand gallons of storage out on the end. And that takes, that's a buffer there that we can get through. Once some cows are full, then we seem to get along all right. But we still got a long ways to go on watering. We're getting there slowly. You move from one paddock to the next fairly rapidly. It's not the season long any longer. Did you have to make some adjustments on the watering system or do you have some temporary? We've got temporary and this will be the third year third summer we've done that on on our summer grass. Up there it's just not feasible for a well for us. It's 3400 feet to a well and we just can't outlay that much money. So we are relying on the surface water that we do have. And we understand that and that's our most important deal out there. And so we fenced out those dams and this will be the third year on that. We have a solar pump system rigged up that we pump out of the dam or the dug out through a pipe into the storage trailer to to the cows. And that that keeps the cows from mucking up the dam water and preserves it's preserving the integrity of the dam bank. You know, just to keep that that resource there long term. I mean, it's it is a lot of water a lot of work and getting that done. But last summer when I went up I went up one day and, you know, it's 110 degrees up there. And I get up there to check water and there's 20 calves up there to the tanks to drink. And that makes it all worth it to me that those cows can get a clean drink of water and not have to wait out in the slop to get a mucking drink. So that's that's probably the biggest thing we've done is that pumping on those dams. And it's really working good for us. All right, guys, how in times of hardship like this when when a lot of the cows have probably had to leave the place or are being fed at another location? How do you diversify your income stream just to meet your obligations? You got it. So I guess we we have made decisions based on every year and the need for that year financially resource wise. We've taken in cattle we've sold down cattle. We, we've got both gotten town jobs at different times. I stayed home and took care of cows he went to work full time. We basically have just done what we've had to do for that time just to be able to reach our long term goals. So whatever it took to meet those long term goals, that's what we did. And wasn't always exactly what we wanted to do. But we knew we knew that if we did that short term that we could meet our long term goals and reach that. And so it made it bearable. So but I know the key to success and anything that you're doing, I believe is is to seek out individuals that you do admire who they are and what they do. Ask them for advice, but also, you know, take, take their, you know, their criticism or their advice how to change and how to grow and, and, you know, and do to keep you accountable. Because if you don't, if you don't have that, we all just kind of get pretty just relaxed with. Because most times when they're trying to tell you something they've gone through that experience and they want, they want, they would want that, that advice, same advice when they were going through that. And something else too. I mean, you don't, you don't necessarily want to take advice from everybody. Yeah. Yeah, so one year, you know, we realized by keeping our cows, we were going to go broke. And so the best thing that we could do for our family and, and for our business was to sell our cows. And I'm someone that can talk, I could talk to anybody. But I didn't talk for three days. I mean, I couldn't speak. It was very hard. But, but it was the right looking back. It was the right decision. And it wasn't easy. But it again, it helped us accomplish our long term goals. And so it achieved, it achieved our short term goal of just not going broke. So the alternative was to feed through it? To feed through it, take on more debt that we were not going to be able to pay out and get cashed out by the bank. And so we just made a decision. We have this, we have this road to take or this road to take. And they both aren't going to be very enjoyable. But what's our long term goal? Well, to stay in business. So, you know, the only thing we did wrong is I didn't let my husband sell all the cows. That's the only thing we did wrong. But I, I believe that, you know, we do, we have to seek out, seek out someone, whether it's a spiritual mentor, a Bible study, a book club, a mom's group. It's hard. It's hard to get away. We're all busy. Everybody, everybody's busy and we can make a thousand excuses. I mean, we all have very valid excuses. You know, when you have kids and animals that rely on you, that's a big deal. And you can use that as any excuse to get out of any obligation or anything. But I know the things that are the hardest to do are usually the most rewarding. And, and, and so it's so important. You know, I know with Riley and his grasslands coalition group, it's so hard to get away. I mean, you know, we have three kids. One, she's a toddler, ranch, we homeschool. I mean, I have a hundred excuses just like everybody else, but what he, the knowledge that he cleans the confidence. But just in the friendship and mentorship that he gets out of that, it's so important and it's life changing. And it just reboots you and spurs you on because, you know, when we, when we live and work in the same place all the time, it's always here and you can't get away and it's almost. You can become accustomed to the problems that are already there and get different perspectives. And unless you get out and get off the place or get around people that have a fresh perspective on things, it's hard to see, see your problems in a different light. And so, yeah, making time to get off out and do things is important, even if it's just for a couple hours. It's, it's worth it. It's worth it. So I've had to seek out a real, a core group of people, friends and business partners and like-minded individuals and balance crazy ideas off each other and tell us if we're wrong or we think you're right. That might work and then we hold each other accountable for it. And that, just having that, that support there, that keeps me going. Otherwise we just quit and take the easy way out probably. Hold us accountable for, hold us accountable for what we do. I think you talked about what I was going to say. Is that kind of what it is? Yeah. Together. So, but it definitely takes a team because when, when one is to get through those situations, because when one is low, the other one can carry the other one through. And, and it does take a team and we're all a team. This is our team. We're missing him. She's up and coming teammate. Hopefully she'll pull her weight someday. But it is, it's about working together and having, having combined goals set and reaching those. Because it is, it can be hard. I hope that you speak to the ranchers, many of them probably are neighbors and friends that feel like they're out of options. A lot of grass, the green, like you said, Riley isn't coming on as rapidly here in mid-April as it has in years past in part due to temperature in part and maybe large part due to lack of moisture starting to clear back last fall. To those that feel like they're out of options, do you have any, any tips or, or messages of hope for them? That's a, being hopeless is a really hard place to be and we've been there. But, you know, you can use that to set the stage to be determined to come up with solutions for those, for the future. Because in agriculture it's cyclical, things cycle back around, drought is cyclical, markets are cyclical. It all, it all cycles back around. And so you can choose today to make different choices that affect, that affect you long term. And when we finally decided to do that, we were sitting with our calves. We had gathered, the stress will gather, sorted, had truck dollar calves to town 50 miles to the sale barn. And, and they were bringing, you know, $200 below our break even. And Carly leaned over to me and said, Mom, what's wrong? And I, I didn't realize, but I, you know, I had that look because it was hopeless because we knew that was, that was it for us. But, you know, God had different plans that day and we calves brought what they needed to bring. But on the truck ride back to go, to go get our horses and get everything situated at the pasture. Riley and I just decided we're like this is, I don't want to do this, be in this position again. Because I felt like I lost maybe a couple of my nine lives if I have that many. And I just, it's, it's not a fun position to be in. And, you know, you don't want your kid asking you that tough question of Mom, what's wrong? And you can't really explain it to them, but they, they know something's wrong. And so anyway, we just determined on the truck ride back that we were going to do it differently. And that was it for us. And if you continually make the same choices, the same outcomes going to happen and that's up to us to make those changes. And so we, so I guess my advice to people is, is, you know, find where those hard, those, those hard things that cause great effect on your family and your business and figure out what you have control over and change it and do it. And it's not easy. Change is hard. I mean, I, I'm usually the one that is the hardest sell in this family. Again, but I, if you come at it with the resources that different places offer and, you know, come at it in an analytical way, like my husband's very analytical. And to say it works on paper and now let's just, we just got to go do it and take back some of that control because it is, it's hard and being hopeless position. It's, it's no fun. We've been there more than we care to ever be again. But, but take control, take control of what you can change and do it and seek out resources and, and don't be afraid and, and find, and find people that you admire how they, you know, how their families, how their businesses, what they're doing and ask them questions. Ask them questions how and why and what do you think and then go out and Riley's always, he does. Well, let's just do it then. This is what we're doing. We're doing it. And so, and then go do it and then reevaluate and so and make changes from there. But there are things in agriculture we can take control of but it, but it takes different, making different choices and that's okay.